Nevada

Other than my meager efforts in a fantasy football league, I don't bet. Not on football, not on March Madness, not on the World Series. It has just never been my thing. Probably never will be. But I should be able to bet on a game if I wanted to -- and so should you -- legally, at a sports book in Los Angeles, or anywhere in any of the 50 states. Unfortunately, if we want to place such a bet and do it on the up-and-up, we've got to go all the way to Nevada, the only state where sports wagering is both widespread and legal.

In revenue-strapped Nevada, where foreclosed homes dot suburban streets and poker tables sit empty, it's come to this: A state legislator wants to talk about legalizing -- and taxing -- prostitution in Reno and Las Vegas. "It's almost de facto legal. It's running unregulated," said state Sen. Bob Coffin, a Democrat who chairs the Senate Taxation Committee. He also said legalization would better protect sex workers.

With its gleaming Vegas Strip and stucco sprawl, Nevada has portrayed itself as a model of the civilized West. But every so often, such as Tuesday, holdovers from its boisterous beginnings show up at the Capitol -- and they are named Chicken Ranch, Pussycat Ranch and Shady Lady. Here's Nevada's dirty little secret: Many lawmakers would like to keep the state's legal brothels a dirty little secret.

The sex scandal engulfing Sen. John Ensign deepened Wednesday after his former mistress' husband made new allegations about the relationship, saying the Nevada Republican paid the woman more than $25,000 in severance when she stopped working for him last year. Doug Hampton made the accusation in a TV interview with Las Vegas Sun columnist Jon Ralston.

Authorities have arrested a man who they say told bank tellers in Utah that he was on a mission to kill President Obama. Daniel James Murray, 36, was arrested Friday outside a casino in Laughlin, Nev., according to the Secret Service. Murray made bizarre statements last month while opening -- and then closing within two weeks -- an $85,000 savings account at Zions First National Bank in St. George, Utah, the Secret Service said in documents filed Thursday. Asst. U.S. Atty.

The water ravaged the Crimson Road neighborhood. It punched in windows, buckled pavement, dug a 7-foot-deep gulch. It barreled over Tony Ebert's redwood fence and hurled his shed across the yard. Calf-deep in brown water on Sunday, he wondered: How could this happen again?

Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton threw some subtle and not-too-subtle jabs at her main Democratic rival during a campaign swing through Nevada on Saturday while courting Latino voters and pledging to help financially troubled homeowners in a state that will host the first major political bout in the West. Clinton bristled when an undecided voter asked whether she had grown too cozy with Washington lobbyists to offer true healthcare reform, and she mocked Sen.

A federal judge cleared the way Thursday for creation of nine at-large Democratic casino precincts on the Las Vegas Strip for Saturday's caucuses, but the decision did little to calm the internecine battle between supporters of Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. U.S. District Court Judge James Mahan sided with the state Democratic Party and rejected a challenge by Clinton supporters and the Nevada State Education Assn. to ban the at-large Strip precincts.

Barack Obama has warned about the dangers of gambling -- that it carries a "moral and social cost" that could "devastate" poor communities. As a state senator in Illinois, he at times opposed plans to expand gambling, worrying that it could be especially harmful to low-income people. Today, those views are posing a problem for Obama in the gambling mecca of Nevada, which holds its presidential nominating caucuses Saturday. While his top rival, Sen.

Far out in the suburbs that reach almost to the horizon here, there's a beauty salon inside a beige-on-beige shopping center where the talk usually revolves around husbands, children, pets and affairs of the heart. In the last few weeks, however, habitues of the tony Radichi Salon have turned their attention to a topic that once would have been taboo -- presidential politics.