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Orchids & onions

ORCHID: To longtime Trumbull County Treasurer Sam Lamancusa for winning the Gus Frangos Lifetime Achievement Award last week from the Ohio Land Bank Association at its annual conference in Toledo. Lamancusa, who retired last year after 24 years of service in the treasurer’s post, richly deserved the honor for his herculean efforts to create and strengthen land bank programs in Trumbull County and throughout the state. In Trumbull County, for example, Lamancusa oversaw projects that led to the renovation or construction of more than 500 homes. His office also facilitated the reuse of ...

Ohio tax abolition campaign stumbles; opposition grows

From a variety of perspectives, the Ax OH Tax movement to abolish all local property taxes in Ohio is going over like the proverbial lead balloon. Consider: ● Its nearly yearlong drive to collect its goal of 620,000 ballot-access petition signatures as of last week has fallen woefully short, lacking 315,000 needed signers. And time is running short for their submission to state officials to qualify for this fall’s ballot. ● A mushrooming coalition of more than 65 organizations and local governments across the state have united under the banner of Ohioans to Protect Public ...

Who’s to blame this time?

It would be amusing if it wasn’t so serious. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and several other Democrats were on weekend programs calling for a toning down of the political conversation following the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington. Jeffries went so far as to say we are all Americans. This after regularly denouncing the president in harsh tones. Another of the bad rhetorical offenders has been Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md. He has called the president an authoritarian who threatens the Constitution, rule of law and democracy. There are ...

Shooter’s real problem was mental, not political

“Shots Fired at Correspondents’ Dinner” dominated TV headlines following the gun attack at the Washington Hilton. Correction: Shots were not fired at the dinner but in the corridor outside. That’s where security had pinned the accused gunman, Cole Tomas Allen, on his stomach and handcuffed. Some journalists like to overdramatize everything, especially concerning themselves. Sure, the alleged attacker released a manifesto saying he wanted to take down Trump and members of his administration. But even if the suspect had made it inside, he probably wouldn’t have gotten past the ...

A secret act of judicial tyranny

In a famous Supreme Court one-liner, reminding the legal community of the finality of the court's rulings, the late Justice William J. Brennan Jr. is reputed to have said that the Constitution means whatever any five of us say it means. This reflects the basic math that five is a majority of nine. It also reflects the theory of realism in constitutional jurisprudence. Realism, in this context, is the view that the Constitution is stagnant and unenforceable of its own existence. Realism teaches that the Constitution is only enforceable when the government voluntarily complies with it or ...

Another Trump appointee about to bite the dust

You can be Secretary of Defense (War) and cause the mightiest military in the world to be brought to its knees, and still keep your job in the Trump regime. You can be in charge of public health and cause measles to reemerge as a major hazard to Americans, and still keep your job. You can be illegally enriching yourself and your family as Commerce Secretary, and still keep your job. But you'll be fired for actively and unnecessarily getting bad press. A few days ago, a senior White House official told Politico that FBI director Kash Patel's bad press was "not a good look for a ...