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The Columbus Free Press welcomes hockey fans to the 2015 NHL All Star game at Nationwide Arena, here in Columbus. Now that you are in town, we need you to put down your bags, head to our local casino and start gambling. Oh – and we need you to lose … and lose big.

Our Beautiful (Now) Taxpayer Funded Arena

You will soon see Nationwide Arena in the newly-developed Arena District, which fifteen years ago was the blighted and deteriorating site of the former Ohio State Penitentiary. The state of Ohio sold the site to the City of Columbus in 1995, and the City of Columbus remediated environmental issues and added infrastructure before leasing the 22 acres to Nationwide Insurance to redevelop.

When asked who he thought was the most valuable player for the Ohio State football team’s drive to the national championship game, Evan Spencer carefully weighed his options.

“I don’t even know. There are so many people who have been so valuable to us,” the senior wide receiver said at a media day before the team’s trip to the inaugural national championship game Jan. 12 in Arlington, Texas. “It could be (quarterbacks) J.T. Barrett, Cardale Jones, (wide receiver) Devin Smith or (running back) Zeke (Elliott). Name whoever you want to.”

Asked the same question, coach Urban Meyer had one name jump quickly to his mind.

“(Spencer) is the MVP of our team,” Meyer said. “He's the leader of our team. I'll probably make an executive decision and make him a captain. He's really what, to me, football is all about.”

Spencer made a strong case for the honor in a 42-35 victory over top ranked Alabama in the Jan. 1 Allstate Sugar Bowl. Although he was limited to one reception for seven yards, Spencer:

 

* tossed a 13-yard touchdown pass to Michael Thomas;

* leveled two Crimson Tide players to pave the way for Elliott’s 85-yard touchdown run;

As Ohioans fight to shut the state's two dying reactors, good news has come from Vermont.  Thanks to decades of dedicated activism, the Vermont Yankee reactor at Vernon was permanently shut down on  Dec. 29, 2014. 

Citizen activists made it happen. The number of licensed U.S. commercial reactors is now under 100 where once it was to be 1,000.

Years of hard grassroots campaigning by dedicated, non-violent nuclear opponents, working for a Solartopian green-powered economy, forced this reactor’s corporate owner to bring it down.  Hopefully, the same can be done--SOON!---to the dangerous, decrepit reactors at Davis-Besse, near Toledo, and Perry east of Cleveland.  

Some killings are reported on in a slightly different manner from how the Charlie Hebdo killings have been. Rewriting a drone killing as a gun killing (changing just a few words) would produce something like this:

Freedom Fighters Gun Strike in Europe Is Said to Have Killed 12 Militants

PARIS, France — At least 12 foreign militants were believed to have been killed in a freedom fighter gun strike in the North Paris tribal region on Wednesday morning, a Liberation security official said.

The Liberation official said guns fired 128 precision bullets into a compound in the Cafe Au Lait subdistrict at 6:40 a.m. The area is close to the headquarters of numerous French businesses.

“The guns targeted a base of a French commander known as Francoise, killing 12 French militants. Two militants are wounded,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the news media.

Selma gives us our first glimpse of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (David Oyelowo) while he’s preparing to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.

Given our memories of King as the inspirational leader of the Civil Rights Movement, you might expect him to say something profound and high-minded. Instead, he complains to his wife (Carmen Ejogo) about the formal tie he’s forced to strap on for the occasion.

That’s one way Selma distinguishes itself from the average historical drama it could have been. Rather than turning King and other luminaries of the period into cardboard heroes, it renders them as recognizable human beings.

The other way Selma distinguishes itself is by delving into the arguing and strategizing that went on behind the scenes as King fought to secure voting rights for black Americans. Director Ava DuVernay and screenwriter Paul Webb have put together an illuminating account of the events leading up to a massive demonstration he organized to promote those rights: the 1965 march from Selma, Ala., to the capitol building in Montgomery.

When the news arrived from the White House yesterday that Barack Obama would veto the proposed Keystone pipeline bill, I thought back to a poll that the National Journal conducted of its “energy insiders” in the fall of 2011, just when then issue was heating up. Nearly 92% of those insiders thought Obama’s administration would approve the pipeline, and almost 71% said it would happen by the end of that year.

Keystone’s not dead yet -- feckless Democrats in the Congress could make some kind of deal, and the president could still yield down the road to the endlessly corrupt State Department bureaucracy that continues to push the pipeline -- but the President's veto threat shows what happens when people organize.

By pledging to veto the Keystone XL bill, President Obama took an important step towards backing up his climate talk yesterday, and we should applaud that. He showed the kind of courage that will be needed to stop this pipeline and begin to turn the tide against the fossil fuel industry.

Oh, the moral force of a snub.

Several hundred cops turn their backs on New York’s mayor as he eulogizes one of their own, killed in the line of duty, and the media have another us-vs.-them story to report. Bill de Blasio’s in trouble, accused of playing politics with the lives of heroes. And, of course, the story goes no deeper than the dramatic accusation.

As the sign of a lone protester at the officer’s funeral proclaimed: “God bless the NYPD: Dump de Blasio.”

There’s nothing like a good, righteous condemnation to stop a national discussion. Criticizing police tactics means contributing to an anti-police atmosphere. End of debate.

Personally, I view the snub, by some New York police, as de Blasio’s red badge of courage more than his moral condemnation. He stood for something outside the zone of official righteousness. He met with protesters. He ended stop-and-frisk, the tactic of warrantless street searches that primarily targeted blacks and Hispanics. He told his biracial son to “take special care in any encounter he has with police officers,” in other words, refused to sugarcoat a pragmatic truth.

The trial of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, set to begin in mid-January, is shaping up as a major battle in the U.S. government’s siege against whistleblowing. With its use of the Espionage Act to intimidate and prosecute people for leaks in “national security” realms, the Obama administration is determined to keep hiding important facts that the public has a vital right to know.

After fleeting coverage of Sterling’s indictment four years ago, news media have done little to illuminate his case -- while occasionally reporting on the refusal of New York Times reporter James Risen to testify about whether Sterling was a source for his 2006 book “State of War.”

Risen’s unwavering stand for the confidentiality of sources is admirable. At the same time, Sterling -- who faces 10 felony counts that include seven under the Espionage Act -- is no less deserving of support.

A former Governor of Virginia is expected to be sentenced to a long stay in prison. The same fate has befallen governors in states across the United States, including in nearby Maryland, Tennessee, and West Virginia. A former governor of Illinois is in prison. Governors have been convicted of corruption in Rhode Island, Louisiana, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Connecticut, and (in a trumped-up partisan scam) in Alabama. The statewide trauma suffered by the people of states that have locked up their governors has been . . . well, nonexistent and unimaginable.

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