ProgressOhio

Citizens for Community Standards and Dancers for Democracy filed Monday the petitions needed to block Ohio's so-called stripper law from taking effect Tuesday.

The groups delivered 120 boxes of petitions containing 382,508 signatures along with five boxes of completed new voter registration forms.

If the groups secure 241,366 valid signatures, Ohio voters will have the chance in November to reject or accept some of the most restrictive regulations ever placed on legal businesses.

Earlier this year, lawmakers spent months crafting the new regulations, rather than focusing on education, health care or jobs. They did so at the urging of Citizens for Community Values, a Cincinnati-based group that gathered the signatures of at least 120,000 Ohio voters to put the issue before the General Assembly through a process known as the initiated statute.

At the time, legislative leaders said the number of signatures collected showed "the people have spoken;'' they insisted they had no choice but to respond.

During a Monday news conference, Cincinnati Dancer Kimberly Welch said, "Today, the people have spoken even louder. It's time to stop legislating morality and time to start helping all businesses grow.''

SB 16

Issue 1

State Rep. Tom Brinkman should be indicted in connection with a Cincinnati election falsification case, says the judge who sentenced two minor players in the scandal.

Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Robert Ruehlman made the comments while sentencing Lois Mingo and Precilla Ward who pleaded guilty to charges of election falsification.

The charges stemmed from the unsuccessful effort last year to repeal the city’s gay rights ordinance; Brinkman headed up the effort.

According to the Cincinnati Enquirer:

“To cheat on petitions in an election is to really rob people of freedom. It’s the foundation of democracy,” Ruehlman told the women. “You have to pay for that.”

Ruehlman, a Republican, went on to say: “I still think real culprit is Rep. Brinkman.”

“I know politics,” Ruehlman said. “Somehow (Brinkman) falls between the cracks and is not prosecuted… the guy in power is the one who should have been indicted.”

See Also: GOP Judge’s Finding Falls on Ethics Panels Cold, Deaf Ears

Thanks to the tax-and-spend, big-government Republicans, your tax dollars are paying for young guys to watch porn.

The good people at Young Turks tell us about it and have a video that's worth watching.

The alleged purpose of the porn watching is to conduct research designed to come up with new ways to curb internet porn. Are we really supposed to believe this?

State Rep. Tom Brinkman altered "around eleven hundred'' petitions that were circulated as part of CCV's on-going efforts to deny rights to gays and lesbians.

Thanks to the Gay People's Chronicle, and a transcript of the proceedings, we now have a clearer understanding of exactly what Brinkman did.

From the article:

State Rep. Thomas A. Brinkman, Jr. of Cincinnati ran last year’s petition drive by Equal Rights Not Special Rights to force a vote on Cincinnati’s new LGBT human rights ordinance. The campaign was halted after fake signatures and altered addresses were found on the petitions.

At the time, ERNSR head Phil Burress blamed the problem on day laborers hired to collect signatures. Two of those workers, Precilla Ward and Lois Mingo, pleaded guilty to election falsification on July 11.

But Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Robert P. Ruehlman bluntly blamed Brinkman in an extraordinary statement from the bench during the women’s hearing.

“[T]he real culprit is Mr. Brinkman and his boss,” said Ruehlman from the bench. “They [Ward and Mingo] are kind of pawns compared to him.”

From the transcript:

“I got concerns on this case,” Ruehlman said during an exchange with assistant prosecutor David Stevenson and Hamilton County Board of Elections director John Williams in the hearing transcript.

“Along with Ms. Branch and others,” Williams replied.

“Now, what about Brinkman?” Ruehlman asked Stevenson. “What did you find out about Brinkman? This is what’s most intriguing.”

Stevenson said Branch and prosecutors discovered that addresses of signers who lived outside the city were changed to addresses of Cincinnati voters with similar names. Someone, not the signers or voters, crossed out the old addresses and wrote in the new ones.

In one case, a Robert Costelli signed the petition but the address he used was crossed out.

THE COURT: He actually signed it?

MR. STEVENSON: Yes, sir.

THE COURT: He actually signed it. But it turned out they couldn't use it because it was out of the county, not the city.

MR. STEVENSON: The address was changed to inside the city, which belonged to Robert Castellini.

THE COURT: I got a lot of this from talks in the chambers. We talked about this case which actually bothered me. It turned out Brinkman actually admitted to that?

How many others did he do like that he admitted to?

MR. STEVENSON: I don't know the exact number, around 1,100, 1,000 addresses changed.

THE COURT: He admitted changing addresses?

MR. STEVENSON: Yes, sir.

THE COURT: Now reading this: With intent to defraud or deceive, wrote or signed the name of another to any document.

