Banning judges from personally soliciting or accepting campaign contributions would not represent an improper restriction on their constitutional rights and would help restore the integrity of Nevada's troubled judiciary, an advocate for reform has argued.

The Nevada Supreme Court is expected to decide in coming months whether to implement the ban. The measure would put Nevada in line with much of the rest of the nation, and advocates believe it would mark a significant step in judicial reform....

The proposed restriction on judges' campaign activities is part of a wide-ranging reform effort launched in the wake of a Los Angeles Times investigation.

The Times investigation found that Nevada judges had awarded millions of dollars worth of judgments without disclosing that the money went to friends, business partners and former clients. The Times also disclosed that 17 incumbents in recent judicial elections raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from attorneys and corporations with cases pending before the judges.

There’s good news at last for the Family Court: We don’t need to kill all the lawyers! Some can be rehabilitated through an intensive program of psychotherapy that treats them as unique, valuable and vulnerable human beings instead of slimy shyster scumbag sleazeballs.

The key is understanding. Lawyers may choose strange ways to express themselves, what with their Motions, Writs, Petitions, Stipulations, and Quashings of This or That, but their inner motivations are really quite simple.

Deep down, every lawyer just wants to be loved.

Clark County Family Court judicial candidate Robert Lueck accused his ex-wife and her lawyer on Friday of filing a Supreme Court petition to evade a gag order and reveal publicly during his campaign that Lueck had failed to make child support payments.

Lueck's lawyer John Watkins said it was "purely for spite" that his client's former wife, Jane Johanson, and her lawyer Bruce Shapiro filed the petition to lift a gag order imposed by Clark County District Judge Nancy Saitta and unseal records that detail how the candidate fell $2,400 behind in child support payments.

Watkins made the accusation in a 21-page response to Johanson's petition. Chief Justice Bob Rose had ordered Lueck to make the response through his lawyer by Friday.

Watkins called the dispute: "a very minor and private matter between these parties and there is no significant issue of public interest here."

CHAD HODGE LIKED #694. She was a 21-year-old college student, 5-feet-5, 135 pounds, with straight brown hair, blue eyes and a narrow nose. She had won 16 awards in high school for academics and music, and scored a 1210 on the SAT. She was outgoing, intelligent, responsible and friendly, or at least she said she was.

Chad wanted her to be the mother of his children.

But David Craig, Chad's partner of seven years, had his heart set on #685. She was a teacher, 23, 5-feet-2, with wavy blond hair and light blue eyes. She wore a size 0. She had been a varsity tennis player in high school, a ballerina and a classical pianist.

For two hours on that day in early 2004, Chad and David sat in a small office at Genetics & IVF Institute, a fertility clinic in northern Virginia, and sifted through the dossiers of prospective egg donors. It felt more like catalog shopping than human reproduction.

District Judge Nancy Saitta is accused in a state Supreme Court petition of issuing a gag order and sealing court records to prevent voters from learning that Clark County Family Court judge candidate Robert Lueck failed to pay child support.

Las Vegas lawyer Bruce Shapiro, who represents Lueck's ex-wife, accused Saitta of showing favoritism toward Lueck by preventing anyone from discussing the case or accessing the decision she issued after a July 11 hearing. Saitta and Lueck served on the District Court bench together....

Saitta said she ordered the gag order and sealed the records to protect the child.

"This deals with a young child, and it shouldn't be used for political benefits," she said. "The First Amendment is always a priority to me, but this was something that was not newsworthy. To suggest I was using favoritism is absurd since I ruled against him. Every Family Court judge had refused to hear this case. I felt I had a job to do. I just wanted to protect those who can't protect themselves."

When Elizabeth Halverson fields questions about her judicial candidacy, she gets one that most candidates never have to answer: Will your physical condition be an obstacle to fulfilling the duties of the position you seek?

Halverson, an obese woman who has an oxygen tank to assist her breathing and uses an electric scooter to get around, has a quick response.

