The chairman of the history department at Kent State University just got himself canned. He allowed his department's resident jihad booster, Professor Julio Pino, to take six weeks of leave to attend a conference ... in the Persian Gulf.
That's a good start. Now KSU needs to fire Julio.
Some background:
Newshound rounds up the past seven days' worth of Ohio political blogging from left, right and center.
Can you say "soft target"? AJ Strata ponders the implications.
Hat tip: Michelle Malkin
Here in Northeast Ohio, Spring has sprung.
Since your local government is now allowed to take Citizen A's property and sell it to Citizen B because the government believes Citizen B will generate more tax revenue, I predict it'll be less than six months before the City of Cleveland snatches up the privately-owned parking lots in the Warehouse District.
Cleveland's downtown area is badly run down, and the city government has been unsuccessfully trying to spur growth there for decades. The owners of those downtown parking lots have long refused to sell them to developers (who want to build apartments and condominiums), because the parking lots are much more profitable than other uses would be. But now that the U.S. Supreme Court has removed all restraints from the government's use of its eminent domain power, Cleveland will grab those parking lots for a song, then turn around and sell them to somebody willing to build some glitzy high-rises that'll generate higher property taxes than the city currently collects.
You heard it here first.
Yesterday, we heard about Nicaragua's problems with maintaining control of its shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles. Today as I was driving, I heard on WTAM that several communities near Hopkins Airport in Cleveland have complained so bitterly about jet noise that the government has responded with a web site ... where you can track passenger jets. That's right. According to WTAM, you can log on to a web site and make sure passenger jets are at their designated altitudes and in their correct flight corridors.
Now, assuming I heard the radio report correctly, am I the only one who sees a problem here? We've potentially got missing SA-7 surface-to-air missiles floating around on the black market, a new web site reveals location and altitude information for air traffic around a major international airport, and just up the road in the metro Detroit area there's a very large community of Muslims. Heck, we have our own home-grown terrorist fundraiser here in town (and don't tell me he's alone).
Hello? Is anybody home at the Department of Homeland Security?
I'll keep looking for a link to the aircraft tracking web site, which I've not found yet. Boy, I hope I'm mistaken.
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UPDATE (12:02 PM): I just got off the phone with WTAM's news room. I've got good news and I've got bad news. The good news: I heard wrong ... there is no jet tracking web site. The bad news: Hopkins Airport is indeed putting such a web site together (according to WTAM). I've already left phone messages with Marty Flask, the Security Director at Hopkins, and with Laura Farmer (position unknown ... I got her number from the Media Relations Manager, Pat Smith, who didn't answer my question about the web site).
UPDATE (3:21 PM): Andrew Cochran of The Counterterrorism Blog just let me know that the Department of Defense has been chasing down Nicaraguan SAMs for two years already, which wasn't in the original story. That's reassuring, since I suppose that if the terrorists had a workable SAM they'd have used it somewhere by now (in Iraq or Afghanistan if not in America). The idea of the jet-tracking web site still sounds foolhardy, though.
UPDATE (9:16 PM): Just to clear up what might otherwise be murky in my hurried post, the government entity involved here is the airport itself, which is owned and run by the City of Cleveland (except security of course, which falls under the TSA). So far as I can determine, this web site idea is not a state or federal one. The feds ought to take notice of this, in my opinion, if it truly will allow detailed jet tracking online.
UPDATE (9:30 PM): Jeff Quinton has thoughts on a similar-sounding system he's seen before, and I sure hope what Hopkins has got planned is no more detailed than that.
If you haven't swung by The Buckeye Bloggers recently, you're missing out. I'm not the only conservative Ohio blogger.
Now if we can just find a good conservative Cincinnati blog ...
In Twinsburg, Ohio, you're now allowed to take your bow out into your back yard and hunt deer ... if your lot's at least four acres in size, if you get a license from the city, if you take an archery proficiency test, and if you pay a $25 fee. Administrative hassles aside, I'm glad that Twinsburg residents can thin the booming deer population around here. I have just one question.
How is it that until now, Twinsburg could prevent you from bowhunting on your own property?
Ah, schadenfreude. The City of Cleveland, financially mismanaged for decades by liberals, decided a year or so ago to cut expenses and laid off a bunch of police, firefighters, and EMTs. Bob Beck and the rest of the leadership of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association is now considering whether to retaliate in the way every politician fears most: using the ballot box.
Cleveland police, hacked off because of layoffs, are planning to take out some frustration on Cleveland City Council. The police union's executive board met this month to talk about a ballot issue to shrink council from 21 members to as few as seven. The full union is expected to vote on it Dec. 9 and firefighters may join in. "They abandoned the unions and were hypocrites, and they don't expect this to happen?" asked union President Bob Beck.
I'm torn here. This is a fight between a labor union (ugh) and a liberal Democrat-dominated city council (ugh). Is there some way I can root against both sides?
According to the L.A. Times, Condi Rice has a favorite NFL team:
Then there are the endless conversations about sports. Bush is omnivorous when it comes to sports, making a special point of rooting for Texas teams. Rice is a little more selective, preferring football -- especially the Cleveland Browns, her team since childhood.
I like her even more now.
Hat tip: Hugh Hewitt
The Akron Repository reports the results of a meeting last year between former Cleveland Browns player and current announcer Doug Dieken, and former Browns owner and current fan piñata Art Modell, during the Browns' final game against Modell. Here's the money quote from Dieken:
Art said, "Oh, so you've come to see me before you can pee on my grave?" I told him, "Art, I've lived a long time and played a lot of years. I refuse to stand in line to do anything anymore."
I love Deek's way with words.
Hat tip: Ace Davis
Greater Cleveland may be a political and fiscal and economic basketcase, but we needn't lose hope in the area's core city. Three tidbits of good news have cropped up in the past week.
Now let's lower local taxes and ease stupid regulations (read: elect Republicans), get some development going downtown (instead of parking lots), exploit our waterfront with something more attractive than Whiskey Island, and clean out the dive bars and rundown warehouses in The Flats.
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UPDATE: Oh, and put a stop to this nonsense too.
Citysearch Cleveland has a list of "10 Things to Do in Cleveland Before You Die", and I've already completed numbers 1, 3, and 8. I'd better get crackin' on the other seven, just in case there's an approaching meteor with my name on it.
Hat tip: Cool Cleveland
