Startling new revelations highlight rare Congressional hearings on Ohio vote

Startling new revelations about Ohio's presidential vote have been uncovered as Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee join Rev. Jesse Jackson in Columbus, the state capital, on Monday, Dec. 13, to hold a rare field hearing into election malfeasance and manipulation in the 2004 vote.  The Congressional delegation will include Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, and others. 

Taken together, the revelations show Republicans – in state and county government, and in the Ohio Republican Party – were determined to undermine and suppress Democratic turnout by a wide variety of methods. 

The revelations were included in affidavits gathered for an election challenge lawsuit filed Monday at the Ohio Supreme Court. Ohio's Republican Electoral College representatives are also to meet at noon, Monday, at the State House, even though the presidential recount, requested by the Green and Libertarian Parties, is only beginning the same day.

Why four died in Ohio: Governor Rhodes and his relationship with the FBI

Ten days after Governor James A. Rhodes assumed office on January 14, 1963, a Cincinnati FBI agent wrote Director J. Edgar Hoover a memo stating: "At this moment he [Rhodes] is busier than a one-armed paper hanger . . . . Consequently, I do not plan to establish contact with him for a few months. We will have no problem with him whatsoever. He is completely controlled by an SAC [Special Agent in Charge] contact, and we have full assurances that anything we need will be made available promptly. Our experience proves this assertion."

Why would the FBI assert that the newly-inaugurated governor of Ohio is "completely controlled"? Media sources like Life magazine noted the governor’s alleged ties to organized crime and the Mafia in specific. Gov. Rhodes’ FBI file, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, suggests that it may be because of the FBI’s extensive knowledge of Rhodes’ involvement in the numbers rackets in the late 1930’s that the Bureau could count on his cooperation.

Copwatch

The photo of a white man in a big white police hate with black brim and badge on it scowling on his face and a cop uniform with the words a the left saying Be on the lookout for this officer

Armed and dangerous: He’s the plainclothes “jump out boy” who shot up a Linden neighborhood in the summer of 2016 killing a young black resident, Henry Green. He’s the uniformed officer seen on tape stomping on a black man’s head as he lay cuffed on the ground in 2017. He is Zachary Rosen, and he was fired. But the Fraternal Order of Police threw such a fit and their weight around the city of Columbus that Rosen was reinstated last month. At first he was assigned back to his old beat in Linden until posters appeared warning the community that he was back on the streets: “Be on the lookout for this officer,” it read with Rosen’s scowling photo, “and record any suspicious behavior.” Later the Dispatch noted the CPD may assign him to a different area of the city. Pity them.

Your Endocannabinioid System: Proof that Marijuana is Medicine

Extreme close up of woman's lips and side of face with a smoking joint held with your fingers at her lips

You know you’ve got a heart (or at least I think you do). You know you have lungs. You know you possess a spine (well, at least some people do …). Kidding aside, these organs permit your body – and you – to function. Respectively, they are part of your circulatory system, your respiratory system and your nervous system. I’m going to tell you about another bodily system that is also integral to you.

It is called the “endocannabinoid” system (ECS), pronounced [en‧duh‧kuh‧nab‧uh‧noid].

I’ll bet you’ve heard of marijuana. No? Do you have a brain? Our favorite herb is often referred to by its scientific name: cannabis. It’s an ancient plant species that has followed mankind from prehistoric times through the present and will continue onward through millennia so long as there are humans. Its ties bind plants, mammals and mankind together.

Marijuana is a compound of over 450 chemicals. The 80 that are unique to the plant are each termed a cannabinoid. [pronunciation: “can-na-bin-oid”] 

14 days in … a Democratic wet dream

Young people wearing winter coats one young man holding a sign above his head that says Fear has no place in our schools

Things are going really well for the Democrats. And none of it is thanks to them. They are headed for significant victories at the end of the year and all without crafting progressive legislation or discussing the biggest issues on the campaign trail. The Republicans are imploding and continuously feeding the Democrats ammunition to use against them. Then there is the new wave of activists whose baby steps and half measures are straight out of the Democratic playbook. All the gutless liberals must be positively tumescent at how the past two weeks have turned out.

