Former Nevada Athletic Commission chairman. Former Boyd Gaming director. Member of the 197-person "Midnight Jim" Gibbons transition team. Out-and-out disgrace. That'd be Luther Mack, who walked the plank at Boyd Gaming last week, not (as I speculated at the time) on account of company politics, but because his company, Mack Associates, was engaged in a criminal enterprise.

For a prominent Nevadan, Mack did an excellent job of keeping his legal troubles out of the newspapers -- at least until The Associated Press broke the story, two days ago. Considering that Mack Associates actively connived at encouraging and facilitating the employment of illegal aliens, if somebody was going to have the book thrown at them, it hit the right target.

There really ought to special circle of jurisprudential Hell for companies that conspire to screw citizens of their own country out of jobs in favor of illegal immigrants. The latter are going to try and get those jobs -- that's why they snuck in here, after all -- but what sort of boneheaded businessman decides to engage in the facilitation and furtherance of the crime? And if the government is correct in its allegation that Mack Associates was providing its illegal burger-slingers with Social Security numbers that rightly belonged to other people, well, that'd be one of the scummiest sorts of fraud imaginable.

Mack wasn't indicted personally and he might try to push mid-level managers under the bus. Yet the fact that guilty pleas were entered by a vice president, director of operations and controller is hardly a vindication -- unless Mack's preferred line of defense is that he was a clueless bozo who didn't know what was going on at the company that bore his name. In which case, one might ask why he felt competent to serve as an officer of Boyd Gaming.

Maybe Boyd was as blindsided by this as the rest of community. Considering that Mack's fast-food joints got busted by the feds last September, if Mack didn't clue Boyd in on his legal troubles sooner, he should have -- as a matter of directorial responsibility if nothing else. In fact, he should have stepped down as soon as la Migra came knocking. And if Boyd didn't demand his resignation the moment Mack's problems became known to them, they should have.

It cannot be said too often that, given its past, the casino industry is like Caesar's wife and has to be above even the appearance of impropriety. There's a widespread perception (undoubtedly with at least some basis in fact) that illegal immigrants form a sizeable percentage of the Vegas casino labor pool. Under any circumstance -- and especially that one -- Mack is baggage that Boyd did well to throw overboard, and should have done at the first whiff of trouble.

Update: Given the opportunity to clarify the timeline on l'affaire Mack, Boyd Gaming balked at doing so and put the onus Mack himself to explain matters. The company was at pains to characterize the event as routine.

No free lunch -- or coffee. A latté-sipping local publisher whines about the closure of 17 Starbucks outlets and how it will force him to drive a few blocks farther for some $5 espresso. Hey, them's free-market economics in action, baby.

(It looks like the Gulf Coast of Mississippi is a stronger bastion of Starbucks than is Las Vegas: 0 closings to our 17. Who knew?)