Issue 1- RIP

RadarOhio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has (finally) issued a directive to the county boards of election directing that they not count votes cast for Issue 1, the referendum on the Community Defense Act (CDA).

She based her directive on the Ohio Supreme Court’s rejection of motions from the No On Issue 1 Committee attorneys asking the court to force validation of signatures collected that were originally rejected for a variety of reasons. The court’s decision effectively telegraphed that the result of another pending suite in the Ohio 10th Circuit court would have no effect on the outcome, thus leaving Brunner no choice except to issue the directive. Had she failed to do so, and this was a possibility, Issue 1 would have been “live” meaning the votes would have been counted leaving legal avenues open for nearly perpetual lawsuits, one of the reasons that the Ohio Supreme Court ruled as they did.

We continue to urge you to vote in the strongest manner we can. VOTE ON TUESDAY NOVEMBER 6, 2007!

Here We Go Again!

GamblingEverybody get ready because here we go again! According to the Columbus Dispatch, a front group for casino developers, My Ohio Now, has presented signatures to Attorney General Marc Dann for the purpose of qualifying a petition drive to place a referendum on the November 2008 ballot that would permit the opening of a huge gambling casino in Clinton County.

The group will have to collect about 402,000 valid signatures by late August of next year to qualify the referendum for the ballot. So what’s different about this effort? Well having failed to convince people that their kids would get free college by allowing 9 casinos to open in the last effort and also having failed to convince Ohio voters before that that gambling would be somehow lucrative for Ohioans in several past initiatives that would have allowed multiple casino openings, gambling interests have decided to try and convince Ohioans that allowing the camel’s nose in the tent with a single $600,000,000 (!) casino is the way to go.

Watch for red herring arguments like “this will keep Ohio gambling money in Ohio” and “everybody is doing it anyway so let’s keep it here and tax it” and “it’s just good clean fun and nobody is getting hurt.” Ok, so why is a company willing to come to Ohio and spend $600,000,000 to lure gamblers to Clinton County? How much profit is there in gambling? Clearly, a gigantic one! How much of that profit comes from gambling addicts who spend their children’s college money, their retirement funds, their home equity and money they “borrow” from employers to get their fix? How much of the profit comes from the poor, who are seduced by empty promises of big payouts? How many families are destroyed to provide a paltry revenue to the state so they can expand their power and control over our true liberties? What are the actual costs of legalized gambling versus what revenue they generate?

We will be asking these questions as this latest attempt to bring gambling to Ohio progresses. My Ohio Now will not like the questions and will couch their answers in libertarian terms that hide the fact that they will be profiting on man’s weaknesses, his covetousness and his denial of God’s position as our sole provider.

Strike One; “Mandamus will not issue to compel a vain act.”

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RadarWe have been blogging that Issue 1, the referendum on the Community Defense Act (CDA) is still a live ballot question, despite Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner’s notification of the No On Issue 1 Committee (the Committee) that it did not meet the requirements to put the issue on the ballot. She still has not notified the county boards of election that the issue is dead so it continues to be live for the November 6, 2007 election. She claims that she has delayed making the notification because of a pending Ohio Supreme Court Case seeking to force validation of signatures.

In a decision issued today by the Ohio Supreme Court those arguments in favor of forcing validation of invalid signatures have crashed with a resounding thud. The phrase the justices used from an earlier case, “Mandamus will not issue to compel a vain act” tells the story of the decision. In reading the decision, one gets the impression that the arguments in favor of validation are not being rebuked in a polite but gentle fashion so much as being subjected to a legal smackdown.

The justices rejected several arguments by explaining that to accept them would tantamount to creating complete electoral chaos by opening large loopholes in which referendum organizers could force acceptance of bad signatures by simply forgoing challenges until time limit windows had closed. They also rejected arguments that would have required local boards of election to validate all of the signatures collected again, nearly 700,000, while validating supplemental signatures- all within a 5 day window! They also rejected arguments that signatures from county boards of election should be automatically counted as valid if the Secretary of State’s return deadline were missed. The justices were not impressed

Although some of the boards violated the five-day requirement of R.C. 3519.16, it is clear from the secretary of state’s worklog that by the time of the secretary of state’s October 17 insufficiency determination, which was only two days after the statutory deadline, she had received from the boards of elections all of their verification reports concerning the sufficiency of the signatures contained on the supplemental part-petitions. The primary purpose of the requirement in R.C. 3519.16 ─ that the boards promptly make their sufficiency determinations of supplemental part-petitions ─ was served. There is also no evidence here that the minimal additional time taken by some of the boards of elections was intended to impair relators’ referendum rights.


