Hoping to take advantage of a recent federal court ruling in Kentucky, the Ohio Democratic Party joined a lawsuit filed today that seeks to abolish the restrictions imposed on judicial candidates in Ohio.

The Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this month struck down the rules used in Kentucky for electing judges, stating they violated the judicial candidates’ First Amendment right to freedom of speech. The rules prohibited candidates from listing their party affiliation on the ballot, or to directly solicit campaign contributions.

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This week’s Porkopolis column mentions a flap over an upcoming local appearance by Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher and Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, both of who are seeking the Democratic nomination to run for the U.S. Senate.

As the column notes, Fisher is the Establishment candidate and the bigger fundraiser. But a new poll indicates Brunner would have a better shot at defeating the likely Republican candidate, former Congressman Rob Portman.

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President Obama, Joe Biden, John Boehner and John Kasich did what a lot of old dudes do on weekends and enjoyed a game of golf together Saturday. I could make a lot of jokes about the amount of tears shed, containers of sunless tanner used and conversations of how to make Ohio cooler, but I'll leave that to Jimmy Fallon, who covered this golf summit on Late Night recently.

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It was “Rich People Voice Their Concerns Night” at city councils across town last night, as proponents of the $1 sale of Music Hall packed Cincinnati City Council chambers even though the proposed lease deal wasn’t on the agenda. Mayor Mark Mallory insisted that any middle ground that will allow the nonprofit Music Hall Revitalization Co. to renovate the building will require that the city retain ownership.

Across town (and about 10 miles northeast toward the area with mass trees), Madeira City Council shot down a plan to develop a luxury apartment complex on Camargo Road. Council voted 6-1 to scrap the plan for a 184-unit complex after residents who voiced concern said the complex would be “too dense” and take away from the city’s single-family character. Word on the street is that the Council majority didn’t want scumbag renters like this guy to be able to move into the neighborhood and start playing music really loud out of their car stereos. 

Cincinnati City Council yesterday pretty much canceled its plans to build an atrium at City Hall. Six council members approved a motion asking administrators to shut it down, and City Manager Milton Dohoney says he’ll abide by it even though he technically doesn’t have to because the funding was approved in a spending ordinance. 

Council also voted yesterday to keep the property tax rate pretty much the same next year despite a projected deficit. 

Now that the Supreme Court has temporarily upheld part of Arizona’s racist controversial immigration law, no-name state legislators in Ohio and Kentucky plan to break out the laws they couldn’t previously get passed. According to The Enquirer’s Mark Curnutte (who apparently won a national book award for his work covering poverty in Haiti — big ups, Curnutte!), some dudes named Courtney Combs (R-Ross Township, Ohio) and John Schickel (R-Union, Ky.) have some great ways to rid of their states' illegal immigrants, at least until the court strikes down the rest of Arizona’s law.

New York Times: "Arizona Ruling Only a Narrow Opening for Other States"

Housing prices are going up in most cities due to low interest rates and cheap prices. 

A new Obama campaign ad refers to Mitt Romney as “outsourcer in chief.” Ouch!

The War on Drugs is making the AIDS epidemic worse by driving people away from treatment, according to a report released today by the Global Commission on Drug Policy.

California condors are being threatened by lead poisoning from bullets left behind in dead carcasses shot by hunters, which the birds eat. 

Facebook changed users' listed email accounts, and people on the Internet are mad. Gizmodo explains how to fix it. 

The Spice Girls are reuniting to create a musical called Viva Forever! at London's Piccadilly Theatre.

With just five days left until the primary election, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is touring the state in her converted school bus, “the Courage Express,” for some last-minute campaigning in her U.S. Senate bid.

Brunner made local stops at Take the Cake in Northside, Keller’s IGA in Clifton and Fountain Square downtown.

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Precinct executives with the local Democratic Party will meet Thursday evening to decide on the party's slate of candidates for Cincinnati City Council.

The Cincinnati Democratic Committee will meet at 7 p.m. at the Hampton Inn, 3024 Vine St., near Martin Luther King Drive, in Corryville.

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Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee are the top choices among 10 Republicans who've expressed interest in seeking the party's presidential nomination in 2012, according to a new poll.

A Harris poll released today finds that Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, tying with Huckabee, the ex-Arkansas governor, among all voters surveyed by the poll. Each received 23 percent when totaling responses from Republican, Democratic and independent respondents.