The 48-year-old says that though she is heavy, she's healthy, and her physical challenges will not interfere with her ability to be a judge....

Halverson's career as a law clerk also ended in a very public way. In 2004, Chief District Judge Kathy Hardcastle ordered that Halverson's position be filled by someone else.

Hardcastle explained at the time that she felt Halverson's position, which paid nearly $70,000 a year, was not meant to be filled by one person over an extended period of time. Instead, it was meant to help give budding lawyers experience.

"It's a limited type of a job and after they've been there for a year, it is time for them to move on," Kathy Hardcastle said at the time, adding, "I gave her plenty of notice."

Halverson then announced she was running for the Family Court judgeship in Department D. That seat happened to be held by Hardcastle's then-husband, Gerald.

Halverson was placed on paid administrative leave by Kathy Hardcastle, who said the situation posed a potential conflict of interest. Halverson was not rehired.

"They hired somebody younger, prettier, less experienced," Halverson said.

Halverson went on to nearly beat Gerald Hardcastle, receiving 49 percent of the votes in that race.

"I'd actually like to thank Kathy Hardcastle," Halverson said. "She started me thinking, 'Well, what do I want to do?' So, after 10 years of helping make decisions and writing thousands of memorandums and opinions everyday ... I said, 'You know what? I'd like being a judge.'"

The boy hasn't yet entered a plea, because it isn't relevant. Under the law, he is innocent until proven guilty, except in this particular kind of hearing, where he is presumed guilty. We are here for a much more significant proceeding than any criminal trial. In this hearing, the judge must decide whether this teenager, recently arrested, should be processed as a child or an adult. If he is tried and convicted as an adult, he will get those 20 years. If he is convicted in the juvenile system, he will be released by the age of 21, no more than four years from now....

It has been a long day. This is the tail end of the Wednesday afternoon JSO calendar — Juvenile Sex Offenses — at Family Court in Las Vegas. Wednesday is the day when we gather together all of the ugly crimes that no one wants to think about and distill them into one marathon parade of hearings that usually extends into the evening.

The county, which became the legal guardian for Everlyse once she was removed from parental custody, also asserted a claim to qualified immunity from civil liability and said that the birth parents should not receive a financial settlement.

"Plaintiffs are not entitled to recovery on any claim of relief set forth in the complaint since the plaintiffs come to court with unclean hands regarding the matter," Navarro wrote.

Attorney Gregory Mills, who represents Olivas and Cabrera, said the county's assertion that the birth parents are at fault in their daughter's disappearance is ridiculous. He was also taken aback by the county's claim that the birth parents "voluntarily" assumed the risks and dangers of foster care by causing their children to be taken away.

"Are they saying that the 2,900 other individuals in foster care are in open and obvious risk of being lost, killed or harmed?" Mills asked. "This is the county's own attorney saying that foster care is an unsafe place for children."

Please stop laughing. You say that people have been predicting the bust for 20 years now, and it hasn’t happened.

Yeah, well they called the Titanic unsinkable. The iceberg was just a bump. It woke people up, but nothing to panic about.

The ship can’t be sinking, the passengers said, BECAUSE THE BAND IS STILL PLAYING.

But if you look at the ship’s design—at what’s keeping it afloat—you might think differently. Once the hull is breached, one bulkhead after another is going to fail ‘til the band can’t play no more.

It’s simple physics.

The flyer turned up, among other places, in the faculty mailboxes at the Boyd School of Law.

The former foster parents of Everlyse Cabrera have maintained months of public silence since they reported in June that the girl was missing.

In newly filed federal court documents that respond to a civil lawsuit by the toddler's birth parents, foster parents Manuel and Vilma Carrascal deny any wrongdoing.

The documents lay responsibility for Everlyse's plight on her birth parents, Marlena Olivas and Ernesto Cabrera, saying they "did not exercise ordinary care, caution or prudence for the protection of their own child's wellbeing."...

Mills said Friday that language in the foster family's response to the lawsuit is standard for such documents, but that it makes "absolutely no sense" to blame the birth parents for something that happened when they did not have legal custody of their child.

