Unfortunately for Husted, a federal judge disagrees. In a ruling today, Judge Peter Economus said in-person early voting must be restored for all registered voters to include the Saturday, Sunday and Monday before Election Day. Husted will now work with county boards of elections around the state to decide the voting hours for those days.

The ruling is the outcome of President Barack Obama’s campaign and the Ohio Democratic Party suing Husted to extend in-person early voting. Before the ruling, only military personnel and their families were allowed to vote, which the Obama team and Democrats argued was unfair to non-military voters. With the ruling, everyone — including military personnel and their families — will be able to vote during  the three days before election day.

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine has vowed to appeal the ruling, but, for now, the news comes as a victory to Obama and Democrats in the ongoing struggle over early voting hours. 

Recently, Republicans have tried to block any statewide expansion of in-person early voting, citing costs and racial politics. Doug Preisse, chairman of the Franklin County Republican Party and close adviser to Gov. John Kasich, previously wrote to The Columbus Dispatch in an email, “I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American — voter-turnout machine.”

Republicans defended Preisse’s racially insensitive comment by calling it “background” and saying it was supposed to be off the record. But those defenses didn’t match Preisse’s defense of his own comment, and they didn’t deny the substance of the comment. CityBeat covered the racial politics behind early voting in this week’s issue (“Republicans Admit Racial Politics,” issue of Aug. 29).

Mike Wilson, the Republican candidate for state representative in Ohio’s 28th district, also voiced some concerns about the lawsuit. He said extending in-person early voting for everyone could make lines too long for military personnel and their families.

Northern Ohio counties are starting to receive $19 million from Cleveland casino tax revenue. Cincinnati and Hamilton can expect a similar revenue boon next year when the Horseshoe Casino opens on Feb. 2013. Of course, the casino (and its revenue) could have been coming this year, but Gov. John Kasich blocked construction last year to protect his tax plan.  

The Enquirer over the weekend did an investigative piece on ER “superusers” — individuals who can sometimes cost the health-care system as much as $1.3 million due to a lack of health insurance. Hospitals have said that this "charity care" could be curtailed by Obamacare's Medicaid expansion and save the state money, but Kasich claims the Medicaid expansion is too costly for the state. 

The Ohio Board of Regents is considering banning smoking on all public campuses. Smoking is already banned in buildings, but health concerns may lead to a bigger ban.

Toledo Public Schools used “scrubbing” to improve report card scores. The Board of Education claimed such cheating could be a “state-level problem.”

Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown and his Republican opponent Josh Mandel have settled on a day to debate: Oct. 15.

Former Reds shortstop Barry Larkin was inducted into the Hall of Fame Sunday. Here’s CityBeat’s C. Trent Rosecrans’ column offering current players’ thoughts on Larkin.

The Great Ohio River Swim was postponed Saturday because of high bacteria levels. Not very surprising.

In science news, a European agency became the first in the Western world Friday to approve a gene therapy treatment for a rare genetic disease.

Even though he has criticized super PACs in the past, President Obama has decided he will allow a pro-Democratic one to assist him in his reelection bid. Priorities USA Action, a super PAC founded by two former White House aides, will help Obama counter the deluge of money being raised by GOP groups during the 2012 election cycle.

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney told a conservative radio talk show host on Monday that he doesn’t support funding for Planned Parenthood and believes Susan G. Komen for the Cure should have stuck by its original decision to pull grants from the organization.

Read More

With the prospects for repealing the U.S. military's “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” policy looking ever dimmer, two local groups will hold a vigil to remember the men and women discharged due to the policy.

The Greater Cincinnati Human Rights Campaign and the Alliance, a student group at Xavier University, will hold the vigil Nov. 15 at the greenspace area on Xavier's campus.

