It’s pretty bizarre:

A letter mailed to The Columbus Dispatch newspaper is among those being reviewed as part of an FBI investigation into a series of threatening letters that complain that ESPN and ABC crews have exploited cheerleaders, WNBA players and WTA Tour players, the newspaper reported Wednesday on its Web site.

The FBI on Tuesday offered a $5,000 reward for help finding the mailer of dozens of the letters - some containing a potentially harmful insecticide - to national networks, their local affiliates, and people throughout the West and Midwest. Recipients also included people associated with university athletic departments in Ohio, Michigan and Arizona.

The letter sent to the newspaper, bearing a Seattle postmark, says a television producer “will cause 88 people to be assaulted and shot at. One for each time shown on TV, one for each second shown and 10 for each shot during a 30 second timeout.”

Perhaps the strip club bill (Ohio Senate Bill 16) isn’t the slam dunk that it would seem to be:

A bill to impose stricter regulations on strip clubs — which takes center stage again Thursday during an Ohio House committee hearing — may ignite a larger political battle that could linger throughout the year and beyond.

So says Neil Clark, a lobbyist for an association of Ohio strip clubs that is trying to rally political and public support against the bill.

He said the politics behind the bill, known as the Community Defense Act, has caught the attention of several national corporations and groups that are interested in dumping money in Ohio to defeat the bill and those who support it.

It’s unclear if Clark is just teasing, because he said he can’t identify the groups by name at this time. He added that the groups are “moderate” and ones “Republicans would be aware of.”

But this is weird:

Phil Burress, the head of Citizens for Community Values, is not above trying to use the issue as a political stick either. In 2005, Burress, a self-described recovered porn addict, threatened to spend money to defeat Republican senators who did not support an earlier version of the bill that stalled in the Senate.

“Artsy district to host art fest”. Man. That really is the best newspaper headline since the New York Post’s “Headless Body Found in Topless Bar”.

The biggest Downtown festival is packing its tents and moving east.

The Columbus Arts Festival will move next year to the area surrounding the Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus College of Art & Design and Columbus State Community College. After 25 years, it will leave Bicentennial Park and the banks of the Scioto River in June 2008 and move north of E. Broad Street until at least 2011, officials said.

“A lot of people still aren?t sure where the Discovery District is, and this will be a wonderful opportunity to acquaint people with the wonderful riches in this neighborhood,” said Nannette V. Maciejunes, executive director of the Columbus Museum of Art.

OK. Laugh time’s over. The move won’t take effect until ‘08. The 2007 Arts Fest will be right where it’s always been. (Via RetroMetro.)

From 365gay.com:

Legislation to bar discrimination based on sexuality the workplace was introduced in Congress Tuesday afternoon.

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act would make it illegal to fire, refuse to hire or refuse to promote an employee based on the person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

The bill was filed in the House by Reps. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio) Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Chris Shays (R-Conn.)

Emphasis mine, for the local interest of course. This bill nearly passed in 1996, and Clinton would have signed it. If I’m not mistaken, President Bush has indicated his disapproval of workplace discrimination in the past, so there should be no problem getting this bipartisan bill made law in 2007.

Via bilerico.com.

From the blog of the Porter Wright Morris & Arthur nanotechnology law firm:

The Ohio Department of Development recently announced a significant financial incentive that it awarded to Zyvex Performance Materials, Inc., a “leading nano-technology company providing tools and instrumentation to the semi-conductor and research and education markets.” The incentive, a 60%, 5-year tax cut on real property improvements, allows Zyvex to relocate its headquarters to Columbus along the new State Route 315 Technology Corridor. The move is expected to generate approximately 100 jobs in Central Ohio.

In addition to its semi-conductor work, Zyvex “was the first to provide carbon nanotube (CNT) powered products to the marketplace,” and “Zyvex’s performance materials serve customers in the aerospace, defense, automotive, and energy markets while its patent technology has been incorporated with customers who are sporting goods manufacturers.”

This is potentially very important for Columbus. Making the city the Silicon Valley of nanotech might be a long shot, but the Zyvex move certainly moves us further along.

Here’s a link to the 315 Research + Technology Corridor, which is playing a significant role in making that happen, with the help of OSU, the all-important Battelle and others. OSU has a lab devoted to nanotech, the Nanotech West Laboratory. The two-day Ohio Nanotechnology Summit 2007 is happening today and tomorrow in Akron.

If you have no clue what nanotech is, a good place to start is The Foresight Nanotech Institute. Last week Russia announced that it will be investing $1 billion in nanotech, so if you don’t know about nanotech, well now’s the time.