"For an individual who doesn't deal in the law, that language is going to be offensive," Mills said. "My clients are going to find it offensive."

Prosecutors have decided to charge a 16-year-old Legacy High School student with attempted murder in connection with the shooting of a fellow student.

The decision means the suspect, Michael Johnson, will be tried as an adult in District Court.

It also means that Johnson will face a maximum penalty of 40 years in prison if convicted of the charge, which includes an allegation that he used a deadly weapon during the incident.

There are more signs this week that the Las Vegas housing market is cooling down. In September, the median price for a home was $285,000. That's exactly the same as it was one year ago.

And experts say there's been a 21.5-percent decline in new home building permits in the past year. The number of new permits requests in September was the lowest since December 2001.

The housing market slow down is bringing back a wild, Wild West staple, the ghost town.

There are valley neighborhoods where vacant homes seem to outnumber the homes where people are living.

A juvenile court judge on Tuesday gave probation and community service to a 14-year-old Henderson boy who made references to the Columbine High School shootings in an e-mail to another teen....

The Review-Journal is not revealing the boy's name because of his age.

Psychologists who examined the boy determined he had no intention of carrying out the threat.

Voy sentenced the boy to nine months' probation, including three on intensive supervision, and 60 hours of community service. A commitment to the Spring Mountain Youth Camp was suspended.

Lunch hour turned violent Monday when more than a dozen students started throwing punches and food at each other during a fight on the Biltmore Continuation High School campus.

Metro police and the Clark County School District police arrested a total of 15 students after what many of them are calling a rumble, a riot.

You missed it!... the most fantastic freak show this side of Burning Man! It was the "Age of Chivalry" Renaissance Festival this past weekend in Las Vegas.

Fortunately, our sister website RoamingPhotos.com was there and can probably give you a better experience than actually going yourself. We took 1400 photos and recorded 3 hours of audio — but our website presents only the best.

See it here: Daytime Visit (with audio) | Nighttime Visit

South Dakota's ballot contains the most radical provision: It would empower citizens to sue judges over their rulings.

Other proposals would make Colorado the first state to impose term limits on top judges and give Montana residents the right to recall judges over any "dissatisfaction."...

Supporters cast their efforts as populist and democratic, a way to make judges answer more directly to the citizens they serve. "This is a very measured and mild response to the perception that our courts are out of control," said John Andrews, a former legislator promoting the amendment to impose term limits in Colorado.

Opponents, however, warn that the initiatives would begin to dismantle the system of checks and balances set up under the U.S. Constitution.

"Judges are there to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. They are not there to do the popular will," said Doreen Dodson, a St. Louis attorney who chairs the American Bar Assn.'s committee on judicial independence. "They are accountable to the law and the Constitution."

A mother from Cambodia could be sent to prison for an act that her attorney describes as a cultural transgression but one that under the law could be considered a sexual assault.

Authorities believe that between July 1 and Aug. 1, the 28-year-old woman performed fellatio on her 6-year-old son.

However, attorney Robert Langford said his client kissed her son's penis once when he was 4 or 5 years old because in Cambodia, the act is a sign of love.

The crime of sexual assault with a minor under 14 years of age carries a potential sentence of 20 years to life in prison....

Police learned about the incident after the woman's husband was arrested on a sexual-abuse related charge involving an underage victim who was not a family member. On July 20 after investigating the matter, police arrested the husband, who was charged with lewdness with a minor under 14.

Police then contacted Child Protective Services to interview his son.

According to a police report, on Aug. 3, a CPS investigator spoke with the 6-year-old son, who said that his mother had once kissed his "peanut," the child's term for penis.

North Las Vegas police arrested a 16-year-old Legacy student Tuesday. He was charged with battery with a deadly weapon and was booked into the Clark County Juvenile Detention Center, said North Las Vegas police spokesman Sean Walker.

