If you were to believe some West Side Republicans, State Rep. Denise Driehaus is caught in a predicament that would do Romeo and Juliet proud. The Price Hill version of this tale has Driehaus supposedly asking the Hamilton County Board of Elections if she can deny her father and change her last name on the Nov. 2 ballot, instead using the surname of her husband, Zeek Childers.

What a monumental letdown. For a person who once described himself as a “rodeo clown” and regularly provides the type of high drama on his nightly TV show that would make the unhinged Howard Beale proud, Glenn Beck's much-hyped “divinely inspired message” to the American people landed with a thud this past weekend.

An internal investigation into whether Lt. Col. Michael Cureton, an assistant police chief, improperly offered police services in exchange for free tickets to a Jamie Foxx concert in summer 2009 finally concluded in March that Cureton violated police rules about accepting gifts. A department spokeswoman said then that Police Chief Thomas Streicher Jr. would review the report and decide what, if any, discipline was warranted. Some 146 days later and counting, he still hasn't decided what to do about Cureton.

Most people are familiar with the old proverb "If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, then it must be a duck." By that standard, if a job hiring in Green Township looks like a textbook example of political patronage, is it? Depends on who you ask.

You know when the two men many conservatives have most admired on economic issues during the past 30 years say extending the Bush tax cuts would be harmful, it truly must be a dreadful idea. But that's exactly what former Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan and former director of the Office of Management and Budget David Stockman believe.

It's time for Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters to use his considerable influence and put the squeeze on Bengals owner Mike Brown. Hamilton County officials are desperately seeking to renegotiate the lease for Paul Brown Stadium because the county's stadium account is facing a $13.8 million deficit this year. The deficit will jump to $25 million in a few years and could cumulatively total more than $700 million by 2032, when the Bengals' lease expires. Unless the Bengals agree to some concessions, county commissioners will have to cut some services to residents, lay off some county workers or probably both to cover the shortfall.

Less than 18 months into its existence, the Tea Party movement is in the throes of an identity crisis. It began when the NAACP announced it would consider a resolution at its annual meeting that asked the Tea Party to condemn and expel its racist elements, calling them "a threat to democracy." That was enough to get the temperatures rising of some Tea Party leaders, who certainly are all too willing to dish out criticism but never seem able to take it. But what happened next really lit their fuse.

Almost as soon as the health care reform bill finally was passed in March, the Ohio Liberty Council — an organization comprised of various Tea Party-related groups — promised it would exploit the public outrage and mount a petition effort to have the federal law barred from taking effect in Ohio. Just days before the June 30 deadline to turn in their petition signatures, the group called off its effort with less than half the signatures required.

If you listen to the federal government's shady accounting tricks, defense spending only amounts to 20 percent of the budget, just behind the the cost of Social Security, Medicaid and other mandatory entitlement spending. But that doesn't include the national debt, most of which was incurred for military reasons, and related costs. Fifty years ago President Eisenhower told us to be wary of "the military-industrial complex," but it's obvious Americans didn't heed the warning.

Cincinnati's Gay Pride Festival this year is causing quite a commotion. An event designed to celebrate the rich diversity in human sexual expression, Pride always has pressed some people's buttons — usually those close-minded straight folks who would prefer that anyone not like themselves be neither seen nor heard. This year, however, the discord is brewing among the local LGBTQ community itself.