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…having an affair with your scheduler while partying it up with your pervert buddies from back home.

Forgive me, but the man has a way of staying in the news, and this quote of his in today’s Dispatch story on state pilots (describing why his daughter accompanied him on state flights) just demands attention:

“Being attorney general kept me away from my family a great deal,” Dann wrote in an email. “Any chance I had to spend additional time with any of my kids or (wife) Alyssa without any additional cost to the state I took. This was one of those opportunities. My only regret is not spending more time with the family.”

And his “only regret” is not spending more time with the family. I’d say just about every politician and most busy people probably say that at some point. And those people didn’t carry on an affair with a subordinate while condoning abusive sexual harassment that permeated an office of the state government. I get what he’s going for here, but he just digs the hole deeper every time he speaks.

My suggestion; quit responding to reporters! You’re out of public office, you haven’t been charged with a crime, and you’re not getting reelected to anything (though he is from Youngstown, so never say never). Dann still seems to want to defend his indefensible tenure as Attorney General – enough already.

If John McCain would carry Ohio en route to the presidency, the media and Democrats are already laying the groundwork for the latest “election fraud” excuse. This time it’s all those foreclosures, and all those people registered to vote at their foreclosed house, that will be the deadly assault on democracy. Pay no attention to the fact that the responsibility to keep your voter registration current is (and always has been) 100% on the individual voter.

When I move, updating my voter registration is one of the absolute first things I do. Isn’t it a bit telling that it’s always the Democrats fighting to make sure people can stay as uninformed and irresponsible as possible before heading into the voting booth? There isn’t a single voter registration issue that couldn’t be solved by that voter making a 3 minute telephone call to their county board of elections.

Somehow I missed this, but he makes the top contenders list on one major Kansas newspaper’s list.

He won’t get picked, period. He doesn’t contrast Obama at all (both are raging liberals sometimes masquerading as pseudo-populists), he’s got less than zero national presence, and I don’t believe he guarantees Obama carries Ohio.

But I bring it up because I do believe that Sherrod will run for president someday. He’s been a career politician since he was in his very early 20s and he definitely has the ego for it. Just sayin’. If he gets re-elected in 2012 (which I don’t think will be a cakewalk), I wouldn’t be surprised if he starts mulling it over.

How else do you explain such a stupid “column” today in the PD? I know everyone is ready for the 4^th of July, and editorial writers are no exception, but a pair of fake letters to potential GOP AG candidates peppered with basic, PoliSci 101 observations? Seriously?

Memo to Naymik and Joe Hallett (who did this earlier in the week) – we get it. The state GOP is unlikely to field a top tier candidate for AG this fall. What a shocker that no one wants to run an uphill campaign short on money, time, and media attention. Democrats in this state ran crappy candidates (here’s looking at you Tim Hagan for Governor) for more than a decade before 2006; Republicans are having trouble in their first election since being beaten.

That’s the feeling I usually get from reading Thomas Suddes. His latest column hits a flurry of issues bullet by bullet, so allow me to critique:

• The world according to Suddes: If you think English should be the official state (or national) language, or if you think that incessant “Press 2 for Espanol” options are an irritating symptom of today’s immigrants’ refusal to assimilate and learn the language of the land, then you are mentally retarded. Lovely.

• Of course, Suddes is all for the payday loan rate cap, and thinks any effort to put it on the ballot is evil.

“Sure: Ohioans want to stay broke so legalized loan-sharks can keep living the good life.”

• Funny, I wasn’t aware that any Ohioans had been forced to take out crappy payday loans. The issue is not whether payday loans are a good deal – they are not. The issue is whether personal responsibility still matters at all, and whether the government should drop the hammer to bail people out. “Rent-to-Own” places put people in the same kind of trap, but it’s over a television they paid 391% for instead of cash. Where does the crusading stop?

• Suddes is, however, very correct about how Strickland continues to talk about how tight his budgets are, even as he signs into law $500,000 for the NFL Hall of Fame. I still don’t get why Ohio subsidizes a museum for the national football league.

Huh.