Once upon a time, a few centuries ago, leaders started writing down laws so that citizens would know exactly what they could and couldn't do. There had always been conflict among men, which was often settled by force. The creation of law promised an end to bloodshed. Henceforth, we would obey written rules, and disputes would be settled by civilized means.

This new technology carried great promise but also created its own set of problems. The law, it turns out, can be as brutal and tyrannical as marauding Vandal hordes, just in a different way.

Child Haven Manager Lou Palma said the triage system that troubled staff members was phased out entirely on Monday. Child Haven has six nurses on staff and a physician's assistant on site three days a week.

A physician acts as supervisor, Palma said, and ultimately a pediatrician will be on staff full time.

"This is a transition from a time when we used to triage because there weren't enough upper-level medical staff to see everyone," Palma said.

At this time, any Child Haven staff member or parent can place a child on the sick list and that child will be seen by a medical professional, Palma said....

One new measure being phased in is the creation of a medical passport that will follow the children after they leave Child Haven. It will record any services received by the individual, including immunizations, dental work or medical test results.

The medical passports are in use now with medically fragile children in custody. By the end of the year, Criste said, all children who go through Child Haven will have one....

"What these situations highlight is that no system of congregate care, especially for young children, is going to be one that inspires as much confidence as appropriate foster care," [ACLU dirctor] Peck said. "This is exactly what we're stressing in our approach: the need to move away from congregate care."

A foster family is supposed to tell the county if it leaves Nevada with a foster child.

Tom Morton, director of Clark County Family Services, said he could not confirm or deny whether Ochs had given the county agency proper notification. Not filing the report would result in a licensing violation but would not necessarily require the removal of the child from the home, he said.

He said a caseworker responsible for monitoring the boy's well-being had an appointment to visit the family pending when Charles was rushed to the hospital.

Caseworkers are required to have face-to-face contact with the child monthly, and Ochs had been caring for the child since Jan. 3. Morton said he could not comment on how many times a caseworker had visited Charles at Ochs' home or whether a caseworker had visited the home at all.

When asked if the agency acted appropriately in the child's case, he said, "I don't want to speculate based on not having the correct information in front of me."

Morton said he would need to review the case before he could comment further. Unsure about what he could say about the case specifically, he directed further questions to county attorneys....

Lt. Brian Evans of the Las Vegas police special victims section said he had reviewed pictures of the home and said it was not clean when emergency responders arrived, but there was nothing he knew of that was unsanitary or unsafe for children. Clothes were strewn about, and ants were in the house, he said.

"I don't keep my house like that, but I don't think it was anything that was uninhabitable by any means," Evans said. "I know there was some ants in the place but, that's so subjective."

It is a polarizing political question: Should committed gay and lesbian couples be allowed to legally marry? Should the institution be restricted to “one man and one woman,” or can it also be “one man and one man”? For that matter, what about “one man and two women” or “one man, one monkey, three sheep and a donkey”? Where are we going to draw the line?

In our opinion, everyone has the question upside down. Instead of lobbying the legislature or sponsoring voter initiatives to promote one side or the other, we should talking to each gay couple directly. We should be sitting them down, perhaps in a Christian setting, and counseling them on the facts of life.

Why would you want to screw up a perfectly good relationship?

Alfano also said his family members remember seeing Higgs at a reception for Charles after his funeral....

That same year, the Augustus Society named Kathy their Italian American of the Year, and Alfano and his entire family attended a banquet for the honor.

Kathy showed up at the function with Higgs, and her family figured he was her date. To their shock, Kathy introduced Higgs as her new husband.

She'd married him in Hawaii, just three weeks after Charles' death.

"She said he (Higgs) was like an angel," Alfano said. "She kept using that word, and she talked about how compassionate he was. She had been swept off her feet.

"It sounded very immature," Alfano said. "Of course we didn't say anything at the time. I wished her well, but I also told her I thought it was silly for her to rush into it that quickly, and I hoped it worked out.