Read More

A citizen committee has determined that levy-funded Hamilton County social-service agencies need to provide their services with fewer resources, advising that property owners pay the same levy rate despite decreases in property values that will reduce funding for groups that help senior citizens and people with mental illnesses. The decision by the 11-member committee will reportedly affect 30,000 residents who rely on such agencies to provide services such as meal delivery and counseling. In order to keep funding level the levy would have had to increase the cost for the owner of a $100,000 home by $6. 

From The Enquirer: 

Bosses of the Council on Aging of Southwestern Ohio had already agreed to live on less, but argued against some committee recommendations.

Those include:

• Raising the age criteria. Currently 9 percent of clients are between 60 and 70 years old. An agency spokeswoman said that’s because services are disability-based. Some “younger” seniors – those suffering from strokes and early Alzheimer’s, for instance – have more needs than older people.

• Requiring new clients to meet U.S. legal resident requirements. According to the agency, screening for U.S. citizenship would make the program ineligible to use Older Americans Act dollars, at a cost of almost $1.2 million a year. The spokeswoman said all clients live in the county.

Enquirer reporters Carrie Whitaker and Janice Morse broke from traditional journalistic standard on Tuesday by reporting the names of teenagers involved in an alleged theft and police chase. The three girls, ages 16, 14 and 12, were identified by full name and as being from Avondale and Pleasant Ridge. A follow up story on Wednesday reported two of the girls being released from the hospital. It also included the minors’ names and did not include a reporter’s byline.

Jean Schmidt sided with Democrats on an attempt to stop Republicans from cutting even deeper the funding for the national food stamp program. The legislation that passed will cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by more than $16 billion over 10 years. GOP lawmakers wanted it cut by $33 billion. 

Iran put on a missile show on Friday, demonstrating the accuracy of its long-range missiles and their ability to hit Western bases and Israel. 

Headline: “Wells Fargo Posts $4.6 Billion Profit, Up 17%.” Big ups, Wells Fargo!

Condoleezza Rice as Romney’s running mate? Sarah Palin says it’s a good idea. 

A nearly complete skeleton of a human ancestor has been found in South Africa. 

We Are Ohio, the organization that helped repeal SB5 last year, says it will team up with nonpartisan Ohio Voters First to help put on the November ballot a constitutional amendment that would change the way legislative and congressional districts are drawn. The effort is in response to Republican-drawn redistricting maps that attempted to create 12 solidly GOP districts and four Democratic districts. The proposal calls for a nonpartisan commission to redraw legislative and congressional boundaries rather than letting politicians and anyone who gives them money do it.

The University of Cincinnati has released a study showing a considerable economic impact from construction of The Banks. Between construction contractors, new residents and visitors to the area's restaurants, the development reportedly will impact the local economy by more than $90 million a year.

The parent company of Cincinnati's Horseshoe Casino will host two informational sessions this week to offer local vendors information on how to bid on contracts for supplies and services the entertainment complex will need. The first takes place 6 p.m. tonight at Bell Events Centre near the casino site at 444 Reading Road, and the second is 9 a.m. Thursday at Great American Ball Park.

The Enquirer on Tuesday reported that the University of Cincinnati and Xavier University have agreed to move the Crosstown Shootout to U.S. Bank Arena for two years in response to last year's massive brawl. NBC Sports today reported that the presents of both universities issued a press release in response, stating that no final decision had been made.

The University of Cincinnati and Xavier University were both surprised to see today’s announcement concerning the future of the Crosstown Shootout. While both schools are committed to the future of the Crosstown rivalry, specific discussions are ongoing and no details have been finalized. We look forward to sharing our plans with the community at an appropriate time in the coming weeks.

If it does happen, The Enquirer's Bill Koch says it's reasonable, while Paul Daugherty says that's fine but kind of dumb.

President Obama is finding it rather difficult to even win primaries against nobodies in the South. Not that it's surprise or really matters, though.

Of course, there are reasons for these kinds of returns. Few Democrats are voting in these primaries where Obama faces only token opposition; only protest voters are truly motivated.