It’s a surprise, but not exactly earth-shattering. However I do enjoy imagining his ultra-liberal base choking on it and having to contort all sorts of ways to agree with their leader.

And Zanesville is the spot for this? I think we’re getting an indication of a fall trend. Presidential candidates court OH-18 voters either in Chillicothe or Zanesville – they rarely venture much further into Appalachia. They’re within bigger media markets, and they let the candidate seem friendly to small town folks. Voters are likely to become pretty tired of both of them by the time this election is done.

…because I thought it was supposed to be about how he’s the antithesis of a typical politician, that he’s above the typical ways of campaigning, and that he was always a straight shooter.

NOPE.

From Fortune magazine, detailing Obama’s acknowledgement that NAFTA isn’t the Great Satan he made it out to be in Cleveland and other parts of Ohio:

“Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified,” he conceded, after I reminded him that he had called NAFTA “devastating” and “a big mistake,” despite nonpartisan studies concluding that the trade zone has had a mild, positive effect on the U.S. economy.

Does that mean his rhetoric was overheated and amplified? “Politicians are always guilty of that, and I don’t exempt myself,” he answered.

Honestly, I don’t begrudge Obama being a typical politician. Most of them are - that’s why they’ve worked up the ladder high enough to run for President of the United States. But I do begrudge the continued myth-making and fawning adoration from followers who stupidly believe that he’s not. On substance, he’s nothing new. Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy and Ted Kennedy’s domestic policy, that’s what Obama promises you.

Yes We Can.

Delaware County Prosecutor Dave Yost announced that he will not be running for Attorney General this fall, leaving the party with precisely zero candidates to screen when they are scheduled to meet on Saturday.

In a way, it’s understandable. All the county prosecutors are up reelection this year, so it doesn’t make a ton of sense to run a rushed, uphill campaign against Rich Cordray with no safety net. I have to think that if this were 2010, half these prosecutors who said no would be fighting each other for the shot, Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien and Yost included. Dewine wants to be U.S. Attorney General en route to Governor of Ohio, so he’s out. So far, all the other big names have said no too.

So what now? The Columbus Dispatch mentions efforts to get Supreme Court Justice Maureen O’Connor into the race, but that seems just as unlikely as some of the other options that have already failed. Grendell is up for reelection to the Ohio Senate, so he’s staying put as well.

My guess, when the dust clears, is that either Petro or Montgomery are roped into running again, or we end up with someone from the minor leagues. Either way, this isn’t making things look terribly promising against Cordray.

State Rep. Mallory recently introduced HB 590:

“to establish the Bed Bug Awareness, Education, and Prevention Program and to make an appropriation.”

He’s got a bipartisan list of co-sponsors, and why shouldn’t he? Bed bugs are nasty, and can really screw you up. Reading the fine print, this bill basically adds some extra responsibilities to the Ohio Department of Health and seems targeted primarily at the hotel industry. Citizens will also have a hotline to call and report incidences of bed bug infestation.

They make an appropriation of $335,000, which sounds like a pretty reasonable amount. We rely on the government to inspect restaurants for cockroaches, so hotels for bed bugs sounds about right.

If you go to Obama’s amusing “Fight the Smears” website (only Obama could get a pass from the media for such a showy, martyred celebration of victimhood) you may be as surprised as I was to see the phrasing of the third item down:

“The Smear – Barack Obama is a Muslim”

Now I’m perfectly aware that the individuals forwarding this lie through e-mail don’t view it as a positive attribute. But you’d think a candidate like Obama wouldn’t have such a virulent reaction to the insinuation that he’s a Muslim as to call it a “smear”.

Now comes a story that, were it the McCain campaign, would be front page news. See, Barack staffers (those eternally thrown under the bus imbeciles who are the cause of every mistake Barack makes) told some young Muslim supporters that they would not be allowed to sit behind the senator because, according to the Politico, quoting one of the staffers,

The volunteer “explained to me that because of the political climate and what’s going on in the world and what’s going on with Muslim Americans, it’s not good for [Aref] to be seen on TV or associated with Obama,” said Koussan, who is a law student at Wayne State University.

This is the politics of hope and change?