U.S. maps: When is Ohio not Ohio?

THE SHAPE OFTHE U.S. is attracting interest in odd ways as depicted by a couple of maps that have shown up of late. One that appeared on Andrew Sullivan's home page, the Daily Dish, listed each state's best quality. Some may surprise you. Shown within Ohio's borders was credit for the "highest library usage," which may put to rest those critics who insist that only a small portion of Buckeyes can read anything except the scoreboard at Ohio State football games.

South Carolina was credited with the most "golf holes per capita" and Texas's honor was "the most wind power production" - a leadership role that is likely to stay that way so long as Rick Perry is the governor. Oregon had the most "breast-fed babies" while Illinois was the most "average" and Kentucky the "best armed". By now, you get the drift. And in a contentious nation, none of the above is likely to go unchallenged.

The other colorful U.S. map appeared on the cover of the Economist magazine and was headed "State of the Union". In this map, each's state's name inspired a play on words. Ohio, for example, morphed into "Ohno". Some others: New Jersey, "Nojersey"; California, "Califoreclosia:; Idaho, "Doh" and Washington "Washedup". Michigan was renamed "Muchgone" and Alabama was shown as "Alabania."

You can probably do better, but in the whipsaw of winter, we grasp at some lighter banter to counter the side-slapping antics on Capitol Hill. Or is that "Culpable Hill"?

Kasich's "your people" retort gets a wider audience.

Our new governor is already grabbing national attention - but unfortunately it's not likely to enhance Ohio's woebegone image. POLITICO, the national Republican-tilting Web site, topped its page with this AP photo of John Kasich over a report on his choice of an all-white cabinet. It quoted Sen. Nina Turner, a black Democrat, who told the Columbus Dispatch that she and the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus are demanding a meeting with Kasich to express their concerns.

Turner says that when she personally raised the question with Kasich, he replied that that he "didn't need your people." Huh?

A Kasich spokesman said the governor was actually referring to Democrats, not blacks, which was not at all persuasive to Turner. In any event, Kasich is demonstrating a deaf ear to the fallout from his clumsy remarks. And now the entire country is hearing about it.

Palin's tasteless WTF moments aren't that funny

FOR ALL OF THE SPEECHIFYING, punditry, cable show comments and political posturing, Sarah Palin has once again stolen the show. Her repeated obscene references to President Obama's State of the Union speech (a speech that she found "hard to stomach") aren't pretty, particularly for a woman who wants us to believe that she is the model goody-goody mother of a model goody-goody American family. The Brady Bunch never used the term WTF, and as Lawrence O'Donnell noted, if you don't know what those letters mean in the current glossary of social networking, ask your kids.

Relatively brief rises to riches and public notice by people who are uncontrollably self-absorbed and deeply into their false importance to others can only soar to a certain point before gravity takes over. Palin remains unaware that the least that anybody can say about her political fling is that she is becoming so tiresome that her opponents (including me) craftily arrange to have her continue as a public spectacle. Her low polling figures suggest that our side is winning. We can only wonder that after WTF, what more can she do to demean herself in the public arena?

In fairness, however, she has already created a new growth industry: WTF T-shirts, Watch for them on the Internet. I guess there is a little good in everybody.

When U.S. Supreme Court justices come to dinner...

AFTER THE SUPREME COURT handed the 2000 election to George Bush, and after its game-changing Citizens United decision that turned over elections to the highest corporate bidders, I had hoped that the conservative-majority guys would finally behave themselves and get back to serving us as apolitical justices. I missed that one by a mile. Indeed, they aren't even bashful these days about their narrow political interests as guests at right-wing fundraisers - places the robed strict constructionists oughtn't to be."

There have been numerous reports of three of the justices making their rounds at these mega-cash registers for sympathetic candidates. Interestingly, the three - Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas - didn't show up at President Obama's State of the Union speech, dismissing these annual rituals as political events. On the other hand, Scalia and Thomas found time to speak at a political fund-raiser organized by Koch Industries - a leading Tea party contributor. Alito made it to an event sponsored by the Manhattan Institute, an honored think tank in the conservative pantheon.