Now, for this last out, ninth inning rally to be brought to a close only two more strikes are necessary; Jennifer Brunner has to issue notifications to the county boards of election that Issue 1 is dead and a 10th Circuit court challenge, for forced acceptance of certain invalidated signatures from the “3 C” counties, needs to be rejected. The Ohio Supreme Court has already telegraphed in their decision that they won’t look favorably on the arguments being employed by the plaintiffs in that case. Keep watching this site.

Church History And Modern Life- How Is Today’s Date Significant?

Abandoned ChurchWhat is significant in church history about today’s date? Does anyone out there know? You should. It doesn’t matter if you are Protestant or Roman Catholic, the events which took place on this date shook the church and changed it in a way that still reverberates today.

I was personally shocked at how few people, in an unofficial and completely unscientific poll I conducted today, knew what happened on this day in church history.

Do you know? Leave us a comment if you think you do. We’ll tell you this weekend, if you haven’t Googled it by then.

When Not Enough Is Too Much

RadarThe Columbus Dispatch for Saturday October 27, 2007 reports that more than $1.3 million was spent on the recent effort to repeal the Community Defense Act (CDA). The Toledo Blade for the same date has a similar if more detailed report. Both articles report the same amount of money spent (which may be a low figure) but give vastly different amounts of money donated by the Buckeye Assoc. of Club Executives (BACE), a group of strip club owners and managers and General Video of America (GVA), a Cleveland based pornography distributor. The Dispatch reports that BACE put up $640,000 and GVA contributed $345,000 in cash and in-kind donations. This adds up to about $985,000 about $315,000 short of the total spending reported. The Blade reports BACE putting in $785,500 and GVA contributing $431,042. This total is about $100,000 shy of the reported total spending. Neither report indicates what earlier spending reports revealed- that substantial donations came from out-of-state pornography producers. So why is that not covered in the stories and is the reason for the discrepancy that journalists are giving the No On Issue 1 Committee (the Committee) a break (or maybe reporters just can’t add)?

The report in the Blade speculates that the only winner was the Craig Group, a Columbus political consulting and marketing company that ran the initial signature collection effort. They got a million dollars to get the job done. They couldn’t do better than to turn in signatures at a validity rate under 33%. They blame the short time frame. Frankly, we don’t buy these excuses. In 2004 signatures were gathered by a group of mostly volunteer gatherers at a rate exceeding 50% in a similar time frame. When Phil Craig, President of the Craig Group, says “…there’s no way to know what the validation rates are going to be” he is correct. You never know for sure, but you can sabotage your own effort when you engage in practices like the following:

  • Hire convicted felons to gather signatures- it’s illegal in Ohio

  • Engage in fraud to get people to sign, then get caught by media who are only too happy to expose it to the public

  • Take on an issue that would de-regulate sex businesses, businesses most people would prefer either didn’t exist or if they must exist, that they do so in someone else’s neighborhood- something which requires some form of regulation

  • Make sure everybody knows what you’re about by opening your campaign with a press conference where strippers in tight pink t-shirts give impassioned speeches which reveal how much money they are making, mostly from boyfriends and husbands of women watching from home

  • Act as agents for corporations whose leadership who have no qualms about, and in fact are proud to engage in, exploitation of a man’s natural desire to view attractive women’ bodies and women’s perceived need for income for a number of reasons, often including broken families

Phil Burress, President of CCV, put it very succinctly in the Blade article. He said

“They tried to hijack our name and then changed it…They put people on the street who lied to voters, saying the petition would close down strip bars. … They hired ex-convicts to collect signatures, which is a violation of the law …So we’re supposed to be surprised when, out of 612,000, they’ve only got 181,000 [valid] signatures?”


So we definitely disagree that the Craig Group is a “winner” in this situation. The whole effort is a “loser” for many reasons.

The Blade has a quote from Sandy Theis, a spokesman for the Committee that is a stunning revelation of her ability to twist the truth of events in order to make it appear that, somehow, her side of the issue had been presented with some unfair disadvantage. Theis says

“It shows the importance of having good-quality control to catch problem circulators and problem petitions early in the process,”


Indeed! It also shows the necessity of actually desiring to engage in quality control. Since the signature gatherers hired by the Craig Group were producing signatures by engaging in fraud, quality control was not really necessary. Only after journalists began to investigate and report on the open, obvious and illegal methods being used was some form of “quality control” begun. It consisted of firing a few of the most egregious practitioners of fraud and supposedly discarding their petitions. As we have blogged about previously, Theis claimed that petitioners had been “trained and retrained.” This didn’t stop the fraud, as several journalists reported.