MR. STEVENSON: Nothing specifically relates to addresses in the election code, That's what we looked at.

THE COURT: Because this is substantial. He's the real criminal.
 What he did is terrible, almost defrauding. A layer of foundation of our democracy is voting and free elections. To cheat the voting system. He's a State Rep. On top of that....''

 Yes. He's a state rep -- and a poster child for Citizens for Community Values. Once more, my values aren't his values.

Citizens for Cult Values gets hammered in its own backyard by City Beat Magazine where writer Kevin Osbourne suggests that Phil Burress read the Constitution and the federal tax code:

As Citizens for Community Values (CCV) cries foul over the tactics of opponents who are trying to overturn a recent law that placed more restrictions on strip clubs and other sexually-oriented businesses, its own tactics outlined in a fund-raising letter raise troubling questions.

Sharonville-based CCV dislikes that the adult entertainment industry has organized and launched a referendum effort to overturn the Community Defense Act.

The law, pushed hard by CCV, enacted statewide regulations that limited the hours of operation for strip clubs and imposed a “no-touching” rule between workers and customers.

The latter restriction, CCV says, is “aimed at specifically putting an end to the prostitution (alias ‘lap dancing’), which is the mainstay of many sex clubs.”

Let's not even snicker that CCV thinks a lap dance equals prostituion.

But this part of the posting isn't snicker worthy:

What’s most interesting about CCV’s fund-raising letter, however, is the group believes the adult entertainment industry will launch a multi-million dollar advertising campaign to overturn the law, and CCV concedes it cannot compete financially. Instead, CCV wants supporters to contact their churches about distributing CCV-published inserts in church bulletins to get their message out.

“Already we are designing bulletin inserts and other promotional materials to expose their deceitful message and help Ohioans understand the importance of (the law) and to the well-being of Ohio families and communities,” the letter states. “If you are willing to contact your church office about distributing our inserts, please indicate so on the enclosed card. Engaging the church will be a key component of our campaign.”

Separation of church and state, of course, is a principle included in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Burress and his ilk would have people believe the Founding Fathers were fundamentalist Christians and didn’t intend to keep religion out of the political arena but the facts, alas, don’t sustain that argument.

The campaign asking voters to repeal new statewide restrictions on adult businesses cleared the first step today in blocking the law from taking effect on September. 4.

The organization hopes to ask voters in November to repeal the new regulations and leave in place current restrictions passed by individual cities and townships.

To qualify for the ballot, the group needs 241,366 signatures from registered voters by September 3. As of today, it had 248,673 signatures.

As the Dancers for Democracy march toward the ballot, the Cincinnati group pushing for the law is trying to keep them off the ballot.

That doesn't sit well with Bianca Tate, the Dancer representative on the campaign committee.

“The people of Ohio should have the right to vote on this,’’ Tate said. "If this is such a great law, why are they so afraid to put it before the people?’’

The signature collecting has been enhanced, Tate said, because many voters are downloading a copy of the petition from the campaign website, then signing it and mailing it in.

To download your petition, visit the campaign website: www.citizensforcommunitystandards.org

The latest posting at humanismbyjoe.com is a nice summary the tactics of deception CCV is using to fight the strip club law.

Here's my favorite part:

By trying to use the law to force everybody to live according to its religious doctrines - and doing so with a pack of lies - CCV is not only violating church-state separation but also other humanistic principles.

In regard to adult businesses, those principles include the right of individuals to autonomy over their own bodies and the right of consenting adults to make their own decisions regarding sexual expression.

As the American Humanist Association’s New Bill of Sexual Rights and Responsibilities states: “Laws can and do protect the young from exploitation and people of any age from abuse. Beyond that, forms of sexual expression should not be a matter of legal regulation.

Mature individuals should be able choose their partners and the kinds of sexual expression suited to them.”

Humanists and others who value freedom, reason, honesty, and compassion should strongly oppose this latest disinformation campaign that CCV is waging to impose its harmful anti-sex doctrines on all of Ohio.

CCV's actions show that its leaders have no business lecturing about good values to anyone, let alone dictating values for everyone.

Today's Right Angle Blog gave me a real chuckle.

It's in defense of payday lending:

But I’m curious- For all of the people who want to clamp down on pay day lenders and put them out of business with excessive regulations, what do you think rent-to-own services?

Fascinating, isn't it, that Matty supports excessive regulations for legal, highly regulated adult businesses but not for largely unregulated -- but still legal -- loan sharking.

Even more fascinating is that Matty's position places him at odd with one of the most conservative members of the Ohio House of Representatives, Rep. Bill Batchelder of Medina. Bill is trying to lead efforts to clamp down on the lenders.

