The Mobster of Mesopotamia

A mobster museum has opened in ... Las Vegas. For some reason, it reminded us of a bad guy in the OT reading for today.

“In Godfather we trust.“

You can get that slogan on a T-shirt in the gift shop of the recently opened “mobster museum“ in Las Vegas. If there were ever an appropriate spot to situate such an attraction, Las Vegas is it, for gangsters were instrumental in creating the place. As the story goes, mobsters helped build the desert highway that would eventually become the Vegas strip. They had front men open resorts and casinos, but behind the scenes, organized crime ran things and skimmed the profits. By the late 1960s, law enforcement got the upper hand and corporations took over, but Vegas hasn't been shy about its nefarious beginnings.

Now visitors to Sin City can view some mementos of that era in the new museum, which is housed in a former federal courthouse where trials of mobsters took place in the early 1950s. One wall displays uncensored photos of the mob's “greatest hits,“ including shots of men with their heads bashed in. Other victims are shown...