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Hamilton County has been killing people more often than Ohio counties of similar size, despite actually asking for the death penalty less often. Today's Enquirer takes a look at the growing opposition to the death penalty in other states and recent legislation and task forces aimed at either studying its effectiveness or stopping the practice altogether. Prosecutor Joe Deters says he's going to kill all the people who deserve it because the law is still the law.

Would you like to pay tolls or higher gas taxes in order to have a new Brent Spence Bridge? No? Then you're like a majority of people who take the time to respond to Enquirer polls.

City Manager Milton Dohoney plans to ask City Council to raise the property tax rate in response to a projected $33 million 2013 deficit that everyone knows was coming.

The Community Press on the East Side says Norfolk Southern is willing to consider selling the Wasson Way right of way that some would like to see turned into a bike trail. CityBeat in March found the proposed trail to have support among cycling enthusiasts but some resistance from light rail supporters.

President Obama hooked up an 11-year-old kid with a note excusing him from class on Friday.

“He says, ‘Do you want me to write an excuse note? What’s your teacher’s name?” Sullivan told ABC. “And I say, Mr. Ackerman. And he writes, ‘Please excuse Tyler. He was with me. Barack Obama, the president.'"

Fortune magazine has taken exception to Mitt Romney's recent criticism of Solyndra, the solar panel company that went out of business despite a $500 million Department of Energy loan.

So last Thursday Romney held a surprise press conference at Solyndra's shuttered headquarters. During his prepared statement, Romney said:

"An independent inspector general looked at this investment and concluded that the Administration had steered money to friends and family and campaign contributors."

Romney then repeated the claim later in the press conference.

Small problem: No inspector general ever "concluded" such a thing, at least not based on any written reports or public statements.

Wisconsin Gov./Union Crusher Scott Walker holds a slight lead over his Democratic challenger, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, according to a recent poll.

George Zimmerman is back in jail after what his attorney is calling a misunderstanding over telling a judge that he had limited money even though a website set up to fund his legal defense raised more than $135,000.

Legal issues will be involved in New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's attempt to ban giant sodas.

Jason Alexander has released a lengthy and quite thoughtful apology for referring to the sport of cricket as "a bit gay" during a recent appearance on The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson.

Why do people on the West Coast get to see all the cool stuff that happens in space? First the eclipse and now the Transit of Venus, when Venus will cross paths between the sun and earth. Next time it will happen is 2117. And Australia got to see a partial lunar eclipse the other day, too.

Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan weighed in on the controversy over replacement National Football League referees in a Tuesday town hall-style meeting in Cincinnati, comparing the Obama administration to the substitute officials who cost his home-state Green Bay Packers a victory with their botched call Monday night.

“Give me a break. It is time to get the real refs,” Ryan said. 

“And you know what, it reminds me of President Obama and the economy — if you can’t get it right, it’s time to get out. I half think that these refs work part time for the Obama administration in the budget office.”

Ryan was referencing a play that should have been called an interception for the Packers but instead allowed the Seattle Seahawks to score a game-winning touchdown on Monday Night Foodball. Replacement referees — some of whom may have been fired by the Lingerie Football League for incompetence — are filling in for unionized officials who are locked out.

The vice presidential candidate spoke inside a Byer Steel warehouse surrounded by piles of I-beams and rebar. A self-proclaimed Southern gospel rock band played before the event, occasionally pausing to talk up GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s conservative credentials.

Much of Ryan’s prepared speech, as well as questions from participants in the town hall, focused on the economy, the deficit and the need for changes to entitlement programs.

Asked by an audience member how he would limit government and eliminate programs, Ryan said he and Romney would spur economic growth by lessening the tax burdens on small businesses, cut discretionary spending on government agencies and overhaul entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Outside before the rally, protesters called for Ryan — whose House-passed budget made deeps cuts to many welfare and safety-net programs — to have more compassion for the poor. 

Meanwhile an airplane sponsored by MoveOn.org carried a banner reading, “Romney: Believe in 55% of America?” referencing comments revealed in a recent video where Romney claimed 47 percent of Americans didn’t pay any income tax and viewed themselves as victims reliant on government so it wasn’t his job to worry about their votes.