A few days ago in Courtroom 18, I witnessed a sentencing hearing for a 15-year-old boy who had been convicted of molesting a 4-year-old girl. The crime had demonstrated some forethought and deceit, not to mention a disregard for the victim. At issue now was whether he should be placed on intensely supervised probation or sent to a youth camp. The probation officer who had interviewed the boy described him as "manipulative," and he proved it a few minutes later.

When the time came for his apology, he turned to the parents of the victim and bawled. He was terribly sorry for what he had done. He regretted it all. He pleaded for forgiveness. "Please don't send me away." It was a very convincing performance, except for one thing: There were no tears in his eyes. They were dry. I have seen dozens of these apologies, and the real ones have tears and signs of obvious physical distress. This one was an act.

Then the father of the victim got up to speak. He read from pieces of notebook paper that he held in his shaking hands. His voice quivered. His presentation had no polish and was perhaps a bit hysterical, but it was real. When he sat down, he was still shaking and his wife took his hand.

The judge sentenced the boy to the youth camp. I watched the boy's face as the sentence was pronounced, and that's when the real tears flowed. His eyes were wet as he was lead from the courtroom.

I am all for the compassionate handling of juvenile offenders — They should be "treated," not "punished". — but this was one case where punishment (or at least the appearance of it) seemed entirely appropriate.

Foster suffers from borderline personality disorder. It's one of the most widely studied diseases in psychiatry, but one that modern medicine has yet to conquer. Mental health experts say long-term therapy is the only answer, but many avoid dealing with the disorder, both because treatment is often unsuccessful and because the patients are so volatile. Borderlines, as they are called, have uncontrollable urges to hurt themselves (one in 10 eventually takes her own life), yet the state is loath to put them in psychiatric hospitals.

"It's a dilemma," says Bill Toomey, who oversees the commitment of mentally ill Multnomah County residents to hospitals. "It's very hard for this population. Should they be barred from treatment? No. They have just as much right and perhaps more need than a lot of people. What I'm saying is, it's not available right now."

As a result, the estimated 62,000 Oregonians and 5.2 million Americans who suffer from the devastating illness are left with few places to turn, each one a living testament to the limitations of mental health treatment. In cases like Foster's, the corrections system is forced to pick up the slack....

In spite of the disorder, most sufferers are able to function relatively normally in society as long as nothing interrupts their regular routine. Sherri Foster, for example, managed to keep her job as a clerk at Toys 'R' Us near Washington Square for 13 years, although she cut back her hours when her symptoms flared up.

Nonetheless, successful treatment has proven elusive. "Truly, we're stumped as far as how best to treat a person with serious borderline personality disorder," says Bob Nikkel, deputy assistant administrator of the state Office of Mental Health Services.

In 1992, the state sought an answer by opening a special unit for the most intractable cases at Dammasch State Hospital and giving them intensive long-term treatment.

"The people who worked on that ward deserved medals," says Eugene Minard, a retired staff psychiatrist at Dammasch. "So many of the patients were eating broken glass, putting bags over their heads, cutting on themselves."

It only took three years and about 50 patients before mental health workers admitted defeat and closed Ward L, as it was called. At that point, a state task force had concluded that long-term hospitalization didn't help the patients—and may have even hurt them by increasing their dependence on others.

Attended the commissioners meeting. Morton asked for and received additional funding. My take was he really didn't want it. Why? Because now there is no excuse for his failing at correcting the flaws in DFS.

The commissioners can say "Hey, gave you the requested funds, how come there is no change?"

On the other hand if he didn't get the funds he could have said about the same, "Hey, didn't get the money what's a guy supposed to do?"

Regardless, the situation will remain the same or get worse, throwing money at it might help a small amount but the underlining problems are due to inept workers and upper management staff.

Morton's main plan is to reduce the number of kids coming into the system. It just may work for a time.

The foster mother of Baby Boy Charles, who died in August after suffering head trauma medical experts believe was not accidental, faces a charge of first-degree murder by child abuse.

"Metro submitted the case today and we approved it for prosecution," Clark County Deputy District Attorney Ronald Bloxham said Thursday.