And now, it's discovered that Thomas failed to report his wife's previous job, even though he is required to do so by law. (Until 2007 she had been on the payroll of the conservative Heritage

Foundation, earning $686,589.) Thomas said his failure to list the job - actual earnings not required - was inadvertent for several years because of a misunderstanding and more or less promised he would do better in the future. Maybe he needs better law clerks to explain the complicated forms to him.

Legal experts say, yeah, he broke the law, but nothing would likely come of it, Thomas being a Supreme Court Justice and all that.

Does anybody recall what President Nixon said when David Frost challenged him to explain why he approved of clearly illegal wiretapping? OK, I'll remind you:

"When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal."

Should we now add Clarence Thomas to the untouchables?

y ougers.

The Williams-Bolar case goes national

THANKS TO Kymberli Hagelberg's Fairlawn-Bath Patch home page for alerting us to a national movement in support of Kelley Williams-Bolar. (See my post below). Hagelberg reports that a social action site, Change.Org, has a web-based petition to get Williams-Bolar's sentence reduced. Another site, Daily Kos, says more than 1,000 signed the petition in eight hours. Among other things, Change.Org is seeking donations for Williams-Bolar's legal defense. .

The law was broken - but a felony? C'mon!

THE CASE involving the felony conviction of an Akron mother for falsifying records to place her two daughters in another school has morphed into a whodunnit. The original sentencing of Kelley Williams-Bolare by Common Pleas Judge Patricia A. Cosgrove was a harsh reversal of typical endings in such cases: a felony that threatened the mother' s ambition to become a teacher even though she was just a few credit hours away from a teaching degree. Legal sources tell me it was the first such case that carried a felony. There are many similar illegal transfers that are resolved with misdemeanor charges or none at all.

Well, the judge now says she was quite prepared to reduce the charge, but was thwarted by the county prosecutor, Sherri Bevan Walsh, who has no explanation to rebut the court's claim. So we have two elected officials in a deadlock while many of us continue to wonder whether anyone has a notion about how justice is served. ( That much hasn't dissuaded some broadcast and print voices from checking in indignantly with their idea of upholding the law. They insist the law was broken - case closed with deserved punishment. The law, after all, is the law. Blah. Blah. Blah. )

Funny, but I haven't heard anyone deny that the law was broken. That's hardly at issue. The real issue is did the punishment fit the crime - in this instance, a felony record despite the reduction of the jail term from five years to 10 days with community service thrown in?

Surely, there's a fairer way to run a railroad. .

Rich and poor: some frightful neighborly statistics

HERE'S A STIRRING glimpse of Americana from the Harpers Index:

The median income in the New York's 14th Congressional District, which includes Manhattan's East Side, is $60,099 - the richest in the U.S. Less than a mile away is the 16th Congressional District, the Bronx, whose median income is $17,979 - the nation's poorest.

An overflow of advice without consent

THERE'S A FINE LINE between professional sports and politics, a demarcation that has grown still dimmer these days with the urgent calls to tone down the head butts and trash talk. Calls? In football, our athletic achievers are even being assessed big fines for the appearance of corporal attacks on their opponents. It hasn't reached that pricey stage in politics yet and doubtless never will inasmuch as there isn't that much interest on Capitol Hill for folks to force their "distinguished" colleagues to reach for their wallets over non-violent assaults on their opponents.

Meantime, nothing has demonstrated the link between sports and politics more than the oupouring of advice from the national media on how to score a touchdown or two and what President Obama must do to score points with the public. Throughout the current football playoffs leading to the Super Bowl, miles of copy have been written advising coaches on what they must do to win, or, as it's commonly said, to "put more points on the board." Not that any of this influences the outcome of a game because you can safely assume that a given coach is too busy studying play charts and viewing game films to pay any attention to what the outside world thinks.

That leads us to the flood of advice that many editorial writers and pundits have given to President Obama on what he should say in the State of the Union speech to cheer up sullen constituents in Peoria. No less an authority than the New York Times ran an editorial prepping everyone for the speech (A New Chance for Mr. Obama) with such oratorical directions as telling Americans why job creation and growth are "more important than short-term spending cuts."

