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Travel fun in Ohio not limited to summertime months

It might not feel like it just yet, but fall is on its way. With the transition to colorful leaves and (for many of us) more comfortable weather comes yet another opportunity for Ohio to shine — especially for those who didn’t quite work the traveling bug out of their system over the summer. According to TourismOhio, the state offers “gold medal” leaf peeping opportunities, particularly at its 76 FREE state parks and Cuyahoga Valley National Park. “Everyone has their own idea of the perfect fall getaway, and that’s what makes Ohio such a special place to visit,” said ...

Should our federal government regulate artificial intelligence?

American businesses have long practiced what political scientists call regulatory capture. A company that cannot repeal a law takes control of the people the government put in charge of enforcing it. The airlines did it to the Civil Aeronautics Board, which in 40 years never approved a new trunk carrier. The health insurance industry helped shape the Affordable Care Act and came away with a federal mandate requiring Americans to buy its product. What is new is watching it happen in real time in artificial intelligence. Anthropic’s Dario Amodei published an essay last week called ...

Orchids & onions

ORCHID: To Carl Foote of Boardman for embarking on an ambitious and compassionate 700-mile bicycle trek to benefit research to battle the debilitating Alzheimer’s disease. Foote, 74, a veteran benefit bike rider, is in the middle of his excursion across the entire perimeter of Lake Erie in Ohio, Michigan, Canada, New York and Pennsylvania. This isn’t Foote’s first rolling rodeo. In 2024, he biked 2,200 miles across the country on U.S. Route 62 for the same mission. As he put it before launching his Lake Erie project, “Every mile of this ride represents a step forward in the fight ...

Issue 3 may be odd, but it merits support

Given the heated clamor over such hot-button races on the Ohio ballot this fall as the caustic battles for governor and U.S. Senate, one proposition up for a vote among all 7.5 million registered voters in the state may easily get lost in the shuffle. Others might find its very presence downright odd. That measure is state Issue 3, an Ohio constitutional amendment proposed by state lawmakers to require photo identification to vote. And yes, some may legitimately find it odd. It is, after all, the only statewide issue on the ballot. So what happened to state Issues 1 and 2, some head ...

Mother’s milk gone sour

“Money is the mother’s milk of politics,” said Jesse M. Unruh, who in the ‘60s was a powerful Democratic politician and speaker of the California State Assembly. It is a disgrace, if much is disgraceful these days, that we spend so much on getting people elected to Congress, who do little or nothing to solve real problems once they get there. AdImpact, the leading advertising intelligence and market analytics company, estimates more than $3.4 billion will be spent on this year’s midterms across all races. In Texas, alone, an estimated $446 million will be spent by ...

Women keep politics honest

This is a generalization, I know. As Mark Twain is said to have said, “All generalizations are false, including this one.” But there is growing evidence that women tend to be more protective of our American democracy than men. They are more willing to put their foot down when partisan schemers try to game the electoral system, mostly by changing the rules or gerrymandering. A recent sign that women place more value on being a force for good comes out of conservative Utah. Both parties gerrymander, that is, draw voting district boundaries to give unfair advantage to their ...