Melanie Ochs was arrested at her home Thursday afternoon and is being held at the Clark County Detention Center without bail.

KINGMAN, Ariz. -- Just days after providing trial testimony that helped convict her former boyfriend, a Kingman teenager was given a 21-year prison term for her role in the murder of their friend....

Loretta Buus, the victim's mother, told the court she didn't think the deal was fair and that Bravo should spend much more time in prison.

Buus said she is horrified that Bravo stabbed her daughter repeatedly before co-defendant Ray Carlton, 24, shot her in the face as the trio drove home from Las Vegas on U.S. 93 in July 2005.

Monique Maestas, who three years ago helped stab a 3-year-old girl to death and paralyze the child's then-10-year-old half sister, apologized in court Thursday and found some good in the tragedy she had caused.

District Judge Donald Mosley sentenced Maestas to two life terms with the possibility of parole after 20 years and an additional seven to 32 years in prison, meaning she will be eligible for parole in 47 years when she is 67 years old.

A 14-year-old Henderson boy who made references to the Columbine High School shootings in an e-mail pleaded guilty Wednesday in juvenile court to making threats to a pupil.

The misdemeanor charge was welcomed by the boy's family and lawyer, because prosecutors had considered charging the boy with making terrorist threats....

Dustin [the boy's attorney] said authorities blew his comments out of proportion.

"It was, for lack of a better word, a joke," she said. "And it was puffing."

Dustin also said her client had a First Amendment right to make the statements he made.

"Underneath our Constitution, you can say whatever you want, even if it's inflammatory, even if it's upsetting," the lawyer said....

The boy, who recently turned 14, spoke softly. His mop-top hair fell over his neck and into his face, partially obscuring his bespectacled eyes. His hair was dyed black, but streaks of his naturally reddish brown hair poked through.

Two psychological evaluations found the boy did not intend to carry out any threat and was not a danger to himself or the community. He has been on house arrest since early last month, wearing a global-positioning system ankle bracelet so authorities can monitor his movements.

Comments from the Webmaster

We were at the hearing. The actual statute that the youth pleaded to was NRS 392.915: "Threatening to cause bodily harm or death to pupil or school employee by means of oral, written or electronic communication; penalties." (It was the threat to school employees that was cited at the hearing, not to a pupil.) This certainly made a lot more sense then the terrorism statute that was originally considered (NRS 202.448). That was overkill. While the boy admitted to a "Columbine-like" threat, two psychological reports and all parties in the courtroom agreed that he was not at risk of carrying out his threat. At the next hearing on Oct. 17 is the "R & D" (Report and Disposition) where the youth can be expected to get the usual terms of probation. Unlike the previous hearing, the dad was in court for the current one, along with his own separate attorney. This is the first time where we have seen this: Mom hires an attorney, but dad refuses to contribute; instead he hires his OWN attorney to represent HIS interests. His apparent aim was to try to wrest custody from the mom, a goal that was not entertained in any way at the current hearing. We know darn well that the dad is the real source of the problems here. This case and the coming investigation by the probation department might at least force some cooperation from him. Once again, a juvenile delinquency case has brought some state supervision into a family that needs it. BTW: Below is the boy's GPS monitor, shortly after its installation on Sept. 1. The device costs the county $1500, and the family is responsible if it is damaged or lost. It receives the usual GPS signals and reports its position through the cell phone network. Through the internet, a probation officer can pull up a map of everywhere the youth has been.

Las Vegas police are seeking to arrest the foster mother of a 7-month-old boy who died of head injuries in August. The Clark County coroner's office this week ruled that the death of the infant, known as "Baby Boy Charles," was a homicide....

According to the Family Services Department report, authorities were told that "another child had pushed the baby down."

But Lt. Brian Evans of the Metropolitan Police Department's abuse and neglect unit said, "These injuries are not consistent with a child falling or slipping.

"You would really have to go out of your way to hurt a child in this manner," Evans said.

