Can Mafia museum be a U.S. stimulus project?
LAS VEGAS: After taking a hail of bipartisan bullets in recent days over the suggestion that a federal stimulus package should help pay for a proposed $50 million museum here on the history of organized crime, the project’s godfathers are returning fire, complaining that politicians in Washington are scapegoating the museum and the city.The planned Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement, aka “the Mob Museum” on its own Web site, is to include interactive exhibits where visitors can snap their mug shots, stand in police lineups and wiretap one another. Such a center, Mayor Oscar Goodman said in an interview Thursday, is “absolutely falling within the four corners of what President-elect Obama is trying to achieve.””This is a project where all the plans are in place and we can start it within 30 days,” said Goodman, a former criminal defense lawyer who represented several Mafia figures in the 1970s and 1980s.Citing studies showing that 250,000 tourists a year would visit