There's also the fact that Obama is an underdog to Republican candidate Mitt Romney in the states of Kentucky, Arkansas, and West Virginia; Obama lost all three in 2008 to John McCain.

Another potential factor: Race.

Just when you thought Sarah Palin was super reliable, she goes and backs a Utah Republican incumbent over a tea party supported candidate.

The John Edwards jury entered its fourth day of deliberations today because they need to see more prosecution exhibits.

A white supremacist was sentenced to 40 years in jail by a federal judge for a 2004 package bomb attack that injured a black city administrator in Arizona.

European researchers say they can figure out if Bigfoot really existed, if they can just get one of his hairs.

The film version of On the Road premiered at the Cannes Film Festival today, 55 years after Jack Kerouac's Beat Generation-defining novel was published. London's The Guardian says the “handsome shots and touching sadness don't compensate for the tedious air of self-congratulation in Walter Salles's road movie.”

The Ohio Democratic Party is asking both state and federal prosecutors to look into allegations that a major coal company is coercing its employees to donate to political causes against their will.

The ODP on Monday sent letters to U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio Steven Dettelbach and Acting Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty asking them to launch a criminal investigation into Ohio-based Murray Energy Corporation.

The letters allege that Murray Energy “may have engaged in a pattern of illegal activity, extorting millions in financial contributions from employees and vendors for Republican candidates running for public office.”

Murray Energy fired back in a Monday statement, saying the allegations “are simply an attempt to silence Murray Energy and its owners from supporting their coal mining employees and families by speaking out against President Barack Obama’s well known and documented War on Coal.”

The allegations stem from an Oct. 4 investigation by left-leaning magazine The New Republic.

The article is based on the accounts of two anonymous former Murray managers and a review of letters and memos to Murray employees. It suggests that employees are pressured into making donations to Republican candidates and contributing to the company’s Political Action Committee. 

“There’s a lot of coercion,” one of the sources told the magazine. “I just want to work, but you feel this constant pressure that, if you don’t contribute, your job’s at stake.”

ODP Chairman Chris Redfern told reporters during a conference call that party research found that Ohio political candidates — including all current statewide officeholders — had received almost $750,000 from Murray Energy, its subsidiaries and employees.

Neither Dettelbach or McGinty returned CityBeat calls for comment on any pending investigations.

Murray Energy in its statement called The New Republic biased and radically liberal. The company’s characterization in the article is incorrect and untruthful, according to the statement. 

Murray had previously come under fire when Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney held a campaign event at one of its mines. Some workers claim they were pulled out of the mine early when it closed for the event and forced to attend without pay.

City Council conservatives made Mayor Mallory real mad yesterday, blocking his appointment of Councilwoman Laure Quinlivan to the Hamilton County Transportation Improvement District. An initial vote actually allowed the appointment until appointed Republican Councilman Wayne Lippert heard that the other Republicans and Chris Bortz voted against it for various trivial reasons. Lippert asked for a re-vote and swung it the other way.

Mallory reportedly called out the conservatives, referring to them as "extremely unprofessional" and "horribly non-functional." According to The Enquirer, the normally even-tempered Mallory responded to their suggestions that they'd like to see someone else receive the appointment by saying, "that person's not getting appointed” and later adding, "I appoint a lot of people to a lot of things. And this will be remembered."

Read More

• I’m grateful to the Enquirer for running a story on Sen. Rand Paul’s response to the State of the Union Message. It wasn’t on NPR or any other network that I could find. His Washington office did not respond to my question of whether the Kentucky Republican offered his remarks to any broadcasters/cable networks. 

• Tens of millions of Americans will become eligible for subsidized medical care under Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Who’s going to treat them? I haven’t seen that in the news. And while reporters are working out that story, ask how the required additional primary care physicians will pay off college and medical school debts on the salaries that will be paid to their specialties.  

