A small group of Ohio GOP politicians are leading the effort to pass Issue 1 that will make it almost impossible for any future citizen-led constitutional amendments to succeed.

An Ohio law passed in 1912, or 111 years ago, permits citizens to organize a ballot issue to change or eliminate laws put in place by legislators who are out of touch with the will of the voters.

This right will be virtually eliminated if Ohio GOP politicians are successful in winning the August 8 Special Election for Issue 1.

One key provision of this anti-democratic legislation is to raise the threshold for voter passage of a citizen-led Constitutional Amendment from the current 50 percent, to instead, 60 percent.

If it passes, Issue 1 will allow a minority of 40 percent of the voters to control the outcome of a citizen-led ballot issue supported by 60 percent of the voters.

The late Israeli commentator, Uri Avnery, wrote, "I am increasingly worried that the Israeli-Palestinian struggle … is assuming a more and more religious character."

 At first glance, the statement may seem baffling. If Israel is a 'Jewish State' that serves as a 'homeland' for all Jewish people, everywhere, does it not follow that the 'struggle', at least from an Israeli viewpoint, is essentially a religious one?

 If only it was that simple.

 Israel's dichotomy is that it was founded by an ideology, Zionism, which purposely conflated between religion and nationality.

In response to a criminal complaint filed by Columbus mayoral candidate Joe Motil against a city official, Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein referred the matter to Whitehall assistant prosecutor Brad Nicodemus, supposedly for an independent review. Nicodemus had previously been a special prosecutor who declined to pursue charges of alleged misconduct by Columbus police during the 2020 protests over George Floyd’s murder.

Because Nicodemus’ dismissal of Motil’s complaint had serious problems, concerns have resurfaced about his dismissal of the police cases.

Motil’s complaint stemmed from his removal from an April 28 press conference at the Columbus Police Academy. Mayor Andrew Ginther and other city officials were there to discuss the city’s disturbing rise in gun violence. Motil had attended similar events without incident before becoming a candidate for mayor.

But Glenn McEntyre, an assistant director for the city’s Department of Public Safety, told Motil to leave because he wasn’t a member of the press. Motil said McEntyre grabbed his arm in the process.

The two nuclear reactors at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York were shut down in the late 1990s because they had been leaking tritium into the water table below, part of the island’s aquifer system on which more than 3 million people depend on as their sole source of potable water. 

BNL was established on a former Army base in 1947 by the then U.S. Atomic Energy Commission to develop civilian uses of nuclear technology and do atomic research.

BNL scientists were upset with the U.S. Department of Energy over the closures. BNL has been a DOE facility in the wake of the elimination of the AEC by the U.S. Congress in 1974 for being in conflict of interest for having two missions, promoting and also regulating nuclear technology.

The water table below BNL flows largely into a community named Shirley. 

Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir of an Atomic Town is a 2008 book by Kelly McMasters, a professor at Hofstra University on Long Island, who grew up in Shirley.