“We’re here with several messages, including the immorality of the Ryan budget and how it will impact the vast majority of Americans negatively," said David Little with the liberal advocacy group ProgressOhio. “When a budget protects those with the most and negatively impacts those with the least, I would suggest that is immoral.”

Bentley Davis with the Alliance for Retired Americans said she was concerned about what Romney and Ryan’s plans for Medicare and Social Security would do to retirement security.

Ryan had proposed to keep Medicare the same for anybody already 55 and over, but give younger Americans the choice to get money to spend toward private insurance or stay in a Medicare-like program.

Inside the warehouse was a digital sign that ticked up the national debt, which was at $16 trillion and rising.

“Here is what our government, our Congressional Budget Office, is telling us our debt is in the future if we stay on the path that President Obama has kept us on, has put us on … the debt goes as high as two and a half times the size of our economy by the time my three kids are my age,” Ryan said. 

The Obama campaign fired back in an email response, saying Ryan used misleading rhetoric to hide his own record and Republican plans to raise taxes on the middle class to fund tax cuts for wealthier Americans.

“The Romney-Ryan ticket has plenty of questions to answer about a failed record on manufacturing and job creation and their support for policies that will devastate middle class families by raising their taxes and shipping jobs overseas,” Obama for America – Ohio Press Secretary Jessica Kershaw wrote.

“These policies would take the growing manufacturing industry backward, not forward.”

For some in the audience, the economy was also on the forefront.

Steve Teal, 56, of West Chester, said he doesn't like the direction the country is going in.

"Just get the country back to work," Teal said. "I don't trust him (Obama). He doesn't stand up for America. He doesn't stand up for Americans."

CityBeat writer Stefane Kremer contributed to this report.

Ryan went from Cincinnati to an event with Romney in Dayton later on Tuesday.

Only four days left to early-vote in person. Find out where to do that here.

U.S. employers hired 171,000 people in October and revised job growth over the previous two months, finding it had been stronger than previously thought. However, unemployment inched up to 7.9 percent from 7.8 percent in September, due to more out-of-work people looking for work. People are only considered unemployed if they’re actively searching for work. More people entering the workforce and increased job growth had the stock market jumping, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average futures up 30 points within minutes of the opening bell.

COAST has been keeping busy this week. The anti-tax group filed two lawsuits, one trying to block the sale of some land near the former Blue Ash Airport to prevent the cash from being used for the streetcar, and the other against Cincinnati Public Schools over allegations that staff used school emails to promote voter registration drives and offering to volunteer and contribute to the campaign supporting the CPS school levy (issue 42).

A firm specializing in storm damage forecasting estimates that superstorm Sandy could cause $30 billion to $50 billion in damage, making it the most second-most expensive storm the U.S. has ever seen, right behind Hurricane Katrina.

The U.S. Senate race between incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown and Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel has been expensive, no doubt. But what has all that money gone to? An analysis by The Enquirer shows that the nearly $30 million spent by both campaigns on the race has gone from everything from pollsters to Cincinnati Reds tickets to a used Jeep Cherokee. The largest expenditure for Brown’s campaign was $1.7 million for staff salaries, while the largest of Mandel’s expenditures was $1.7 million on TV ads.

People thinking about entering law school next year, rejoice. Despite a dire job market for new graduates, both campaigns have mobilized armies of lawyers in preparations to sue for votes in battleground states. If the next election is this close, you might have a job in four years. Assuming the Mayans were wrong about the apocalypse and everything.

A joint committee of Cincinnati City Council met Thursday to discuss allegations that workers at the University Square development in Clifton aren’t being paid enough. They didn’t take any action, other than asking the city to investigate, but agreed that there needs to be better oversight to make sure workers on taxpayer-funded projects are paid what they’re supposed to earn.

If you are accused of a crime in Ohio and police take your DNA, they get to keep it on file, even if you’re acquitted. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that DNA samples are like fingerprints and can be kept even if a suspect is acquitted of a crime.

A federal judge on Thursday refused to change an Ohio law that could prevent some prisoners from voting.

A bunch of dirty hippies “light warriors” buried hundreds of muffin-crystal-thingies in at Serpent Mound to help realign the energy of the ancient Native American burial mound. They were caught because they made a YouTube video of their alleged desecration.