Ohio 15th has a post on Deborah Pryce missing three votes yesterday. Pryce’s absences are an issue that have come up before, and I don’t know how legitimate they are. But Ohio 15th ought to be reporting the full story. Just what were those three votes that Pryce missed? From the same Washington Post where the 15th blogger got the info:

Vote 245: H RES 179: Expressing Support for a National Foster Parents Day (passed, 390-0, with 42 other members not voting)

Vote 246: H R 1434: Rachel Carson Post Office Building (passed, 334-53, with 3 voting present and 42 other members not voting)

Vote 247: H R 1402: Sergeant Dennis J. Flanagan Lecanto Post Office Building (passed, 386-0, with 46 other members not voting)

So the votes are for yet another meaningless holiday- nothing against foster parents, but Congress wastes waaay too much time on these- and the naming of two post offices, in Florida and Pennsylvania. How long must we in the 15th CD put up with our lack of a voice in government? Should have voted against Rachel Carson though.

Ohio06win (the blogger’s nom-de-blog) also lists previous votes Pryce missed. Be sure to click the links to find out how meaningless most of them are. Damn you Dutch-American Friendship Day!

Rather than demanding that every member waste your and my money by voting on these things, I suggest that all members of Congress boycott these stupid votes. And in future elections, voting for the candidate with the lowest attendance record might not be such a bad thing.

More skepticism on the city’s Next Generation YP plans from Paul Bonneville at RetroMetro:

Just as trying to stimulate residential and economic growth downtown through governmental subsidies is a dangerous initiative (City Center), so is the creation of a YP council that is formed through initiative of the city as opposed to the generation itself. With the lack of a grassroots, self-identified and elected effort, this Attract and Retain initiative faces not only limited effectiveness but a certain skepticism in the genuineness in it’s creation. As Rebecca Ryan pointed out, we are a skeptical group, so why should we look at this initiative any different?

Saying that a YP council will be formed…and here they are…all in the same breath means that the rest of the YP crowd in Columbus had nothing to do with the selection process. This closed-door, hand-picked approach is indicative of nothing that would strike a positive cord with this next generation, that I can say for sure.

Here’s the post that started it all.

Potbelly Sandwich Works is giving’em away today, from 11 am to 2 pm at all 4 Columbus locations. I’ve never tried them. Any good?

Interesting post at a blog called miriam’s ideas: Summer comes to Columbus Ohio.

Actually, Spring started this year on April 21, at 6:30 p.m., and by 7:20 it was all over. We were in the torrid zone.

NBC4i has a report on Columbus’s 10 most dangerous intersections, put out by the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission aka MORPC. Four of the locations are on High Street. Here’s the list, along with the number of accidents:

1. High Street and 15th Avenue 16

2. High Street and Lane Avenue 14

3. Cleveland Avenue at Morse Road 12

4. Mount Vernon Avenue and N. 20th Street 10

5. S. High Street and Fulton Street 10

6. Broad Street and High Street 10

7. Parsons Avenue at E. Whittier Street 10

8. E. Broad Street and James Road 9

9. Sullivant Avenue and S. Hague Avenue 9

10. Livingston Avenue at Alum Creek Drive 9

I threw together a map too.

Good post and lots of questions by Matt at Right Angle Blog about Senate Bill 117, “which would apparently create one state-wide policy for cable television, which would bypass the control of local government entities and possibly open the door for more cable competition.” You may have seen or heard the ads by a group called TV4US, which is allegedly AT&T astroturfing, and that explain nothing.

Check out this post at Writes Like She Talks too.

From the Coshocton Tribune:

A proposed amendment to the state’s budget bill would allow operators of small wineries in Ohio to sell their wine by mail and to put their products in grocery stores without using a distributor.

This is good news for consumers, as the only reason that the law requires manufacturers to sell to distributors rather than allowing them to sell it to you, is the distributors’ donations to your local politician. (See also: car dealers.) A similar law in Michigan was struck down by the US Supreme Court in 2005.

But there’s a monkey wrench in the works. “Somehow” a provision banning the direct sales of bottled beer to consumers by brew pubs ended up in the amendment. The amendment’s author, House Finance Chairman Matt Dolan, Republican, is promising to take it out. Mark Naymik at Openers wrote:

Patrick Conway, co-owner of Great Lakes Brewery in Cleveland, said the issue was never raised with brewers.

“It was done under the cover of darkness,” said Conway, who claims he would lose about $100,000 this year if such a provision became law. “I guess it happens a lot in politics.”

Yes, quite.

Here’s another BlogWeek, the local blog and news highlights from the last week.

Probably the biggest political news was Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann firing his “top cop” Rick Alli. From the Dispatch:

Attorney General Marc Dann fired his top law-enforcement adviser yesterday after learning that the “top cop” continued to draw a salary from his former employer in violation of his employment contract and possibly state law.

Elrico “Rick” Alli lost his $112,000-per-year position heading the attorney general’s law-enforcement operations after Dann learned that he still was being paid by the Youngstown Police Department. Dann’s office referred the matter to the Ohio Ethics Commission for further investigation and possibly criminal charges.

Alli’s firing is a black eye for Dann, who knew Alli from their years in the Mahoning Valley and hailed him as a man of “impeccable reputation” when he tapped the Youngstown police sergeant as one of his first hires in January.

Right Angle Blog had a number of posts about this, including this one recalling Alli’s hiring:

As David Skolnick opined in in the Youngstown Vindicator back in January, Alli worked in mostly a PR role for Youngstown police department, and was vastly under-qualified to be Ohio’s top cop. Alli may have gone to Denison University, but he never graduated- Instead, he graduated from the International School for Jewelers in Juniper, Florida- So he is obviously a brainiac. Skolonick called the hire of Alli “puzzling at best.”

In other stupid news, the Ohio Senate passed SB 16, that pointless bill setting statewide standards for strip clubs, since local governments, what- can’t be trusted? The Other Paper had a really good article featuring several Senators, Republicans and Democrats, complaining about the bill.

The vote [in the full Senate] would have never occurred had Mumper and three of his fellow members of the State and Local Government and Veterans Affairs Committee voted their consciences on the bill.

Five senators on the nine-member panel—Mumper, Niehaus, Boccieri, and Democrats Capri Cafaro and Shirley Smith—made it clear they disagreed with the bill. But only Smith voted against recommending it to the Senate.

Your tax dollars at work, people. (Via Progess Ohio.)

The Democratic loser in the last 15th Congressional District election, Mary Jo Kilroy, has written an open letter, concluding that, surprise! she’s simply got to run again in ‘08.

After 2006, my opponent [Deborah Pryce] is no longer one of the Republican congressional leaders and no longer in the majority. Now is time to send her home. This is even more critical – and possible – in a Presidential election year. No one has come as close we did to defeating a member of the Republican leadership than in Ohio ’s 15th District. We were only 1,000 votes short, even though Pryce raised and spent $4.6 million. Now that she is out of leadership, she will not be able to raise that kind of money from K Street . But I will!

OK, she totally didn’t say that last sentence.

Lots of local blog talk on the big study. The big inquiry. The big marketing push being cobbled together by consultative professionals. ColumbusING started us off:

So the long wait is over! Rebecca Ryan of Next Generation Consulting gave eager Columbus citizens a sample of her highly anticipated report to help the city figure out how to attract and retain young talent. It was unveiled only the way Columbus knows how! First there is an orgy of introductions from civic leaders reminding their constituents that it is them (not just the Mayor) who helped facilitate this brilliant project. Then the almighty savior of Columbus’ Young Professionals enters stage right….

I weighed in, and there was more on the Columbus Underground boards, and Lisa Renee at Glass City Jungle had more. A brand new Columbus bog- why columbus?- also had a post on it. That last one though- I can’t tell if he’s witty and discerning or totally deranged. You make the call.

In a related matter, Cap City Savvy asks what exactly people mean when they say “affordable downtown housing.” I think the answer usually has the phrase “government subsidized” in there somewhere.

And finally, local blogger and dad Dave is teaching his offspring about the fine art of flower torturing. I can hear the dandelions screaming, Dave.

And there it is, your week in local blogs.

Kings Island opens today. But two of its coasters won’t open for a while:

But they’ll have to wait if they want to ride the Son of Beast wooden roller coaster. It’s still being overhauled, after an accident last summer that sent 27 people to the hospital. The ride is expected to reopen this summer.

You can’t pay for this kind of publicity.

And the Firehawk steel coaster, being transplanted from the Geauga Lake park in northeast Ohio, won’t be ready until Memorial Day weekend.

Cedar Point opens May 12th.

Springtime is when the flowers bloom, the trees leaf, and crazed sexual perverts roam free in our city parks. NBC4i on the matter:

Undercover police said that 90 percent of suspects arrested in area parks are heterosexual white men, while another detective said 80 percent of them are working professionals.

“As the weather started warming up and we had a few warm days last month, we’ve seen more of the sexual deviants coming in and out of our city parks,” an undercover officer said….

“It’s our job then, to try to stop the behavior that wants to drive away the good, law-abiding citizens,” the officer said.

Crime Watch 4 found that within the last week, eight suspects have been cited for alleged sexual deviant behavior at three major local parks.

Six arrests were in Berliner Park, while the other arrests were made at Helsel Park on Hamilton Road and Big Walnut Park on East Livingston Avenue.

Wow. I had no idea Berliner Park is where all the action is.