Note: This post first appeared at about 11 AM this morning, and has been moved near the top for the rest of the day.

The related FreeRepublic post is here.
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Answer: Glad you asked.

In its Friday profiles of the US Senate candidates, The Cincinnati Enquirer noted that Mike DeWine has been endorsed by Hamilton County’s Republican Party.

Those who have only recently begun following the upcoming primary races, especially the GOP US Senate race, need to know what happened in Hamilton County. It is an object lesson in corrupt party kangaroo cronyism and Old Media ignorance.

Once you know what happened in Hamilton County, you will know that the county party’s so-called endorsement of Mike DeWine isn’t worth diddly squat. Similar sham endorsement processes played out in many of the other larger counties in the state. That is why you see Bill Pierce’s supporters noting that only five county endorsement processes had any validity, because it’s the truth (Knox, won by Pierce as Endorsed; Clermont, won by Pierce as Well-Qualified; Miami, won by DeWine; Preble, where Pierce and DeWine tied; and Fulton; where Pierce and David Smith were both evaluated as Qualified, while DeWine finished third).

Here are brief looks at the posts about Hamilton County’s sham endorsement meeting (of course, there’s no substitute for going to the original posts):

February 15 — Script of February 9 Hamilton Co. Endorsement Meeting

This post, originally done on February 13 and carried forward for a couple of days in an attempt to get attention, documented conclusively and confirmed the original report from S.O.B. Alliance member Weapons of Mass Discussion (WoMD) that the February 9 Hamilton County GOP endorsement meeting was scripted to force a predetermined conclusion — literally. The post contains the actual script used by those who conducted the meeting, and its use was confirmed by four different people who were there, all of whom are remaining unidentified for obvious reasons.

The most outrageous part of the script is where incumbents running for eight different offices from County Commissioner to US Senator were endorsed en masse, with no separate motions allowing for consideration of challengers:

By any measurement of newsworthiness, the revelation of this script should have caused the Enquirer to revisit its virtual parroting of the county party’s version of what happened. But despite the obvious evidence and additional outrage from WoMD, it was ignored.

February 16 — AgendaGate: Day 4

The Enquirer’s refusal to even look at how ridiculous its original February 10 report on the GOP’s meeting was led to this rant:

The story, by not saying otherwise, leaves readers with the impression that the process at the ….. meeting was fair, open, honest, and done by secret ballot. It wasn’t any of those things.

The story, by mentioning a few individual candidates, gives the impression that each race was voted on separately. That did not happen.

The story’s unquestioned inclusion of George Vincent’s quote that “People expressed their opinions on both sides in a most eloquent fashion” about the choice between Ken Blackwell and Jim Petro not only misrespresents how that particular contest was handled (those “people” certainly aren’t in the script), but also leaves the reader with the impression that the other races were handled in similar “eloquent fashion.” They weren’t.

It’s one thing to miss stories. It’s another thing to decide not to report stories you’re aware of. It’s beyond comprehension to actually run a story that later is shown to be largely inaccurate, not lift a finger (or click a mouse) to correct it ….. and essentially allow yourself to get played by a local party organization.

February 18 — The Enquirer Invisibler: An Equal Opportunity Ignorer

By the end of the week, I had totally lost patience with the Enquirer, renamed it the Invisibler, and noted:

The sad thing is that in the Information Age, the casual news consumer in Greater Cincinnati is, in my opinion, less well served by its local mainstream media in print, radio, and television than during any time I can recall.

That’s an unacceptable situation, and perhaps (crossing fingers) The Enquirer has figured that out. The paper has done quite a bit to shed its Invisibler moniker in the past week with its reporting on the Second District congressional race and its coverage (finally) of DeWine’s US Senate challengers. But consistent effort and resistance to accepting things at face value will be the keys to the paper’s future credibility.

* * * * * *

The bottom line on Mike DeWine’s endorsement by Hamilton County is that he got away with one, and will continue to as long as people don’t know what really happened. So spread the word: The endorsement means nothing, and is symptomatic of a county party, along with a state party that heavily influenced the proceedings in the background, that has lost its way. As WoMD said at the time: “If you want to truly be a winning party of ideas, allow real fair and open primaries, not the joke that was Hamilton County.”

More importantly at the moment, vote on May 2 for the candidate who, when the playing field wasn’t tilted by the misguided powers that be, defeated RINO Mike DeWine three times and tied him once in five attempts. That would be true conservative Bill Pierce. Go to his web site. Visit his blog, which has Bill’s latest thoughts on the critical issues the country faces. And contribute here.
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Note: I have endorsed Bill Pierce for Senate, and have provided nominal financial support for his campaign. BizzyBlog is a member of Blogs for Pierce.