Let's talk about Citizens For Community Values and its values:

They don't like gays (Issue 1 was their idea), they don't respect women (see their all-male board of directors), they don't support free speech (they like to ban magazines and movies and try and ban strip clubs) and they even went to bat for the guy who knocked around his girlfriend, then argued that Ohio's domestic violence laws don't apply to him because he's not married to her.

Yep. CCV filed an amicus on behalf of the beater, Michael Carswell.

A 2006 article in the Dayton Daily News explained CCV's rationale:

Cincinnati-based Citizens for Community Values, which worked closely with Republican J. Kenneth Blackwell to pass the marriage amendment, filed an amicus brief supporting Carswell's argument.

CCV argued that while the group deplores domestic violence, the marriage amendment should be broadly applied and part of the law ruled unconstitutional.

"CCV believes a case such as this could lead to an inadvertent narrowing of the scope of the amendment by the court, as the motivation is great to preserve an understandably popular statute in its present form," CCV

CCV and the beater lost in a ruling handed down today by the Ohio Supreme Court.

The question before the court was whether the definition of “person living as a spouse” under domestic violence law conflicts with Ohio’s three-year-old state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. The amendment prevents the state from recognizing a legal status for relationships that approximate marriage.

In a 6-1 ruling, the court said the domestic violence law is not trying to define a legal relationship, but merely identifies one class of people who deserve protection from violence.

Even though CCV likes to talk about its "values,'' and even though it filed a friend of the court brief on behalf of the beater, it wagged its forked tongue today and praised the court for ruling against the beater.

As usual, the Right Angle blog breathlessly reported it all, without explaining CCV's about face. Matt, have you no shame? You, who dumps all over the mainstream media, have more of an obligation than most bloggers to add a little context.

Now let's talk about Citizens for Community Standards. That's the PAC that formed to try and fight the CCV-inspired statewide rules on strip clubs.

CCV wants to sue the PAC and insists that is picked its name to try and confuse voters -- even though Citizens for Community Standards  doesn't hate gays, scorn women, support censorship -- or go to bat for men who knock around women.

Like I said, high Standards; questionable Values. 

Michael Carswell, a man who beat up his girlfriend was properly charged with domestic violence, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled today.

When a guy knocks around his live-in girlfriend, such charges seem logical, and simple. But Citizens for Community Values filed an amicus brief in the case that sided with Carswell who argued that Ohio's same-sex marriage ban prevented him from being charged with domestic violence.

Carwwell's logic went something like this: Because the marriage ban state's that Ohio doesn't recognize anything that "approximates marriage,'' a law intended to protect victims of domestic violence only applies if the victim is really marriage to the beater.

The state's high court disagreed.

The justices held that an Ohio law barring domestic violence against an unmarried person who is living with the offender “as a spouse” merely identifies one class of persons who are protected by the statute and does not create or recognize “a legal relationship that approximates marriage” in violation of the 2004 “Marriage Amendment” to the Ohio Constitution. The 6-1 decision was authored by Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer.

State Rep. Tom Brinkman, one of Ohio's most reliable right-wing lawmakers, is a "criminal,'' according to a GOP judge.

Hamilton County GOP judge Robert Ruehlman said in open court that two women were wrong to falsify election petitions to earn bonuses but he called Brinkman "the real criminal'' in the ordeal.

Brinkman helped lead an unsuccessful effort to repeal a city ordinance that offered civil rights protections gays and lesbians.

According to the Cincinnati Enquirer:

The Republican judge said the lawmaker should be charged with complicity to election fraud, acted without ethics and suggested that the state House of Representatives should toss him from office.

"It's terrible," Ruehlman said during the women's plea hearing. "It takes away the right to democracy. It takes away the right for people to decide issues when you cheat like that.

"This is an important issue in the city, for a lot of people in the city." Ruehlman's rebuke came after Assistant Hamilton County Prosecutor David Stevenson told him that Brinkman admitted he changed more than 1,000 addresses on the petitions to make them valid.

Brinkman, R-Mount Lookout, was a leader of Equal Rights Not Special Rights. Brinkman Thursday denied making any changes on the petitions and said Ruehlman is mistaken about what happened: "I personally did not touch a single address or date or signature or name or anything."

Fascinating, but will someone PLEASE get these questions answered:

1. If an assistant prosecutor is on the record accusing Brinkman, why did Prosecutor Joe Deters NOT go after Brinkman?

2. Will House leaders begin an ethics investigation into Brinkman? If not, why not?

3. Did CCV engage in the same types of crimes when the circulated petitions this year to get their strip club law on the ballot? 

4. Since Brinkman said he did not "personally'' modify the petitions, did he instruct someone to do it on his behalf? 

Citizens for Community Values, the Cincinnati-based censors who want to close down legal strip clubs, was told today that Citizens for Community Standards won't change its name.

