An interesting employee for "Child and Family Services," is he not?

To remove the judges from office, the group will have 90 days from the Monday filing to obtain signatures equal to 25 percent of the number of votes each judge received in their last election - 40,711 for Moss and 53,354 for Saitta....

Star-Alexander's complaints against Moss, a Family Court judge since 2000, stem from her handling of a few cases, including one involving the death of 12-year-old Syber Wells....

Adams filed with the Nevada Supreme Court a proposal to amend the Nevada Code of Judicial Conduct to prohibit the personal solicitation and acceptance of campaign contributions by judges and judicial candidates.

When McCorkle, a criminal justice professor, combined less-severe "problem gamblers" into his study, the ratio of Las Vegas inmates with gambling issues jumped to one in six.

Under Adams' proposal, which he tried unsuccessfully to get the high court to consider in the mid-1990s, judicial candidates and judges up for re-election would have to use "committees of responsible persons" to get contributions and run campaigns.

"Getting judges out of the money business is long overdue," Adams said. "Virtually all states that elect judges prohibit judges and judicial candidates from personally soliciting contributions. It's not a wholesome process. It undermines the integrity and independence of the judiciary."

"It was a pivotal point in my life. Had I not been removed from my home, I would have gotten involved in drugs, maybe teen pregnancy."

The experience also inspired her to become a social worker so that she might "give back" to the system she thinks saved her....

Tudor's "giving back" has been so successful that, after spending time as a foster care case manager for the state and a supervisor for child protective services in Clark County, she was recently promoted to assistant manager of the county's Department of Family Services, supervising 130 workers who help investigate child abuse and neglect cases and place children in foster care.

"Folks internally were really impressed with her," Clark County Manager Thom Reilly says of Tudor. "Her insight with the kids and the system is something to see. It doesn't matter how much you're trained. You'll never get to that level unless you've been there yourself."

Reilly knows Tudor's history well. He first met her nearly two decades ago, when she was a foster child and he was Nevada's Chief of Social Services.

The city attorney's office is researching whether this would pass constitutional muster, Goodman said last week.

Like Warden, a disproportionately high percentage of homeless youths taking the survey were black - 36 percent. About 9 percent of Clark County's population is black, according to a U.S. Census Bureau estimate....

Due to an unfortunate series of events, Jones has found himself simmering in a fine cannibal stew of his own creation. He never planned on things turning out this way, but that’s the trouble with ethical slippage: You never know when it might come back to bite you.

We know how irritating ethical rules can be and how easy it is to overlook them, but doing so can be dangerous. It is like driving a car without wearing your seat belt: If you do it once, you probably won’t get hurt, but if you do it every day for six years, sooner or later you are going to rear-end a semi and bash your face in.

The felon, D. Victor Hancock, also has ties to a real estate company for which Jones was treasurer.

According to court officials, Jones played a significant role in launching the short-lived juvenile rehabilitation program, known as Socksters, with Hancock in Juvenile Court about two years ago....

Whether the two men held a shared financial interest in the company remains unclear. If they did, Jones' willingness to involve Hancock in a Juvenile Court program would raise questions about whether the arrangement violated judicial rules mandating a judge keep his judicial duties separate from private interests....

Jones is no longer the chief judge in Family Court, although he remains a judge. He has resigned from the supervisory role, according to a memo circulated by Chief District Court Judge Kathy Hardcastle....

Socksters was a pilot program funded by Hancock and endorsed by Jones. Court Information Officer Michael Sommermeyer said the program did not involve the expenditure of any government funds.

The intent of the voluntary program was to have troubled youths counseled by Hancock. He had spent nearly a decade in prison for white-collar crimes, and he is a registered felon in Southern Nevada, according to Las Vegas police records and an interview with Hancock's attorney, E. Brent Bryson.

News accounts indicate Hancock was arrested in Las Vegas in 1994 amid allegations that he was involved in a gold investment scheme that cost investors $150,000. The resolution of the case is unclear because the records are sealed.

Despite Hancock's history, court officials were willing to allow him to meet with juveniles in the court system to see if he could help them turn their lives around, Juvenile Court Hearing Master Stephen Compan said.

"I was an ex-felon, I went to prison, and I straightened my life up. I have a limo now, I make a lot of money legitimately now, and this is the way to go," Compan said, describing Hancock's message to the juveniles in the program.

The program was in place for a matter of weeks. It was not clear last week why it was disbanded....

Compan, the Juvenile Court hearing master, defended Jones in an interview last week, saying the judge is a man of high integrity and a respected jurist. He also said Jones has a track record of trying to help people, even if those individuals have had trouble in the past.

I am interested in whether Judge Jones or other public officials have been trading on the image and credibility of their office for personal gain. His former brother-in-law Tom Cecrle, a felon with outstanding warrants, is caught up in a questionable land scheme that has separated investors from hundreds of thousands of dollars. One of those investors accuses Jones of being in on it, and other investors said they were in the judge's chambers when business was discussed.

Hancock is suspected of attempting to develop resort property in Baja and using the Team Hancock program to help dress up the development with credible professionals such as politicians, judges and attorneys.

Commission Chairman Rory Reid and Commissioner Bruce Woodbury requested that the board at its Tuesday meeting consider offering Valentine, an assistant county manager since 2002, a three-year contract as the county's new chief executive officer.

Both commissioners said Wednesday that they have such confidence in Valentine that they see no need to conduct a national search. "She knows the community well," Reid said. "We didn't see a need to look elsewhere."

Delivered in a letter to Hardcastle during a status-check hearing Wednesday, here in her own words is her latest plea:

"Dear Judge

"I'm doing great but every time I have a phone call with my mom I have a bad day. I have a ton of spasums and sometimes bad dreams. I love my mom but I don't trust her when she tells me something because she lied to me my hole life. And Im not going to let her do it to me anymore. I know you say that she's changed and doesn't do that anymore but would you believe someone who lie to you all your life and the expects you to trust them? I will always love her but it doesn't mean I can trust her. Oh yeah before I'm done I don't want to go home but I do want to be adopted. I also don't want to see my mom in jail because it brings back bad memories and what happened to me. One more thing. I want my stuff! PS All my stuff.

"Always Brittney"

Isaacs said Jones led him to believe the document would resolve the dispute and ensure that Cecrle paid Isaacs. Isaacs said he signed the legally binding document without having a lawyer review it because he put his faith in the judge.

A confession of judgment is a written agreement in which liability is admitted and the amount that must be paid is agreed upon. It can be filed as a court judgment if the payment is not made.

Jones' assistant notarized the October 2003 document signed by Cecrle and Isaacs.

Craig Walton, president of the Nevada Center for Public Ethics, said Jones' involvement in the $2 million agreement between Isaacs and Cecrle raises ethical questions.

Walton noted that the public pays for the judge's office and pays his executive assistant's salary, meaning only the public's business should be conducted in the judge's chambers and the executive assistant should only be handling the public's business while on the clock at the courthouse.

Initially, Jimmerson said it was his understanding that Isaacs had loaned Jones money to address a medical issue. In a later interview, Jimmerson said he'd spoken again with his client, who said he'd used the Isaacs-issued credit card.

A sample of the expenditures from Jones' portion of a July 2003 American Express bill: $301.37 for a watch, $227.37 for men's clothing, $1,150 for Tommy Hilfiger jeans, and $127.63 for items marked "spring seasonal" from Dillards-Henderson. The bill also included hundreds of dollars for groceries, hundreds more for clothing, and expenditures in Hawaii in excess of $4,300.

Valentine's is expected be the sole name on commission's July 18 agenda to replace outgoing County Manager Thom Reilly. A majority of commissioners have said they would support her appointment....

Pot ingested in the womb or through mother's milk may indeed be bad for infants -- but so are alcohol, nicotine and caffeine. If the Legislature really meant to make "having all your children taken away" a statutory punishment for the crime of pot smoking -- or for the crime of being poor and having "inadequate housing" -- we'd like to see the law. As would, we hope, the Supreme Court.

The program has been deemed a success by its creators. Roy Chandler, the other coordinator and founder of the program, cites a rate of 12.6 percent of young people being arrested again after going through it, compared with 46 percent for other deterrent programs in the county.

Other states and localities keep children safe without forcing every child to be institutionalized as a first stop. They don't institutionalize babies at all. And, most important, they don't take away, proportionately, nearly as many children as Nevada does -- they've found better ways to keep children safe.

*** We want to know more about this. ***

Decades of studies are nearly unanimous: Institutionalization does enormous harm to children, and the younger the child, the greater the harm. That's why the federal government rates child welfare systems, in part, on their ability to keep children younger than 12 out of these places.

