Opinion

This article first appeared in the Ohio Capital Journal

Last March during the hearings on Ohio House Bill 15, I was the only representative of an environmental organization in Ohio to testify against it.

The reason? It gave the Ohio Power Siting Board just 45 days to consider a major utility facility – defined as 50 MW or more – to serve a large energy user – often a data center – on property owned by the applicant. Usually this process takes one to three years.

Data centers use prodigious amounts of energy – often as much as an entire city. If they are to be directly served by an energy generation facility, it needs to be well over 50 MW.

It was clear from the language of H.B. 15 that any such major utility facility would be run by gas.

Wind turbines have too large of a setback requirement to go on most land next to a large energy user, and the footprint of utility scale solar projects is too large.

Dr. Bob Fitrakis and Dan-o Dougan play the whole Desperado album for you.

Listen here

Listen live at 11pm Fridays, January 2 and 9 streaming at wgrn.org or on the radio at 91.9FM
and
Mondays at 2pm streaming January 5 and 12 at wcrsfm.org or on the radio at 92.7 or 98.3FM

In the Donald Trump era — praise be! — so much is possible that previously no one had ever even imagined. For instance, not only has “the late, great Hannibal Lecter” come back to life, he might even join Trump’s cabinet.

Well, that’s just a guess, but why not? I think he’d fit right in. All of which is to say: “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear . . .” It’s not simply that Trump is unique (i.e., uniquely crazy). He definitely is, but he’s also American to the core. Under his leadership, our political structure is naked and exposed, stripped of its political correctness. The emperor has no clothes! Suddenly we can’t avoid seeing this.

When you imagine being safe, you imagine comfort and predictability. You imagine your bed, your backyard, a warm shower. You do not imagine kidnapping, armed conflict, or countries so unstable that U.S. troops are ordered to stay behind fortified walls.

But this is what the Trump administration has labeled “safe,” a place it can now send not only the 232 South Sudanese people who just lost protected status, but anyone who dares to seek asylum in the United States.

As has been reported, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will yet again be in Washington on Monday December 29th. It is a visit that initial media reports claimed had been requested by Trump, which would underline the value of the relationship to the US president. Nevertheless, there have also been some suggestions that Netanyahu, working through his Embassy in Washington and employing the considerable resources of the domestic US Israel Lobby, might have been the real force behind the fifth such meeting in Washington this year plus an additional meeting on October 13th in Israel to celebrate the non-ceasefire with Gaza which was being promoted as some kind of victory.

The Jewish lobby & the embassy of Israel in Italy are having a total meltdown over artwork by an Italian artist,Constantino Cervo,depicting Anne Frank wearing a keffiyeh and demanding the artwork be removed.

In November 2017, a doctored image of Israeli President Rivlin wearing a keffiyeh was seen in 2017 following the president's refusal to grant the Hebron shooter Elor Azaria a pardon. Azaria is an Israeli Death Forces (IDF) soldier who fatally shot Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, a Palestinian, in the head as the latter lay wounded and immobile on the ground near Hebron.

In November 1995, before PM Rabin was assassinated, Netanyahu attended a right-wing political rally where protesters decried Rabin as a "traitor" and "Nazi" and held signs of him wearing a keffiyeh. 

I do not recall that Palestinians took offense or felt insulted by either act. In fact, both Israeli leaders looked more dignified wearing the Palestinian head dress, better known as "keffiyeh" or "victory scarf."

The United States did not emerge accidentally as a global power. It was built through two foundational crimes: the genocide of Indigenous peoples and the system of chattel slavery. Both were morally indefensible, both were economically indispensable to the formation of the American state, and both were repeatedly justified—explicitly and implicitly—through appeals to Christian theology, racial hierarchy, and destiny.¹²

The founding of the United States did not mark the beginning of these crimes but their consolidation. Genocide and slavery were already well underway, embedded in colonial law, economic life, and social order long before independence was declared.³

Genocide and the Theft of a Continent

European settlers arrived at Plymouth Colony in 1620 and initially relied on Native American assistance for survival.⁴ That period of cooperation was short-lived. As settler populations grew and European weaponry, disease, and military organization proved decisive, Indigenous peoples were systematically displaced, massacred, starved, or confined.⁵

Traffic stops are one of the most common points of contact between the public and law enforcement. They are also one of the most misunderstood.

In Ohio OVI investigations, confusion is not accidental. Most people do not know what they are legally required to do during a stop, what is optional, or how standardized field sobriety tests are actually supposed to work. That lack of clarity shifts power entirely to the roadside officer, often without the driver realizing it.

The OVI Pocket Guide was created to address that imbalance through transparency, not advocacy.

Why Traffic Stop Confusion Matters

During an OVI stop, decisions are made quickly and under stress. Drivers are expected to comply, interpret instructions, and perform unfamiliar tasks, all while being observed and judged.

Most people assume that everything they are asked to do is mandatory. It is not.

Others assume that field sobriety tests are scientific measurements of impairment. They are not.

The term ‘hypocrisy’ is the most convenient term, but certainly not the most apt to describe the inclusion of Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest 2026.

We must search for other terms that could possibly explain why a country that has just committed one of the most horrific genocides in modern history is celebrated as a hub for culture, art, and music.