Theis then goes on

“This shows what a huge favor the lawmakers did for CCV [Citizens for Community Values] by not making them go the referendum route”


Theis is completely disingenuous here. The fact is this law (the Community Defense Act or CDA) was passed in substantially its present form by the Ohio House of Representatives by a wide margin in the 2006 session and sent to the Ohio Senate. It appeared to be set for an easy passage. Then high profile lobbyists for the sex industry, the same sex industry that employs Ms. Theis, began the financial and political political wire-pulling and log-rolling in the Senate. Senate leadership caved to sex industry lobbying pressure and allowed the bill to be virtually gutted. That was the version that passed.

What followed was a CCV led ballot initiative petition drive to pass the CDA as it was originally designed. The strategy was to get signatures to authorize the collection of enough signatures to bring the law to a general election up or down vote. People were begging to sign these petitions. They wanted the law. Once the ballot initiative drive was qualified, the Ohio Legislature had a window of time in which to pass the proposed law or face the political embarrassment of being bypassed by the electorate. When it became clear that those behind the passage of the referendum were serious and that they were prepared to do the same thing that virtually the same coalition had accomplished in 2004 with the Marriage Protection Amendment, the legislature passed the law substantially intact, albeit at the last possible minute. This, despite tremendous financial and political pressure from sex business lobbyists (the same lobbyists that represent gambling interests) and political maneuvering from their allies in the legislature. Sorry, Ms. Theis. Unlike the strip clubs, CDA supporters got no special favors from the legislature.

The sex industry spent money by the wheelbarrow full, unleashed the PR hounds and engaged in fraud in order to reach the ballot. That failed. Now they are trying to get the courts to see it their way. Jennifer Brunner, the Secretary of State, whose job it is to see that elections are conducted in a fair and legal manner, is engaging in a game of electoral brinksmanship. It is notable that her husband Rick has done legal work for the strip clubs and is a registered lobbyist. Shouldn’t this mean that she should recuse herself from the process, as her predecessor, Ken Blackwell did when he had a conflict of interest? She has notified the Committee that they did not qualify for the ballot but she has not notified the local boards of election (see our earlier posting on the same subject for details). This means as of right now Issue 1 is a live ballot issue. Should this be qualified for the ballot by judicial fiat, it is imperative that the word get out that voting on Tuesday Nov. 6 is of vital importance.

Was You Ever Bit By A Dead Bee?

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RadarWalter Brennan’s character, Eddie the alcoholic first mate to Humphrey Bogart’s Captain Harry Morgan, asks this seemingly non-sequitur question at random times in the 1944 movie To Have And Have Not. It may not have made much sense in the movie but there is a possibility that it has taken on a new and serious meaning in Ohio electoral politics this fall.

Jennifer Brunner, the Secretary of State, notified the No On Issue 1 Committee on October 17 that they had failed to meet the requirements to place Issue 1 on the ballot. However, to date, no such notification has been given to the parties that really matter- the local county boards of election. There is a suit currently before the Ohio Supreme Court to get the justices to force Brunner to certify enough bad signatures for the issue to be placed on the ballot (not that we think she needs too much forcing). In other words, until Brunner notifies the local boards of election that Issue 1 is officially dead, it’s a live ballot question on November 6! Yes there’s a potent odor of fish about all of this but that observation bears analyzing at a nother time.

What’s that mean? It means get out the vote! Do not, REPEAT, do not plan to sit this one out! There might be no ruling from the Supreme Court until the Friday or even Monday before the election!

So just as a reminder-

If you favor the regulation of strip clubs and adult businesses you must vote “YES”

If you favor allowing strip clubs to continue to operate with no state regulation vote “no”

Please pass the word to everyone. Do Not Forget To Vote On Tuesday November 6! This is of vital importance!

You can help pass the word. Citizens For Community Values (CCV) has church bulletin inserts on Issue 1 available. They also have built a website that is the place to go for official news and information on Issue 1.

Pastors, elders, and church board members; if you fear involving your church in the referendum, please read this letter from the Alliance Defense Fund, an organization that helps churches speak out on matters of social importance.

