Both were great generals. Both Virginians. Both came from slave-owning plantation families. Is it really so far-fetched to put Robert E. Lee in the same category as George Washington, as President Donald Trump suggested Tuesday? Many historians say yes.

Senator Dean Heller’s position on health care reform—he’s against it after having been for it while he was against it—has become a contortionist act worthy of the Circus Circus big top or Absinthe tent. But the Republicans’ recent display of legislative incompetence also brings to mind Harry Reid and Ralph Roske.

It was a chance to shake up the Henderson City Council. Three finalists emerged from a field of nine candidates for the Ward 2 seat, which became available after Debra March was elected mayor.

Boulder City Chautauqua is bringing “Rule Breakers & Headline Makers” to town next month as part of its educational theatrical presentations. To help tell their story, they sponsored a poster contest for art students at Boulder City High School.

When you take Interstate 15 between Las Vegas and southern California, you’re following a route that has been incredibly important to our history. The Los Angeles to Salt Lake Railroad gave rise to the town of Las Vegas in 1905, but even before that it was part of the Old Spanish Trail. A lot of pioneers traveled it, so it’s appropriate that southern California had something to do with the Pioneer Club, which opened seventy-five years ago.

Brian Sandoval is having a good year. Nevada’s Republican governor has seen his national profile grow in prominence, highlighted by his role influencing U.S. Sen. Dean Heller on the health care debate, and his new role as chairman of the National Governors Association.

Twenty Nevada state lawmakers will be pushed out of their seats over the next five years, changing yet again the makeup of the two houses thanks to the state's term limits law. Voters decided in the 1990s to limit lawmakers to 12 years, or six terms, in the Assembly and 12 years, or three terms, in the Senate. The cap affected just one lawmaker after the 2017 session: Assemblyman James Ohrenschall, D-Las Vegas, who just finished his last term and announced Wednesday he would run for state Senate.

Western outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are as alive today as they were at the end of the 19th century.

It was no small feat that Abraham Lincoln was able to maneuver his reelection in 1864. The last president to win a second term, Andrew Jackson, did so in 1832 with his party united and without the weight of a a bloody, three-year-old war. Lincoln was, in the words of Doris Kearns Goodwin and others, a “political genius.”

Dean Heller is Stephanie Diaz-Gonzalez’s problem now. She’s never met Nevada’s Republican senator and hadn’t had much time to familiarize herself. How could she? The 25-year-old is holding down a full-time job and raising a 7-year-old son, who keeps her busy with soccer games, math homework and those too-often terrifying moments when he can’t breathe.

One hundred fifty years ago, an event occurred that became a part of American history still studied by academics today: Countless Chinese railroad workers for the Central Pacific Railroad stopped going to work. “It’s significant because this was the first major strike that any Chinese group ever did. There were earlier strikes, but this was a major one, which involved 2,000 Chinese who struck for one week,” said Chinese-American historian SueFawn Chung, who is professor emerita of the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

The Right is grumbling, says conservative talker Kevin Wall. “Those that tried to forgive and forget when Dean Heller said I'm a never Trumper – all those scabs have been opened up,” he told me, referring to Heller’s distaste of Trump during the 2016 election.