Yet Child Haven is warehousing infants -- even stacking them up like cordwood in the gym. Many are likely to emerge traumatized for life. And the evidence is right under the noses of the people who work there.

Consider what one staffer at Child Haven told a local television station. He said he loves coming to work at Child Haven because babies and toddlers "grab my leg. They call me Mr. Lou. They tell me they love me."

On Thursday, as she walked out of the hospital, authorities took the newborn out of her arms and placed him under county supervision, Olivas said.

"They lost my daughter (Everlyse) and now they are telling me it's justified to take my baby?" Olivas said on Friday.

County officials placed the baby, named Joseph Daniel Cabrera by his mother, in a nursery at the hospital, Olivas said.

Although the baby remained at the hospital's nursery on Friday, Olivas fears the county will transfer him to its overcrowded Child Haven emergency foster care facility.

Children's advocate Glenn Campbell, an independent watchdog who operates the FamilyCourtChronicles.com Web site, blasted commissioners for signing off on County Manager Thom Reilly's selection of Morton without a national search.

Campbell also accused commissioners of trying to squelch criticism of Morton by not allowing citizens an opportunity to comment on him before their vote.

"This thing stinks to high heaven," Campbell told the board during a general comment period at the end of the meeting.

"This is probably the most important issue that has ever come before this board, and we have swept one man into office ... and wiped out any possibility of dissent."

Where the old assumptions seem wildly out of touch with today's reality is when current law implies that a 17-year-old -- or even a 15-year-old -- arrested for a violent crime after running up a rap sheet of burglaries, car thefts and assaults as long as your arm is "basically a good kid who has just fallen in with bad company," in need of a stern talking to and a "time out."

The result has been an increase in juveniles certified by the courts to stand trial as adults -- from 66 last year in Clark County (40 more were negotiated) to 29 so far this year ... on track to reach 87 by year's end.

Seeking a new program to fit between current juvenile rehabilitation programs -- which can see an offender back on the streets in as little as four months -- and simply trying kids as adults, Family Court Judge Bill Voy now proposes a new, longer-term juvenile rehabilitation program, designed to hold youthful offenders from 18 to 24 months, which he believes might prove useful for about a dozen Clark County youths each year.

But at first glance, creating a whole new "program" (presumably with its own rules, administrators, paperwork and high-priced professional staff) -- which would be useful and appropriate for as small a number as a dozen kids per year in the state's largest county -- sounds astonishingly expensive.

Not only was no comment allowed by the public; the commissioners themselves asked no questions, engaged in no debate and made no comments on the nomination.

Assistant County Manager Virginia Valentine, who managed the city of Las Vegas prior to working at the county, is the front-runner for the job, according to several sources. What is clear is commissioners do not have an appetite to launch a national search to replace Reilly.

"My sense is nobody wants to go through a national search if we can come up with a candidate locally, and I think that will probably happen," Woodbury said....

Hoping to fill that void, Voy is leading a campaign to create a long-term juvenile rehabilitation program for youths in state custody. The 18- to 24-month program would address worries about community safety while putting youthful offenders on the road to rehabilitation.

Such a program probably would apply to about a dozen juvenile offenders from the county each year, Voy said. Now some of those youngsters are being sent to the adult system, where they have few services and become immersed in the criminal world, he said.

I spent years raising good kids. My husband prevented me from attending law school, allowing me to spend only one year earning a teaching license. I was left with the means to get a lousy job that's destroying me.

He, with his eight-year doctorate, doubled his salary in the time I worked in the home. He fought for one of two kids and got him: Two siblings were split because he wanted one, though that child wanted joint custody.

After nearly six hours of witness testimony, Washoe County District Court Judge Charles McGee found that Jones' former girlfriend, Amy McNair, was the aggressor in a heated confrontation between the couple at Jones' home on June 20....

In court, McNair said she first met Jones in 2000 while working as a waitress at Hooters. She moved in with Jones and lived with the judge for the next five years.

At times crying, she told of a chaotic home life, saying Jones basically controlled her. She said the judge had a "demerit system" in which her treatment depended on whether she was behaving well and whether she kept the house clean.

She said several years ago, Jones held her to the ground in a bathroom during an argument. In 2002, she said, Jones physically kicked her out of bed, causing an injury to her neck. She acknowledged that she didn't call police to report either episode.

McNair also testified that Jones likes to gamble, at times spending as much as seven hours at a time doing so.