Spielberg flick sets Columbus at center of virtual universe

Man with big screen-like goggles like virtual reality headgear with a big glove stretched out on his hand

The good news: By 2045, Columbus has bucked its opioid addiction. The bad news: It’s replaced it with something far worse.

Our hometown is depicted as the headquarters of a virtual playground called the Oasis in Ready Player One, Steven Spielberg’s new sci-fi blockbuster. So seductive is this escape from reality that most of the world’s population spends its days donning interactive gear, creating avatars and sending them off on mind-blowing adventures.

The phenomenon has turned Columbus into the planet’s fastest-growing burg, but the growth spurt has been a painful one. Many residents—including our teenage hero, Wade (Tye Sheridan)—live in the “Stacks,” a slum consisting of mobile homes piled on top of each other. Impoverished by the Oasis’s demands on their time and money, they have little hope of ever bettering themselves.

We enter this dystopian future at a time when the mogul behind the Oasis, a man named Halliday (Mark Rylance), has died after launching a contest to choose his heir. Wade, with the help of his avatar, Parzival, is confident he’s up to the challenge.

Will we survive Summer Movie Season 2018?

Big burst of a cloud in white all fluffy on top coming off of the ground

It’s that time of year again: Another summer movie season is nearly upon us.

You could certainly be forgiven for not being up to date on what special effects extravaganzas are coming to theaters in the next few months. After all, we’re kind of busy dealing with the existential horror of everyday life in America in 2018. The usual buzz-factories of social media are too busy with the constant stream of news to give more than a minute or two to the latest Avengers trailer. And how excited can you manage to get about movies that may never be released thanks to petulant man-children with their fingers on the nuclear triggers?

So let’s start with the movies most of us will likely live to see, assuming we don’t get gunned down by AR-15-wielding white conservative terrorists or held in indefinite detention by ICE agents.

My Walkabout with WGRN Community Radio

Two women, one young with hair pulled back and the other older with long brown curly hair standing behind two men kneeling, both wearing hats with brims and wire rimmed glasses, everyone smiling

At this time of every school year, most seniors across the country are itching to bust out of high school and into their own independent lives. This feeling is commonly known as “Senioritis” and lucky for me, I haven’t spent the last nine weeks cooped up in a calculus class fantasizing about what comes after graduation. I’m on a semester long service learning project called Walkabout. It’s a project that develops the skills, attitudes and values of responsible adulthood. The test of Walkabout, and of life, is not what a student can do under a teacher’s direction, but what he or she can do as an individual. So instead of dealing with daily tests and assignments, I’ve been working for a local community radio station called WGRN.

How Can One Person Fight Climate Change?

Drawing of the Earth, a round ball with blue and green to depict water and land, little houses and trees and windmills in green coming off the circle all around it and a banner that has the words climate action now

Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, says that if everything is changing, everyone must be part of the change. Fair enough, but what can one person do?

Actually, you can do a lot right here in central Ohio. Simply Living members have been challenging the status quo since our founding in 1992. It’s not just about recycling, switching to LEDs, and starting a vegetable garden.  We can and should do those things because they are the habits of a new, mindful, ecologically-aware culture that will supplant the current consumer culture.

Columbus - City of the Future?

Two men one in front with dreds sticking up off his head and a bright blue mask and a guy behind him with a camouflage mask

Ready Player Oneis based somewhere in Columbus, Ohio during the year 2045 and is directed by Steven Spielberg.

Steven Spielberg began his career directing Rod Serling's “Night Gallery,” a late 60's-Early 70's show after Twilight Zone. Night Gallery is actually more unsettling than Twilight Zone. I feel like Spielberg's films like Gremlins and Back the Future figured out how to tweak Rod Serling's surreal, and supernatural feel into mainstream family accessible blockbusters. Spielberg directed the Twilight Zone movie in 1983.g the life and enduring legacy of

What does Columbus, Ohio look like in 2045? Somewhere between watching video games at your friend's house, the industrialized graffiti coated districts near the East River in Williamsburg, the junk yard near Frank Road and a nightclub. Essentially Ready Player One is Night Gallery meets Avatar. Ready Player One is a Major Motion Picture being shown around Columbus Movie Theaters

My Lazy Earth Day Future

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