Phil at The Ohio Conservative is from Columbus, and has lots of interesting things to say about conservatism, Iraq, EU-PU, the crippled British “justice” system, and so much more.

He thanks us for having him. We’re at least as thankful that he joined. Welcome!

There has a been a great deal of controversy over this year’s Pulitzer winners.

I want to concentrate on Dana Priest’s, which reads:

Awarded to Dana Priest of The Washington Post for her persistent, painstaking reports on secret “black site” prisons and other controversial features of the government’s counterterrorism campaign.

The core article that gained Ms. Priest her award, “CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons,” makes the following claims:

• “The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement. The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.”
• “The existence and locations of the facilities — referred to as “black sites” in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents — are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.”
• “Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long.”

Now, at the risk of being rude, Ms. Priest’s story, virtually 100% anonymously sourced, is at odds with this:

EU terror chief: ‘No evidence of CIA prisons’

There is no irrefutable evidence of secret CIA prisons in Europe the EU’s anti-terror coordinator has told MEPs.

Gijs de Vries told a special investigating European parliament committee that there is no proof government’s are or were complicit in illegal CIA activities.

“That evidence has not been established,” de Vries told MEPs on Thursday.

Appointed to coordinate Europe’s efforts against terrorism after the March 2004 attacks in Madrid, the Dutch politician also denied knowledge of any EU-US agreement permitting ‘extraordinary renditions.’

This contrasts with findings by the Council of Europe, last week the human rights watchdog said illegal renditions of terror suspects had taken place.

But on Thursday de Vries insisted the COE “has not yet concluded his investigations either so let us not jump to conclusions,” he said.

Ms. Priest’s report may yet prove to be accurate and perhaps worthy of a Pulitzer. Unlike other more controversial nominees, her writings appear to betray no specific government secrets, nor do they appear to put anyone in physical danger. (See update below; this statement may not be true based on Mary McCarthy’s arrest yesterday.)

But her piece has not been proven, and parts of it, based on the EU findings thus far, are clearly in doubt. She deserves no prize until the doubts are erased. Assuming she gets to keep her prize, it says more about the Pulitzer Committee’s political predelictions than it does about the accuracy of Priest’s work.

Of course, I’m still waiting for the Pulitzer Committee to pull the Pulitzer given to New York Times’ Walter Duranty in the 1930s as he whitewashed Stalin’s Soviet Union while ignoring its massacres of millions, including his infamously engineered famines. Until that occurs, every Pulitzer, no matter how otherwise richly deserved, is slightly tainted.
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UPDATE: Miss a day, miss a lot — Michelle Malkin reported late yesterday that arrested CIA agent Mary McCarthy had frequent contacts with McCarthy about the as-yet unproven prison system. Wow.

UPDATE 2: Sweetness & Light notes a “minor” conflict of interest on the part of Priest — “Dana Priest’s Husband Gets Joe Wilson Gigs.” Amazing: “Pulitzer Prize winning Dana Priest is married to William Goodfellow. William Goodfellow is the Executive Director of the the Center for International Policy (CIP). ….. So Dana Priest’s husband runs an operation that gets Joe Wilson speaking gigs. Don’t you just love our one party media?”

A NixGuy noted, this is not a surprise, nor is its relative earliness. Last year’s primary endorsement was two days before the election, but The Enquirer’s decision this time had to be an easy one, and there are a couple of toughies, most notably the GOP gubernatorial race, still on their plate.

The decision to endorse may have been easy, but the endorsement is not exactly a stemwinder, and I’m inclined to at least partially agree:

A lot has happened since Jean Schmidt was elected last summer to replace Rob Portman as Ohio’s 2nd District representative in the U.S. House.

Unfortunately, not much of that has been good. Notably, there was last fall’s infamous Murtha speech on the House floor, plus recent flaps over her educational credentials and over endorsements she has or hasn’t received.

We endorsed her believing that as a lifelong resident of the area and an active participant in many of its organizations, she is close to the community, cares about it and is knowledgeable about its people and its needs.

We still believe she can fill the role of an effective voice within Congress for her district.

You have to remember that this is not your father’s Enquirer, or even your older sibling’s, as the paper has taken a mostly misguided liberal turn in its editorial stances in the past 5 years or so. So when The Enquirer calls the Murtha speech “infamous,” it’s because many of the paper’s Editorial Board members don’t like the vote supporting current policy that eventually resulted from it.

From what I have seen, I believe Jean Schmidt is in this for the right reasons. I also seriously doubt that we will see the position creep to the point of core-principle sellout that has marred the political careers of, among many others, both of Ohio’s current US senators. But of course I and others will be watching.

