MGM Mirage and Harrah's Entertainment should have known better than to adopt a laissez-faire attitude toward Pure Management Group's nightclub operations. That's the consensus of a clutch of a former casino executives, with former Nevada Gaming Control Board enforcer-in-chief Keith Copher adding that the NGCB gives a lower level of scrutiny to nightclubs that aren't owned by casinos themselves.

Sound like the makings of an inmates-running-the-asylum scenario? It sure has been. At least MGM gets PR points for being relatively transparent about its the nature of its partnership with Pure. Reports the Las Vegas Sun, "Harrah’s would not disclose the financial relationship it has with the five clubs at its properties operated by Pure Management." Ah, the beauties of private-equity ownership!

Admittedly, people who willingly pay (at a conservative estimate) a 10X markup on a bottle of vodka or gin just to hang with the young and the brainless -- their cerebral cortexes doubtless having been mashed into pulp by that mechanistic nuisance otherwise known as "house music" -- are practically begging to get taken to the cleaners.

But, as Harrah's and MGM are learning the hard way, it's human nature not to ask too many questions when the cash is rolling in early and often. Best-case scenario for them is to get through this without having to undergo an IRS colonoscopy ...

Speaking of which, if Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons has been out of sight (and mind) of late, that's probably due less to problems on the domestic front than to a situation that's put our own Jean Scott at risk. 

After all, Dr. Dipak Desai, who stands accused of running an endoscopic Wal-Mart (to put it kindly), was a member of Gibbons' transition team. So it's probably in Gibbons' best interests to keep the lowest possible profile as the "Doctor Desai's Chamber of Horrors" saga plays out in the papers.

Besides, Gibbons is living proof that the government that governs least governs best. And, with an FBI investigation into GIbbons himself still pending, he'd probably like to stay out of sight while the G-Men descend on Desai. (Infecting patients is one thing; if Desai is found to have overbilled the HMOs or the federal guvmint ... now that's trouble.)

If all that weren't enough, wouldn't you want to suddenly become invisible if one of your cronies was deemed responsible for inflicting upon Las Vegas medical conditions we wouldn't tolerate in the Third World? Who knew that "the global economy" meant that we'd aspire to be the next Haiti?