Clark County School District police arrested a 12-year-old boy on Wednesday after he stabbed a student in the shoulder with a pair of scissors at Mack Middle School, near Karen Avenue and Lamb Boulevard.

The boy, a student at the school, was taken to the Clark County Juvenile Detention Center and faces battery charges, said Lt. Ken Young of the Clark County School District police.

The student who was stabbed was treated in the school's nursing office, said Young, adding that the student didn't require hospitalization.

Clark County commissioners on Tuesday approved hiring 55 new social workers for the Department of Family Services, a move aimed at keeping children safer, settling a child advocacy group's lawsuit, and stanching federal criticism of the county's troubled child welfare system.

Family Services Director Tom Morton said the staff boost will allow the agency to expand Child Protective Services' response to assist police who come across abused or neglected children to weekends and overnight.

Children removed from homes by police on weekends or between 5 p.m. and 9 a.m. on weekdays are automatically placed in Child Haven, the county's temporary shelter, without a professional social worker evaluating whether there is a relative's home or another alternative place for the child to go.

Besides 24-hour-a-day coverage, the 10 percent increase in Family Services' staff will also allow closer supervision of children with open CPS cases by cutting down social workers' caseloads, Morton told commissioners.

Tuesday's 6-0 vote was the first step in implementing Safe Futures, Morton's $30 million agency overhaul designed to address chronic problems in a child welfare system decried by legislators and child welfare advocates as woefully inadequate.

A 17-year-old boy who brought an unloaded gun to Mojave High School on Monday was arrested Tuesday afternoon, authorities said....

He was booked into the Clark County Juvenile Detention Center, authorities said.

While observing the stream of delinquents passing through Juvenile Court, I have begun to detect some patterns. There are a broad range of alleged crimes presented to the judge, from shoplifting and graffiti to sexual assault and manslaughter. I am beginning to see, however, that all infractions—both juvenile and adult—fall into a few broad categories.

I am interested in what motivates a person to break the law. A simplistic answer is that they are "bad" or had a poor upbringing. I am more curious, however, about what it feels like at the time. What is the immediate motivation for the perpetrator — especially when the crime is obviously self-destructive.

I have deduced four basic motivations for breaking the law, several of which can contribute to the same act. Not all of these motivations are responsive to our traditional method of dealing with crime, which is punishment.

Ritzy pet resorts are increasing in popularity among those who can afford to pamper their pooches. Cacophonous kennels and barren dog runs resembling the county lockup are being replaced by comfy quarters and lush lawns. There are even swimming pools at the best mutt Marriots.

Who can yap about accommodations that include heated floors, air-conditioning, music and television, hiking and swimming, and even pedicures and stories at bedtime, according to a recent article in the Business section of The New York Times. With overnight stays reaching to $100 and beyond, it's lifestyles of the bitch and famous.

Others, especially those Southern Nevadans who need affordable housing to stay off the streets, don't seem to fare as well. At a time of unprecedented growth and prosperity in the valley, the working poor and Social Security survivors are rapidly running out of affordable places to live.

Shackled and wearing the juvenile detention-issued blue sweat pants and orange shirt, the 4-foot-tall sixth-grader's face lit up when he saw his mother, grandmother and other relatives in Voy's courtroom. He has been in the juvenile detention center since last week.

He didn't cry and his facial features remained relaxed throughout Monday's hearing.

Voy told him that he suspects the boy will have problems with people picking on him for the rest of his life.

"There are ways of dealing with that without doing what you did, and it can't ever happen again," Voy told him.

Voy opted to place the boy in a group home for children in Henderson, with the hope that he can be reunited with his grandmother once Child Protective Services is set to provide the appropriate social services to the family. At that point, the boy will be put under house arrest.

The 57-year-old one-time heroin addict has lived the life she warns against. She was younger than any member of her audience when she first began abusing drugs.

"I was living on the streets of L.A. when I was 11 years old," Skinkis says. "By the time I was 12, I was doing every drug ever invented. Most of my life as a kid was a blackout."