• And once journalists dig into the supply of physicians to handle Medicaid expansion, I hope they’ll ask who’s going to staff quality preschool education for every American child. Obama can be aspirational, but we’re not talking about minimum wage diaper changers. Early learning centers require trained pre-school educators. And while they’re at it, reporters should ask where these new early childhood educators will train and who’s going pick up the tab. After all, they’ll never repay college loans on day care wages. 

• Maybe I missed it in the admiring coverage of our government killing American Islamists abroad with drone rocket attacks: What prevents Obama from killing Americans in this country with drone strikes? None of the news stories or commentaries I’ve read or heard addressed that point. 

There would be no shortage of targets. Wouldn’t the sheriff have loved a drone-launched missile to kill Christopher Dorner, the rogue ex-LAPD cop? That might have spared the deputy whom Dorner killed during the flaming finale in the San Bernardino mountains. And what prevents our increasingly militarized police from using their own armed drones? 

Imagine what authorities could have done with armed drones during earlier, infamous encounters:

A missile fired at armed members of the American Indian Movement at Wounded Knee, S.D., could have avenged inept, vain and foolish George Armstrong Custer and FBI agents killed in the 1973 siege. 

No feds would have died if a drone-launched missile incinerated Randy Weaver’s family with during its deadly 1992 confrontation with feds at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. 

David Koresh and the Branch Davidian religious sect were incinerated by the feds’ 1993  armored assault in Texas. That would have been a perfect photo op for a domestic drone attack.

• Sometimes, “national security” is the rationale for requested or commanded self-censorship, even when secrets aren’t secret. 

For instance, British editors held stories about Prince Harry until he returned the first time from Afghanistan. However, an Australian women’s magazine reported he was in combat. The non-secret was a secret because no one paid attention.

More recently, the new U.S. drone base in Saudi Arabia was supposed to be a secret. Obama officials asked major news media to hold the story and they agreed. National security, you know.

But it wasn’t a secret. Washington Post blogger Erik Wemple said Fox News already had reported U.S. plans to build the facility in Sept. 2011. Three months before that, the Times of London reported construction of the Saudi drone base. 

When the New York Times broke the agreement and reported the Saudi drone base, everyone jumped on the story. Now, the Times, the Post and AP are trying to explain why they kept the non-secret from us.  

• Gone are the days when senior Israeli government officials could call in top editors and broadcasters and tell them what they could not report. Last week, a tsunami of technology overwhelmed official Israeli efforts to censor the story of Prisoner X. Israeli journalists were not to report his existence or mention the censorship order. National security, you know. However, an Australian network named an Aussie as Prisoner X and said he reportedly committed suicide three years ago in an Israeli prison. Social media and the online world took it from there: "Aussie recruited by Israeli spy agency dies in Israeli prison." Israel dropped efforts to censor the Prisoner X story and is issuing official statements about the case. 

• San Bernardino’s sheriff asked journalists to quit tweeting from the final gunfight with former LAPD cop Christopher Dorner. Bizarre. If authorities feared Dorner would gain tactical information, they misread his situation: Dorner was surrounded in a mountain cabin, tear gas was being lobbed in and men outside were trying to shoot him. He probably was too busy to read tweets. Moreover, only one reporter was close enough to tweet anything remotely useful to anyone. Most reporters initially or finally ignored the sheriff. 

The tweet issue first arose during the 2008 Muslim terrorist attack on Mumbai when invaded the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. Some authorities reportedly feared accomplices outside were reading news media tweets and forwarding tactical information about police and army movements to gunmen inside. I don’t remember if anyone asked reporters to quit tweeting. 

• A new poll says Fox hit an alltime low for the four years Public Policy Polling has tracked trust/distrust among TV networks: 41 percent trust Fox, 46 percent do not. The poll didn’t find anything for other networks to brag about. Only PBS had more “trust” than “distrust” among viewers: 52 percent trust, 29 percent don’t trust. The poll questioned 800 voters by telephone from Jan. 31 to Feb. 3. 