Important Prayer Request- Update

Prayer RequestOur Chairman, Dr. Mark Hamilton, is still in Cleveland Clinic fighting an infection that is keeping him from being placed on the liver transplant list.

We ask you to pray that the Lord guide the doctors in treating the infection and that He intervene directly in bringing Mark to a place where the doctors can do his transplant.

We also ask that you pray for Mark to have the will, strength and stamina to fight off the infection and quickly recover from the transplant.

Many thanks in advance for your prayers.

From The Will Of The People To The Will Of The Judiciary In One Easy Step

RadarAfter months of fraud tinged effort and at least 1.5 million dollars of sex shop, out-of-state pornography producer and strip club money spent by high-price Columbus political consulting firms, the effort to get the Community Defense Act (CDA) to the ballot for an up-or-down vote has failed. The final valid signature rate for the effort hovered somewhere around the 28% mark, a dismal performance by any standard.

The signature drive began with a group of buxom young strippers dressed in matching tight pink t-shirts, called the Dancers for Democracy (dubbed the double D coalition by one wag) holding a press conference. At least one Ohio State Senator, Teresa Fedor, stood in solidarity with the strippers and spoke at the press conference. Fedor later demonstrated gross hypocrisy by feigning shock and outrage that strippers had performed at a Lucas County Democratic Party fundraiser. The Dancers for Democracy, in reality a front group for the strip club owners, quickly faded from the public eye when it became clear that the women were a public relations nightmare. The PR guys just couldn’t sell wives and girlfriends on the “right to lap dance” as a women’s issue. Attempts to make the drive a grass roots effort never caught on. The public knows that strip clubs are often the central point for crime activity in their neighborhoods, especially as gateways for prostitution and human trafficking, and didn’t want them to continue unregulated.

Contrast the anti-CDA signature drive with other true grass roots efforts. In 2004 the successful Marriage Protection Amendment drive delivered valid signatures at a rate well over 50% and cost a fraction of what the anti-CDA effort has cost (so far). The vast majority of signatures were collected by volunteers, with a relative few collected by paid petition passers in contrast to the anti-CDA effort which utilized mostly paid gatherers, some making as much as $3 per signature! In short, the group who led the effort to repeal the CDA, the No On Issue 1 Committee (the Committee), simply could not match the efforts of a highly motivated group of volunteers with the help and support of a few donation-funded grass roots social issue groups with a swarm of paid signature gatherers hired and coordinated by high-priced professional electioneering consultants and using fraudulent collection methods.

Having failed to spark a groundswell of support for unregulated sex businesses with the general public, it should have been clear to the Committee that, unless mass confusion could be created among voters (and make no mistake that this was part of the plan. The Committee made a $5 million media buy before the signature drive failed), Issue 1 would go down to a resounding defeat at the ballot box. This does not appear to be the case, at least at first glance. According to an article in the Columbus Dispatch on Thursday, October 18, 2007 two lawsuits have been filed in a last-ditch effort to get Issue 1 to the ballot. But the Committee seems to be torn regarding their approach, and for good reason.

First, even if the case in the Ohio Supreme Court, requiring that all signatures with bad addresses and those not returned by the deadline to the Secretary of State’s office succeeds, the issue faces the probable ballot box drubbing mentioned above.

Second, and this is what really makes the attorneys for the Committee sweat bullets, is the fact that the governing federal circuit courts of the federal district courts that are hearing the Committe’s suit on the bill’s constitutionality have already approved more stringent regulations in this circuit as well as other circuits. Citizens For Community Values (CCV) has listed several such cases on their website. This option looks like a low-percentage bet as well but could tie up the law for up to 2 years.

So which way should the Committee go? Well, the federal lawsuit angle has the potential to tie the law up for the longest length of time, thus maximizing the profits to the clubs. The Ohio ballot box option appears, currently at least, to be the act of a sadistic equestrian necrophile- beating a dead horse. Follow the money. Chances are a token effort will be made in the ballot access but the real effort will on the federal suit.

The people, having proven to be an “unenlightened” lot, at least on the issue of unregulated stripping and sex businesses, cannot be trusted to understand what is good for them and for society. Therefore, at least as far as the club owners thinking goes, it’s time to flout the will of the people and go to the only remaining remedy, a group that has proven itself capable of seeing things the way the pornographers and sex businesses do from time to time. The federal judiciary. And so we see that having failed to stir the will of the people, the Committee must rely on arousing the will of a potential champion of their “rights.” From the will of the people to the will of the judiciary in one easy step.

