Will an Akron judge be successful this week in outing the chief briber at FirstEnergy?

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Federal Judge John Adams continues his push to delve into the House Bill 6 scandal, demanding to know why information should be shielded from the public.

We’re talking about how lawyers have until Wednesday to file briefs on Today in Ohio.

Listen online here.” target=”_blank” See the automated transcript at the bottom of the post.

Editor Chris Quinn hosts our daily half-hour news podcast, with editor Leila Atassi, editorial board member Lisa Garvin and content director Laura Johnston.

You’ve been sending Chris lots of thoughts and suggestions on our from-the-newsroom text account, in which he shares what we’re thinking about at cleveland.com. You can sign up for free by sending a text to 216-868-4802.

Here are the questions we’re answering today:

Would the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the number of people who own guns in this country discourage an internal attempt at tyranny or an external invasion like we see in Ukraine?

Can a state program aimed at reducing the number of children being sent to juvenile institutions for crimes be blamed, at least partly, for the spate of violent carjackings we’ve seen in Greater Cleveland involving juveniles?

Is the administration of Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish so inept that it is not paying the bills? What happened to the ability to do legal research at the prosecutors, public defenders and judges’ offices?

When Cleveland residents voted to have civilians take over the disciplinary process for Cleveland police after years of incompetence by the city, critics said the charter amendment was in conflict with the city’s consent decree in federal court for police reform. Maybe not, right Lisa?

This should be a momentous week in the effort to draw fair legislative and Congressional districts in Ohio, which has bigger ramifications for the future of this state than anything else happening, so let’s level set. First, where do we stand on the battle over the Congressional districts?

Next, let’s speculate a bit on why the Ohio Supreme Court is taking so very long on the legislative districts. Laura, set the table for where we stand, and then I’ll start the speculation.

How is a federal judge in Akron turning up the pressure in a big way to get the public answers on who, exactly, inside FirstEnergy approved the huge bribery scheme in the Ohio Statehouse, which raises the question once again about why these folks are escaping justice?

Sticking with the bribery scheme, do we finally have a trial date for Larry Householder, the accused mastermind of the biggest Statehouse bribery scheme in the history of Ohio? Why is this taking so very long?

The future of downtown office space is very up in the air, given the number of people working from home, but the offices in the suburbs seem to be doing quite well. What’s the story?

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Read the automated transcript below:

Chris: [00:00:00] I heard from another listener of this podcast late last week to say, yes, the Christmas lighting will continue at Neela park. It was GE they listened to the podcast and they wanted to rest. Everybody assured the Christmas lights are not going anywhere. It’s today in Ohio, the news podcast discussion from cleveland.com and the plain dealer.

I’m Chris Quinn here with Lisa Garvin and Laura Johnston, a Layla Tassie. We’ll be back tomorrow. Happy Monday. It’s going to be a much nicer Monday than it was a Saturday or a Sunday, a

Laura: beautiful weekend. He looks, yeah, it looks gorgeous, but I’m feeling very optimistic

Chris: about this. And 68 is predicted on St.

Patrick’s day. That’s extremely rare that parade after not being here for the last couple of years is going to be a big one. So,

Laura: and all those girls in there, Irish dance outfits with the sweatshirts and the headbands, I’ll be so hot, you know, but it’ll be a lovely,

Chris: I think we’ll welcome that he, so [00:01:00] let’s begin.

What the second amendment of the U S constitution and the number of people who own guns in this country discourage an internal attempt at tyranny or an external invasion. Like we see in Ukraine, Laura, this is one of these wacko questions we throw out there and examine to give our readers of our platforms, something different.

Bob Higgs talked to a whole lot of people for a story about what it would mean here. Got a, got a varied response, but generally the answer is, would mean.

Laura: Correct. I mean, this is the idea that gun rights activists are saying that the second amendment and that’s guaranteed right to bear arms would keep us safer.

Apparently I did not know this. The United States is the only nation with more guns than people. We have nearly 400 million for firearms in civilian hands here. That means four in 10 adults have access to a gun, but that doesn’t necessarily make us. Any safer, obviously this is rhetorical exercise. I don’t see Canada or Mexico likely to attack in any attack from an [00:02:00] overseas power would have a geography barrier of an ocean.

And, you know, our nuclear arsenal would probably be a much bigger deterrent than people who have handguns in their bedside tables. But it’s not just about deterring an attack. That’s there argue.

Chris: Well, there’s also the idea of internal internal tyranny and internal takeover. Um, and he talked to some legal minds that said this wouldn’t make any difference whatsoever.

He talked to some second amendment advocates who said, look, if, if you had somebody trying to set up some kind of occupation, having lots of people with guns to play gorillas would make a difference. But

Laura: as an exercise, that’s where the. Comparison to Ukraine makes a lot of sense, because even if Russia does manage to take over the country, they’re going to have a whole lot of people that do not want to be dictated.

Right? And so if for some reason we had a foreign power overtake the United States, then [00:03:00] the people who it would be a lot harder to govern and maybe people would give up and go back home because if everybody has their own guns and they’re constantly fighting, they’re not going to be orderly an obedient.

Chris: Yeah, this is one of the reasons the second amendment people don’t like gun registries, because if you did have some kind of tyranny, they could come and try and take your guns. But if they don’t know where they all are, they can’t do it as easily. Interesting, not, not a topic that we’re going to be able to go into depth on, uh, on a podcast like this, but it’s a story well worth reading by Bob Higgs.

It was in some days playing dealer and it is on cleveland.com. It’s today. Can a state program aimed at reducing the number of children being sent to juvenile institutions for crimes, be blamed, at least partly for the spate of violent carjackings we’ve seen in greater Cleveland involving juveniles.

Lisa, this is an Adam furry story. It’s eyeopening because it does seem to show that we’re, we’ve gone a little bit too far. [00:04:00]

Lisa: Yep. Uh, Cuyahoga county prosecutor. Mike O’Malley seems to think that the reclaim program, he says it’s not bad, but it certainly needs some tweaks. Reclaim is a program that was started in 1992 as an effort to reduce the juvenile incarceration rate in Ohio.

Uh, basically they closed eight of 11 prisons and reduced the juvenile. Inmate population from 2,500 back in 1992 to 428 as of last week. So the money that they save from this is about $30.5 million a year. That money is distributed among the ADA county juvenile courts in Ohio, based on a formula. And, um, the money from this must go to community rehabilitation programs for probationers to keep juveniles out of the system.

So, but, uh, you know, Michael Malley says that, you know, there was a spate of 2021 emails between court officials that showed that the [00:05:00] number of youth sent to prison has an effect on the allocated. The funds. So the fewer people that they send to prison, the more reclaim money that they get. So in this email chain, there was a court official, uh, Melissa McDaniel.

She was a quality improvement specialist and she said, well, and she was warning court officials. And this was to administrative judge Thomas O’Malley. She says that the 44 use that were sent to prison last year, cost them $1 million in reclaim funding. She says, if we continue sending juveniles at this pace, we won’t get any reclaim funds for 2022.

So see, you can see the. Yeah,

Chris: the problem is it was all noble. There were way too many kids in we’re calling them prisons, but they’re basically reformatories cause the whole purpose of juvenile justice is to change the…