• Garry Wills’ new book, Why Priests, sets out to debunk Catholicism’s dearest dogmas and doctrines concerning priests, bishops and the papacy. NPR’s Diane Rehm gave him an hour last week to say why Catholic ordained clergy are an unnecessary accretion. Then she asked an outgunned parish priest from the Washington, D.C. area for a rebuttal. If she really wanted a lively, informed argument, there is no shortage of priest-scholars who could have matched Wills’ credentials and talents as an historian. It was unfair and cringe-worthy. 

• It’s touchy when an unpleasantry is brought up in an obit: a long forgiven conviction, a “love child,” whatever. More often, predictably awkward moments are omitted in the spirit of de mortuis nil nisi bonum. Here’s HuffingtonPost on a full-blown omission in the recent obit on former New York mayor and mensch Ed Koch: 

“The New York Times revised its Friday obituary . . . after several observers noticed that it lacked any mention of his controversial record on AIDS. The paper's obituary, written by longtime staffer Robert D. MacFadden, weighed in at 5,500 words. Yet, in the first version of the piece, AIDS was mentioned exactly once, in a passing reference to ‘the scandals and the scourges of crack cocaine, homelessness and AIDS.’ The Times also prepared a 22-minute video on Koch's life that did not mention AIDS. This struck many as odd; after all, Koch presided over the earliest years of AIDS, and spent many years being targeted by gay activists who thought he was not doing nearly enough to stop the spread of the disease. Legendary writer and activist Larry Kramer called Koch ‘a murderer of his own people’ because the mayor was widely known as a closeted gay man.”

• New York’s Ed Koch admired Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl’s recorded last words before Muslim terrorists beheaded him. Koch had Pearl’s affirmation of faith engraved on his own tombstone in Manhattan’s Trinity Church graveyard: “My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish.”  

• A former student reporter rarely rates an obit in the national media, but Annette Buchanan wasn’t ordinary. In the mid-1960s, she refused a court order to name sources for her story about student marijuana use on the University of Oregon campus. Her story ran in the Oregon Daily Emerald, the campus paper. No shield law protected her promise of confidentiality. The Emerald said she was fined the maximum $300 and the state supreme court affirmed her contempt of court conviction. That led to the creation of Oregon’s shield law for journalists. She died recently.

• An unresolved First Amendment issue is whether bloggers can be protected by state shield laws that allow journalists to keep sources secret. The latest case is from New Jersey. Poynter.com said blogger Tina Renna refused to identify government officials whom she said misused county generators after Hurricane Sandy. Union County prosecutors demanded the 16 names, saying Renna wasn’t a journalist protected by New Jersey’s shield law because she’s been involved in politics, her blog is biased and she’s often critical of county government. 

The Newark Star-Ledger took her side. It said shield law protection “shouldn’t hinge on whether someone is a professional, nonpartisan or even reliable journalist. It’s a functional test: Does Renna gather information that’s in the public interest and publish it? Yes.” Renna “can be a little wild, she’s not the same as a professional reporter and she drives local officials crazy. But part of democracy is putting up with Tina Renna.” A court will probe whether Renna is a journalist as defined by the state shield law; that is, whether bloggers can be included by analogy under protected electronic news media.

• Few ledes — introductory sentences in news stories — are as lame as those saying the subject “doesn’t look” like some stereotype. For years, it usually referred to a woman in an unconventional (read men’s) occupation or pastime. “She didn’t look like a steelworker . . . “  or, “You wouldn’t think a tiny blonde bagged a deadly wild boar with a huge .44 magnum revolver.” Male subjects aren’t immune, as in this lede from a recent Washington Post story: “Farmer Hugh Bowman hardly looks the part of a revolutionary who stands in the way of promising new biotech discoveries and threatens Monsanto’s pursuit of new products . . . ”

What do revolutionaries look like? Lenin was pictured in suit and tie. Gandhi wore a white, draped sari or dhoti, Mandela and fellow ANC rebels often wore suits and ties. Young 1960s American and French student rebels never wore suits and ties and needed haircuts. Today’s young North African activists dress the same for class or a demonstration. 