Legislative Invocations- Another Whiff For The Dispatch

Prayer RequestIn an editorial in the Columbus Dispatch on Friday October 12, 2007, the editorial writers reveal a glaring double standard in dealing with questions of religious expression vs. any other expression. The sub-headline for the article speaks volumes “Keeping invocations at Statehouse proper ought to be easy (emphasis added).” Just what does “proper” mean? According to the Dispatch editorial writer it means free of any meaningful pleadings to the Almighty.

According to the Dispatch

Conducting prayers before legislative sessions just shouldn’t be this difficult. The Ohio House of Representatives’ guidelines are clear: The prayers should be nondenominational, nonsectarian and noncontroversial, avoiding political issues that are facing the lawmakers.

Pastor’s shouldn’t ask for the intervention of God to guide legislators in dealing with complex issues before them? Then what’s the point of prayer at all? At the risk of alienating first amendment ambulance chasers like Jay Sekulow, who say absurd things about the “establishment clause” proving that the founders of the United States promoted and practiced “ceremonial deism,” we would point to Benjamin Franklin’s call for prayer at the Constitutional Convention in May 1787 as a model for what pastors should pray for.

I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth–that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that “except the Lord build the House they labour in vain that build it.” I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing Governments by Human Wisdom and leave it to chance, war and conquest.

I therefore beg leave to move–that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that service– .

Does this sound “nondenominational, nonsectarian and noncontroversial, avoiding political issues that are facing the lawmakers?” And this plea for meaningful prayer comes not from a bi-vocational pastor or a “wild-eyed religious fanatic,” but arguably one of the least devout members of the Constitutional Convention. It contains two biblical references; Psalm 127:1 and Matthew 10:29.

What the Dispatch is calling for, in fact, is censorship. And they say so in so many words. We triple-dog dare anyone to suggest that some books with explicit scenes of debauchery should not be made available to kindergarteners at local or school libraries. Any person making such a suggestion would face the editorial long knives of the Dispatch editorial board who would scream at the top of their voices (or type at the top of their wordprocessors?) about “censorship” and proclaim it un-American. Only in the case of clergy offering public prayers is censorship proper by the standards of the Columbus Dispatch.

In order to bolster its weak case for continued censorship of prayer, the Dispatch continues to misreport the circumstances which ignited the current controversy. They have repeatedly claimed that “…a Lima-based minister made multiple references to Jesus Christ, spoke in favor of church-sponsored schools and mentioned the state regulation of strip clubs, an issue before the General Assembly.” Not really. The pastor invoked the name of Jesus Christ (as have several other pastors, in violation of the awful policy), asked for protection of the right of freedom of thought and religion and gave thanks for the right to continue to have church operated schools and asked for God’s guidance to the legislators on similar issues including the issue of regulation of adult oriented business. He did not “speak in favor of church-sponsored schools” as the Dispatch alleges. You can hear the prayer in question here. Not exactly as advertised, is it?

The Dispatch writer waxes eloquent about clergy practicing “wisdom” and “common sense” in delivering invocations. Though the editorial writer couches it in terms of enlightenment rationalism, what he is really demanding is that Christian pastors who understand the biblical definition of folly- that “…the fool says in his heart that there is no God…”- get to the back of the bus, sit down and shut up. In other words, Christians who actually believe that God exists and that His Son Jesus Christ is King and Lord of all including government and public policy are second-class citizens whose silly beliefs make them, if not irrelevant, dangerous. In this latter point we agree. Christians who understand that Christ is truly Lord of all are dangerous, at least to those who approach public policy with a reliance on man-centered humanistic rationalism, devoid of reliance on God’s authority or any absolutes. We think the first chapter of the book of Romans explains the situation quite well-

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools (Romans 1:20-22 NASB)

Frankly, any Christian pastor who would deliver a Christless invocation, which is a plea for guidance and blessing from the Father for legislators, in order to please the powers that be is at least guilty of hiding the Light of Christ under a jar (Luke 8:16). Christ did not speak favorably of this and, in fact, says that His Light is impossible to hide permanently.

We would be the first to condemn any kind of denominational or sectarian imprecatory rants on the floor of the Ohio Legislature. Calling on Christ to intercede with the Father for guidance and wisdom for elected representatives on both general and specific issues, as Christians are taught to do in the Bible, is clearly not in this class. The Dispatch needs to back off and so does Speaker Husted.

Promoting The Steady Hand of Biblically-Based Christian Statesmanship on Public Policy