A Virginia lawyer who represents CCV asked the group to come up with a new name, insisting that the terms ""Citizens'' and "Community'' are trademarked and accusing CCS of trying to cause confusion.

Sandy Theis, a spokesman for CCS and Dancers for Democracy issued the following statement:

We chose our name for one main reason: We believe that local communities should continue to have the authority to regulate businesses within their borders.

Any confusion that arises results from CCV defining 'community' as the entire state.

The last thing we want is to be confused with CCV, an anti-business group that promotes censorship.

In a blunt but thoughtful letter to CCV, CCS attorney J. Michael Murray wrote:

Your client does not have a monopoly on the words "citizen'' or ''community.''  Plugging in these words on a search engine such as Google  or Yahoo harvests a host of of hits reflecting names using these very same words as a means of communicating the essence of their ideals: Citizens for Community Improvement, Citizens for Community Justice, Citizens for a Strong Community, Citizens for Community Health and Sustainability, Citizens for Community Protection, Citizens for an Informed Community, Citizens for a Quiet Community, Citizens for a Better Community, Citizens for Community Boards, Citizens for Community Action,  Citizens for a Global Community, Citizens for Crime Prevention and Community Development, Citizens for Black Community and many more too numerous to list here. Indeed there is an Ohio-based organization known as Citizens for Conservative Values. Has your client complained about that organization's name?

Murray goes on to call the cease and desist demand "without legal merit,''and he noted that "the First Amendment does not allow the law of trademark to quell free speech.''

To read Murray's entire letter, go here.

CCS shows no signs of backing down. In fact, it has a new website. You can visit it here.

The Cleveland Press was Ohio's first big-city, Scripps Howard paper to bite the dust, leaving Cleveland as a one-paper town.

The Columbus Citizen-Journal was next to go, relinquishing the morning slot -- and the monopoly -- to the Dispatch.

Today, we learned that the Cincinnati Post will cease operations on December 31, leaving the Queen City with just one voice and a flabby one at that.

 Executives from Scripps (now called E.W. Scripps) visited the Post newsroom today and met a feisty staff who questioned why the organization did so little to boost market share. The reply was unsatisfactory to some, down right dispiriting to others. There's no growth in newspapers -- just a retreat, came the answer.

Although the announcement was expected, some of the remaining 52 staffers are already feeling a loss. Read all about it here:

The latest from the Innocence Project:

A Pennsylvania appeals court is weighing whether the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office must follow state law and grant DNA testing for a prison inmate who says it can prove his innocence.

Anthony Wright was convicted of a 1991 Philadelphia rape and murder and he has repeatedly been denied DNA testing, due to what prosecutors call "overwhelming evidence of guilt."

Last week, Innocence Project attorney Nina Morrison told a panel of judges that the Innocence Project will pay for Wright’s testing – which could conclusively prove his innocence or guilt. Prosecutors disagreed, however, saying Wright should be denied the tests, despite a state law that clearly grants testing in such cases.

A key to the evidence against Wright at trial was a supposed confession that Wright says police forced him to sign.

Wright's court fight is generating news in Philadelphia, and Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Elmer Smith has taken up the cause and questioned the motives of prosecutors who don't want the DNA testing:

The D.A.'s office is vigorously opposing new DNA testing. I want to believe it is fighting to keep DNA evidence out in the interest of justice.

Except that, for the life of me, I can't see how justice is served by suppressing a test result that could point to another perpetrator.

If Louise Talley's murderer is still out there, I want my D.A.'s office to go after him with the same fervor that led to Anthony Wright's conviction.

Instead, the D.A.'s office seems more interested in holding onto Wright than it is in being absolutely sure the crime is solved. That worries me.

That should worry all of us. The entire column is a good read. 

The Lima News told us what bigger newspapers did not: Ohio Chamber of Commerce President Andy Doehrel predicted that Chamber officials will join with a growing coalition that wants to repeal Ohio's strip-club regulations this November.

According to the article:

Doehrel advised business owners to look at the legislation and substitute the name of others businesses where it reads "strip clubs.'' The regulations, and a secondary section of the law that requires the state to pay for any lawsuits against local law enforcement agencies enforcing it, should trouble business owners.

"Take out the words 'strip club' and insert 'ice cream parlor,' '' Doehrel said. "It's really over government regulation of a business that is not illegal.''

Is sanity slowing returning to Ohio? If so, is it contageous? If it is, can we infect members of the General Assembly and make sure there is no vaccine?

Geez. I hope so.

This is the same newspaper that called lawmakers "boobs'' for considering the legislation in the first place.

If you'd like to read the entire article, click here: