“This Little Wingnut Went to the Wrong Coffee Shop” What made it the wrong coffee shop? That reminds of the old ethnic turf battles: Friend, you just went to the wrong sockhop. I keel your broh-ther!

Maybe Nick D will post the car owner’s home phone number- after all, it’s a smear!

Ohio’s political winners & losers of the week, courtesy PolitickerOH, a neat site if you live and breathe state politics. Gov. Strickland’s a big winner, but the ODP a loser. That’s certainly arguable.

PolickerOH is relatively new site- here’s a good review from bonobo, an initial skeptic. When and if newspapers crash and burn, sites like that will fill the local government news niche.

I missed this on Friday when the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Metro blog broke it, but both Plunderbund and blogger interrupted posted the wrong phone number when they tried to make people like John Quinn “think before they do these kinds of disruptions.” The phone number has since been removed from both posts. In case you don’t know, John Quinn was the credentialed photographer who disrupted a recent Obama Ohio campaign event with a demand to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

The posted phone number actually belongs to Jonathan Quinn, not John Quinn. From Tom Benning’s Metro post:

The calls have started to subside, but Jonathan, an undecided voter, just wants the harassment to stop.

“I really don’t appreciate it,” he said. “I did nothing wrong.”

Jonathan said he isn’t related to the heckler Quinn and doesn’t know him.

The blogs have since removed Jonathan’s number. Tim Russo of the Web site Blogger Interrupted declined to comment.

Eric Vessels, whose blog is Plunderbund, apologized for the mistake, but defended posting what he thought was the photographer’s number.

“I want people to think before they do these kinds of disruptions,” he said. “I don’t intend people to call and harass. I don’t ever ask them to do that.”

Quite plainly, Eric’s being weaselly there. He doesn’t ever “ask” people to harass. I guess his position is that if his readers choose to do that on their own, it’s not his issue. But without any harassment, how would publishing home phone numbers cause people to think about disrupting events- which is his claimed motivation. Or is it the threat of harassment that’s supposed to accomplish that? I don’t see how he can reconcile the two points.

Here’s Tim Russo at blogger interrupted:

First things first. I got his phone number wrong, and I’m sorry. I tried my hardest to identify the right phone number, and screwed up. We got everything else right, his address, his voter registration, and his employer. So, my apologies to the other Jonathan Quinn.

However.

I am not going to apologize for attempting to publish the real John Quinn’s phone number.

In other words, sorry for the error, but there’s nothing wrong with the policy. I think that’s wrong. Is it a good thing that saying things in public that some disagree with means that you become the victim of a virtual flashmob of harassment? I’d say no. Buckeye State Blog had earlier published John Quinn’s apparent home address, which I posted about here. In the comments, Tim Russo seems to think that because John Quinn was engaging in a “smear”- that is, propagating an untruth about Barack Obama- that that makes the publishing of contact info more appropriate. But of course, on many issues there will be disagreement on what the facts are, so that rationale will just lead to a situation where everybody’s doing it. To the detriment of the free exchange of ideas, in my opinion.

Previously this publishing of personal info had been nearly universally frowned upon, but I think with the nature of partisan politics, and the particular fierceness of Democrats’ desire to win this year, the envelope’s being pushed in ways we might later regret.

See also takes on this from Political Outsider and Naugblog. (Unfortunately, Matt Naugle at Naugblog publishes Tim Russo’s phone number, which rather undermines the case.)

And as a final note, both Digg and Barack Obama’s official website have published comments which recite the wrong phone number. Once something’s on the web, it’s hard to scrub it, even if it’s totally wrong.

SurveyUSA has a poll on the Ohio-15th race. It’s Mary Jo Kilroy (D) vs. Steve Stivers (R). Kilroy narrowly lost two years ago to Republican incumbent Deborah Pryce, who’s retiring at the end of this term. The result is Kilroy over Stivers, 47-44. I’m surprised, in this Democratic year, that the result is so close. Those numbers are within the margin of error.

Independent Don Eckhart is also running- he’s at 7%. (Via BSB.)

The lefty blog dedicated to the Ohio 15th district, smartly called Ohio 15th District, has a warning on right-wing 527’s who are preparing to run ads:

They are against any movement that would take American troops out of Iraq and into the growing attacks on Americans in Afghanistan. Both Freedom’s Watch and Vets for Freedom subscribe to the Bush and McCain plan to have everlasting war in Iraq. Remember—you’ve been warned!

Speak TRUTH TO POWER, baby!

Nick D at Buckeye State Blog published the home address of that wacky guy who demanded Barack Obama recite the pledge of allegiance at his campaign event in Berea yesterday. (Obama did.)

Now clearly what that guy did was bizarre and I don’t approve, but publishing a person’s home address isn’t cool. And there’s a non-partisan consensus about that.

Here’s a look at the “new” electronic parking meters at columbusING. Jon notes that the device appears to be “rescued from a 70’s interpretation of the future.” It does look a little Star Trek- The Motion Pictureish. I had a post on them a while back.

Brendan at spacetropic has a post up about a Cinci Enquirer article about a transportation study put out by a 501(c)3 a year ago. Cincinnatians spend on average 20% of their income on transportation, which puts them at #6. Cleveland is #2 at 20.5%. I looked at the study (pdf) which lists the top 28 cities by that measure and Columbus isn’t on it. Houston is #1, which should come as no surprise to people familiar with that city.

To possibly make it easier to find your way around on public transportation, Google is starting to index transit maps and schedules to allow mass transit directions at the Google Labs Transit project. No Columbus info yet and it looks like it’ll be a while. Here’s a sample map for Portland:

View Larger Map

COTA does have a trip planner, but it’s not as cool or as fast as Google’s. It needs more ajaxiness.

Walker and Eric have a new blog focusing on Columbus transportation at X-ing Columbus.

Jerid Kurtz of Buckeye State Blog has banned regular contributor Paul Ackerman of Linwood Campaign Services. There’s a big argument going on in the comments to this post at BSB. Paul’s bio was removed from BSB’s About page.

Dave Hickman’s been posting comments about it on this post of mine. Quite gleefully, I might add. It’s hard to know from the outside what’s really going on there, but it doesn’t look pretty. Maybe they should read up on how poisonous the Ohio blogosphere is and… think of the children. Or something.