“Doesn’t look like” wouldn’t even fit an androgynous male model in the annual Victoria’s Secret fashion show. He’d be there because he looks like a classic, young, leggy “angel.” 

• Have you noticed how hurricanes, floods, blizzards and tornadoes are morphing from evidence of climate change into photo ops? News media see them as so common that little reporting is required beyond images and stories of hardship: shoppers hoarding sliced white bread, downed trees and shattered homes, marooned airline passengers and days without power. Maybe there’s the throwaway quote from some climatologist about change affecting weather, but for the most part, that’s it. I’m betting this deliberate ignorance is a Republican Party plot to show that increasingly frequent, dangerous weather reflects the Intelligent Design that gave us dino-riding cavemen a few thousand years ago. 

• The Enquirer devoted Page 1 to a dramatic OMG! graphic and story suggesting Cincinnati was terrible because it had no black candidate for mayor. An accompanying list of movers and shakers had few blacks. The presentation suggested the all-white mayoral contest meant amiss in a city where whites are the largest minority. However, whites and blacks told reporters that leadership rather than color was foremost among attributes they sought in a mayor. Moreover, with so many African Americans in visible leadership roles in the city, having a black mayor succeed a black mayor was less of an issue than the paper suggested. 

But the presidential race raced back to gaffes over trade policy when Mother Jones posted amazingly candid footage of Romney speaking to millionaires at a fundraiser. In the videos, Romney straightforwardly outlines campaign strategy. In one video, Romney said he doesn’t care about getting the vote of the 47 percent of Americans that don’t pay taxes because he doesn’t believe he can convince them to “take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” The Obama team retaliated in a statement: “It's shocking that a candidate for president of the United States would go behind closed doors and declare to a group of wealthy donors that half the American people view themselves as ‘victims,’ entitled to handouts, and are unwilling to take ‘personal responsibility’ for their lives. It’s hard to serve as president for all Americans when you’ve disdainfully written off half the nation.”

Ohioans love their local schools, a new survey shows. The survey also found Ohioans trust their local school boards of education with education-related decisions, but they really don’t trust the state superintendent, governor or legislature.

County budget meetings are still chugging along. Different department directors are still pleading for no cuts, but the commissioners insist cuts have to be made somewhere.

Cincinnati police announced a new Taser policy. The new policy disallows the use of frontal shots except in situations involving self-defense and the defense of others, reinforces the fact officers need to make sure such force is necessary and points out people have been injured due to Taser use. The new policy was brought about due to findings Taser use can kill in rare situations.

Cincinnati launched a national design competition for the decks over Fort Washington Way that will connect the Banks and Central Business District.

A new Hamilton County initiative to improve neighborhoods will tear down 700 dilapidated homes.

The streetcar’s yearlong delay got an explanation yesterday. A few issues are to blame, including the city’s ongoing conflict with Duke Energy over who has to pay for moving utility lines to accommodate for the streetcar.

The amount of people on Ohio’s death row is shrinking. After Donald Palmer’s execution, Ohio will drop to its lowest death row population since July 1995.

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted launched a mailing campaign to clean up voter rolls. Using data from U.S. Postal Service National Change of Address Registry, Husted mailed 70,000 former Ohioans encouraging them to cancel their voter registration. The action is a lot tamer than Republican-led efforts to purge voter rolls in other states, which states like Florida, Iowa and Colorado have backed out of — at least for now.

Duke Energy unveiled its new logo.

A new meta-analysis found fish oil may not live up to its health hype.

NASA is now saying faster-than-light travel may be possible and feasible. The technology would allow spaceships to travel to Mars in minutes. Still, the theory does have some problems.