That said, the sloppiness and inattention to detail that has made Ms. Schmidt vulnerable to her harshest critics has to stop, and I can personally attest that her undeniably courteous cohort’s follow-up needs to improve. In John Murtha (who has descended irretrievably into moonbattiness), Bob McEwen (whose eligibility to even be on the May 2 ballot is questionable), and COAST (which has no interest in persuasion, only in character assassination), all of whom have served to make her seem a saint by comparison, she has so far been “fortunate” (professionally, not personally) in who her persecutors have been. That will not always be the case.

Given what has transpired, I believe a principled opponent on the level of her two predecessors in the Second District could have defeated Jean Schmidt this time (yup, that looks like a prediction that she’ll win, doesn’t it?). She needs to improve, so that if a person of that stature does emerge, he or she will want to pick a different battle.

An OpinionJournal.com editorial today lays some of them out:

Breathe Easier

Today, April 22, is Earth Day, which has been marked each year since 1970 as a day of reflection on the state of the environment. At least that’s the idea, so let’s begin with some figures.

Since 1970, carbon monoxide emissions in the U.S. are down 55%, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Particulate emissions are down nearly 80% and sulfur dioxide emissions have been reduced by half. Lead emissions have declined more than 98%. All of this has been accomplished despite a doubling of the number of cars on the road and a near-tripling of the number of miles driven, according to Steven Hayward of the Pacific Research Institute.

….. As optimists by nature, we’re inclined instead to observe the happy environmental progress of recent decades; that this is in part the result of prosperity produced by economic growth; and that the solutions to any future environmental danger are also likely to emerge from the new technology and greater wealth produced by free markets and free people. So next time someone tells you that climate change is more dangerous than terrorism, bear in mind something else Churchill once said: “A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”

The “evil” forces of capitalism that the enviros so decry have generated the wealth and provided the, uh, environment for the formation of new businesses to do the cleaning up. The worst polluters of the world over the history of the industrialized world have been the communist and totalitarian regimes that so bankrupted their economies that no resources were available for any kind of environmental protection, let alone cleanup. Even where the totalitarians have some wealth, as in China, the environment festers and decays in ways enviros would correctly deem unacceptable here.

If they really wanted to get the most bang for environment-protecting buck, true environmentalists would be spending almost all of their energy focusing on China’s problems and other emerging threats in the all-too-often totalitarian Third World. But they’re not, and that tells you all you need to know about where their interests really lie.

Answer: It’s a lot more fun watching it happen than doing the dirty work –

Complaint Filed Over Bob McEwen Campaign Flier

Attorney Stan Chesley is filing a complaint Friday morning against Congressional Candidate Bob McEwen.

….. A document argues a flier distributed by the McEwen campaign makes false and misleading statements.

In the flier McEwen’s wife, Elizabeth, says they have “never failed to vote and work for a better Ohio.”

The complaint says that is false because Bob McEwen did not vote in Ohio in the 1995 or 1998 elections.

The complaint also says McEwen’s wife states they are an “an Ohio family.”

In the flier, the line actually begins, “like most Ohio families, we’ve juggled teenagers and dealt with job transfers.”

The complaint argues the flier infers the McEwens are lifetime residents of Ohio.

….. The Ohio Election Commission will review the complaint.

If the state finds the complaint has merit, it could lead to a fine or possibly criminal prosecution.

For what it’s worth, I think we can add 2003 to the list of years in which they did not vote.

If I find out when the probable cause hearing is, I might just go up to see if Mr. Chesley’s firm can do as well as I did — the first time (OEC After-action Report; OEC Official Reprimand post). :–>

The coolest part of the Reprimand letter was that it was sent to The Fairfax Station, Virginia Homeless Shelter, otherwise known as the place that supposedly has NOT been the residence of Homeless Bob (c. 2000-2005) and The McEwen Family since 1997.

A guy spent four hours at the task after other efforts were unsuccessful:

Kitty trapped inside a NY deli wall freed

NEW YORK, April 15 (UPI) — An 11-month-old cat that got stuck for two weeks between the walls of a New York deli where she was the official mouser has been rescued by a tunnel worker.

Molly’s troubles began April 1 when she wandered into a narrow space between walls in the 19th-century West Village building and got lost in a maze of beams and pipes, the New York Daily News reported.

Rescuers could hear her meows, and tried unsuccessfully to lure Molly out until Kevin Clifford, 33, a miner who loves animals, volunteered his after-work time to save her.

Clifford, who is helping dig the city’s new downtown water tunnel, spent four hours drilling through the deli’s brick walls. About 10 p.m. Friday, he gently eased Molly out of a 5-by-3-foot hole behind the counter in Myers of Keswick.

Rescuers, workers and customers erupted in cheers and applause as she emerged, dusty and frightened.

Deli proprietor Peter Myers said Molly showed a healthy appetite after her rescue. She feasted on sardines and roast pork and drank “lots of water to bring her back to normality,” Meyers said.