Pho's Akron Pages

• In Which a Tone Deaf Rock Fan Takes in the Worlds Best Orchestra

  
  The offer came in this week -- get comp tickets to a Cleveland Orchestra performance and "blog about the experience." When our schedule cleared up for Friday night, I accepted the offer and took Kid Z along. I assume the offer came to me because [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 21, 2009, 9:58am EST
  

• Hubbard High School and Why We Have a First Amendment

  
  If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.
  [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:59am EST
  

• Today in the Akron Legal News -- Low Power FM

  What with the health care death match moving into the Senate and ongoing dramas over the budget, it's easy to miss the small bills floating around Congress. For today's column I flag one such bill, HR 1147, the Local Community Radio Act. The LCRA expands the authority of the FCC [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 18, 2009, 10:00pm EST
  

• On Akron's New Transparency (By Request)

  Jill asks about the back story of this ABJ story last week. The city of Akron is posting regular daily updates of income tax receipts. I have some things to say about a few comments from the interweb now that I'm back on top of things. Might' [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 16, 2009, 10:14pm EST
  

• Public Option Annie

  Work of a guerrilla musical theater group that infiltrated a national conference of the health insurance trade group AHIP. Thanks to the friend who passed this along. Enjoy.
  
  
  
  Apologies for any Ohio bloggers who may have hit this first. I have, as noted, been out of the [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 11, 2009, 9:16pm EST
  

• Tom Ganley in Akron

  Tom Ganley spoke before the Akron Press Club in early October and, yes, I'm just getting to it now. It's been a trying semester. Sue me.
  
  Anyway, with Ganley running the first ad in what looks like a media-heavy campaign and the ODP increasingly working to [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 11, 2009, 3:28pm EST
  

• Scientific Evidence that the Republican Base Is Crazy

  Some weeks ago I argued that the vituperative criticism of Obama from the right was not, as some suggested, driven by racism but was the result of the right wing being nuts. Not nuts in the sense that they disagree with me, but nuts in [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 10, 2009, 9:26pm EST
  

• Twenty Years Ago

  In 1984 I was on a study abroad program in Yugoslavia. One night we met up with some German students and sampled a great deal of the local malt beverage and got talking about politics. I (clumsily) brought up the idea of reunification and they shrugged it off. A pipe [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 09, 2009, 9:18pm EST
  

• ODP Talking Junk about the Republican Senate Primary

  The tasteful graphic above is from the Ohio Democratic Party website today. The link leads to a release riffing on an ABC News story about the Republican Senate Campaign Committee assuming a neutral posture in contested primaries in 2010. The presser notes:
  COLUMBUS - National [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 09, 2009, 7:58pm EST
  

• Randomosity: Resurfacing Edition

  So, kids, you know how the public health folks are saying that you can get reinfected with H1N1. Well, they speak the truth. Happily the second time through has been shorter. And BTW I took the kids in for Akron's free immunizations yesterday. A well run operation and the kids' [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 06, 2009, 1:57pm EST
  

• Today in the Akron Legal News -- 2010, It's On

  
  
  
  
  
  Today's Akron Legal News column hooks on the Wednesday after Election Day being, for us politics junkies, the official beginning of the 2010 election cycle. From that I take on a personal bugbear.
  
  Based on what we're hearing from Republican [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 04, 2009, 9:01pm EST
  

• Brunner in Town Tomorrow

  
  Secretary of State and U.S. Senate candidate Jennifer Brunner will make her case to Akron tomorrow, with a series of events. Tomorrow morning she is appearing on the Ray Horner Show on WAKR at 8:30.
  
  Then at 11:45 she appears at the [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 04, 2009, 5:01pm EST
  

• Election Day Tomorrow

  
  Yes it's mid-term, but that means you will be in and out quickly. So first and foremost, VOTE!
  
  Since this blog is based on the increasingly tenuous assumption that people care about my opinions, a few thoughts/recommendation about the ballot.
  
  Of course I' [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 02, 2009, 10:02pm EST