Then there was Steven Hayward, a resident scholar at the Conservative American Enterprise Institute, who urged the president to be " more specific and direct than Bill Clinton's famous line declaring that the "era of big government is over." I wonder how many people would remember that if you stopped them on the street. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Hopeful of imperiling any upbeat presidential comments, Rep. Michelle Bachmann, the Tea Party Queen in the House, staged her own defining state of something speech, which led to sotto voce advice from some worried Republicans that could easily be translated into "For God's sake, Michelle, shut up!"

With Obama's rise in the polls (55 pct. approval in the latest CNN tally), shouldn't we assume that he knows how in hell to give a speech without malapropisms? And without everybody telling him to be careful that he doesn't screw it up, or be a fool about the the country's priorities? Of course, he does. But political pundits don't write about pro football, which sort of restricts what they can write about. Besides, I haven't seen a single bit of advice from a sportswriter on what Obama should say about the state of the union. Mention union to the sports world and the only only thing it can come up with is the possible lockout of the gladiators before next season. And to millions of fans, that's something to worry about.

Will Lieberman have a forwarding address?

MY FIRST SERIOUS encounter with Joe Lieberman was no different than anyone else's who sat in front of a TV set in 2000 for what was erroneously billed as a vice presidential candidate debate. The purported contenders pitted Sen. Lieberman, the Democrat, and Dick Cheney, the Republican. Instead, we witnessed an embarrassingly vapid conversation during which Lieberman played pattycake with his sly political counterpart.

Connecticut Joe, who offered no more than a rubbery smile and the bedside manner of Dr. Welby, was Al Gore's greatest blunder (equaling that of John McCain's in 2008!). It was not until much later that we learned the 2000 campaign was no more than a dress rehearsal for Lieberman's plan to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. The Democratic voters had other ideas and the senator caused no more than a ripple in the primaries.

That rejection is said to have left him so bitter that he became McCain's shoulder-to-shoulder pal against Barack Obama in 2008 - even showing up to endorse him at the Republican convention. You had to wonder. Did he silently believe that McCain might tap him for veep? I don't know. But Lieberman's track record of see-sawing in his allegiance offers a strong case that he had it in mind.

Well, he has announced that he won't seek a fifth term in 2012 and I can only say good riddance, even if we have to wait two more years. Having switched to the independent slot while caucusing with the Democrats, he fashioned his new life on Capitol Hill by shaking down the Democratic leaders with the threat that unless he held on to the chairmanship of homeland security, he might just start pattycaking with the GOP again. With a hair-thin margin of error in the Senate, the Democrats wouldn't risk it.

So he is back where he wants to be, in front of the TV people. And as recently as yesterday, he was defending his hawkish support of the invasion of Iraq with his version of the facts that have long been destroyed. From President Obama, who was betrayed by Lieberman, on down the pecking order, Democrats have dished out pro forma praise of Lieberman while such conservative pundits as David Brooks have applauded Lieberman's independence. But, again I wonder. Brooks insists the Democrats would be nowhere in advancing their key issues such as health care and the stimulus package if Lieberman had not been on board for critical votes. But would fiercely independent Joe have changed his mind if he didn't retain his committee chair?

The answer should be obvious. When hasn't he planted himself in the main arena on any issue to meet his own self-absorbed need for attention? He now says he wants to start a new chapter in his life. We can only guess what that will - or won't - be. After all, he still has time to change his mind to seek another term.

Robert Bentley: Governor or individual?

LET'S SEE: The new governor of Alabama, Robert Bentley, a dermatologist, Baptist deacon and Republican, rose to a church audience and declared that unless you accept Christ as your savior, you would never be accepted by him as a brother or sister. The word spread as quickly as another star falling on Alabama and his first reaction was that he thought he was speaking only as an individual and not as the chief of his state, so he apologized if he offended anybody.

Question: What did we learn from all of this? Does it matter whether a person is only an "individual" instead of a governor as we react to what was obviously his most deeply held religious conviction? A simple politically correct apology doesn't answer the question.