President Obama’s actions on New Year’s Eve finally dispenses any shred of doubt about him being a fraud and a huckster. In a reversal of his previous position, Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act.
  

Ben-Gals cheerleader and Edgewood school teacher Sarah Jones won $11 million in a default judgment in summer 2010 arising from a libel lawsuit she filed against Thedirty.com, a gossip website.
  

A series of contradictory tweets and blog comments posted by members of an anti-transit group has observers wondering of there is dissension in its ranks — or whether one member simply has anger management issues.

Ever since an initiative put on the Nov. 8 ballot by the Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes (COAST) was rejected by voters, someone with the group has vowed on various local blogs that it still would try to block Cincinnati’s streetcar project.  

At least three of Cincinnati City Council’s four new members will appear at a meet-and-greet event next week in Price Hill to answer questions.

Chris Seelbach, Yvette Simpson and P.G. Sittenfeld are scheduled to attend the Jan. 5 forum, which will be held at Elder Hill School’s Schaeper Center. It’s uncertain at this time whether the fourth and final new council member, Christopher Smitherman, will attend.  

Forget all that hype about 2008 and the presidential election: When local historians gaze back from the future, 2011 in Cincinnati probably will be remembered primarily as the year when true change occurred.   

Now that Christmas has come and gone, we enter that strange time of year where many people get reflective and try to make some type of sense and discern meaning from the previous 12-months’ worth of random occurrences. 
  

After serving 20 years for allegedly committing several rapes near Dayton, Dean Gillispie was released from prison Dec. 22 based on the work of City Councilwoman Laure Quinlivan and the Ohio Innocence Project.  

Sharp-eyed readers who received an email update this week from Cincinnati City Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld got a surprise: At the bottom, it stated the missive came from the “Office of Congressman P.G. Sittenfeld.”

That prompted some observers to wonder if the error was a Freudian slip and whether Sittenfeld, who was just sworn into his first council term three weeks ago, had already set his sights on higher office.  

A new report released this month found that 30 large U.S. corporations paid more to lobby Congress than they paid in federal income taxes for the three years between 2008 and 2010, despite all of them being profitable. Merry Christmas!  

A longtime campaign consultant has decided to jump into politics himself. Jeff Cramerding announced today that he will seek the Democratic nomination to run for Hamilton County treasurer next year.

Cramerding, 38, of Price Hill, is a local attorney who has served as a consultant to numerous area politicians, mostly Democrats and Charterites. They include Denise Driehaus, David Pepper, Jody Luebbers and Chris Bortz.