Skinkis has been sober for more than half of her adult life. She and her husband, Dan, a 64-year-old, self-described "garden-variety drunk," have spent more than two decades traveling the country in their battered 1970s pickup, telling their stories at juvenile detention centers, adult prisons and outreach centers, hoping those who hear them get the message: "Don't be me," Sharon Skinkis says.

North Las Vegas Police detectives spent Saturday back in the neighborhood of Camino El Norte and Centennial looking for Everlyse. They re-interviewed neighbors and also looked for clues as they came through the neighborhood, hoping to find something which has been overlooked.

For three decades, Maier has been a straight-talking guardian angel watching over Klong Toey, Bangkok's largest slum, a grim sprawl of swamp muck, garbage and tin-roofed shacks. Sandwiched between a droning freeway and the Thai capital's gritty port district, the ghetto is home to 100,000 impoverished Bangkok residents.

Since founding Mercy Center in 1972, the priest has ventured on foot into the slum to rescue outcasts from cardboard hovels, garbage-can homes and freeway underpass hobo camps.

Many others are abandoned on his doorstep — left by AIDS-stricken mothers with few choices or shamed parents mired in drug and alcohol stupors.

To most, they are Thailand's throwaway youths. But for the priest known affectionately here as Father Joe, they are family.

"You try to give a kid a chance to be human for a while," Maier says. "You shoot them like an arrow into the wind and you hope for the best. You want to show them that for one bright, shining moment of their lives there was a Camelot called childhood."

The two students represent what is both positive — and distressing — about the state of youth sports today. High school athletes are fitter, more skilled and better trained than ever before. But these top-notch athletes, say many health and fitness experts, have become the singular focus of the youth sports system — while teenagers of average or low ability no longer warrant attention.

"What is happening at the high school level is, we're principally satisfying kids who are elite athletes — the best, the most skilled, the most developed in their particular sport," says Bruce Svare, a critic of the nation's youth sports system and director of the National Institute for Sports Reform, based in Selkirk, N.Y. But, Svare adds, "we're forgetting everyone else in terms of their health and fitness needs."

The reasons for the declining opportunities have long been in the making. Gradual funding cuts have slashed the number of teams offered at many high schools; teachers, whether simply uninterested or overburdened, are less likely today to volunteer to coach freshmen teams or intramural sports; and the emergence of club sports has forced those of average ability or limited financial means to the sidelines. Moreover, say critics, teams are too often formed with the goal of entertaining the public, not providing an educational experience to students.

Insurance defense attorney Phillip Emerson asked for a new trial based partly on his allegations that District Judge Tim Williams was biased against him and favored personal injury attorney Robert Vannah because Vannah was one of the judge's campaign contributors.

While "pay to play" was one of the points of the Times series last summer, this could be the first time a lawyer alleged in court documents that campaign contributions influenced a judge. While many might think it, few attorneys are willing to say it on the record....

The Supreme Court has said judges don't have to remove themselves from cases because of campaign contributions.

From what Supreme Court spokesman Bill Gang said, while certain judicial reforms are expected to be recommended, asking judges to disclose in court their contributions from attorneys and witnesses is not one of them.

Anyone with Internet access is free to check out the reports on the secretary of state's Web page, even if searching them for particular names is a painstaking process.

Nidi Lifshitz tells the story of her unfortunate introduction to the Los Angeles Unified School District like this: She answered her cellphone on her daughter's first day of school and was greeted by a scream — "This is the worst-behaved child I've ever encountered in my life!"

Only later did the caller identify herself as Woodland Hills Elementary School Principal Anna Feig, Lifshitz says. The kindergartner, Feig told her, had crawled under a table and refused to come out. It seems her teacher, new to the job, had called the principal for help and Feig hauled the child into the office. The little girl spent three of the next four days outside the principal's office — once, Lifshitz swears, for refusing to use the correct crayon color.

In later meetings, the mother says, Feig shouted that their child was not welcome at her school unless she started taking Ritalin — an allegation the principal denies.