COLUMBUS — Another trial of alleged pill mill operators begins Tuesday, one that will highlight the connections between the roots of the state’s painkiller epidemic in southern Ohio and the 90-mile trip many addicts took north to Columbus when their source for prescriptions dried up.
OAKLAND, Calif. — For weeks the protests had waned, with only a smattering of people taking to Oakland’s streets for occasional marches that bore little resemblance to the headline-grabbing Occupy demonstrations of last fall.
COLUMBUS — Ohio’s Democratic Party chairman wants to know by the end of the week whether the state’s ruling Republicans are willing to compromise on a new congressional district map. The current map, drawn by the GOP and signed into law in September, is on hold after the Ohio Supreme Court ruled on Friday that it is subject to possible repeal by voters. Senate Republicans had appropriated money to local elections boards in the bill in a move they hoped would make it effective immediately and shield it from repeal.
COLUMBUS — Lawmakers pushing to ban capital punishment in Ohio have asked the governor for a moratorium on executions while a committee studies the death penalty.
ATLANTA — The federal government asked an appeals court Friday to stop Alabama officials from enforcing a strict immigration law that has already driven Hispanic students from public schools and migrant workers from towns, warning that it opens the door to discrimination against even legal residents.
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Four of the five largest U.S. tobacco companies sued the federal government Tuesday over new graphic cigarette labels that include the sewn-up corpse of a smoker and a picture of diseased lungs, saying the warnings violate their free speech rights and will cost millions of dollars to print. The companies, led by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., Lorillard Tobacco Co., said the warnings no longer simply convey facts to allow people to make a decision whether to smoke. They instead force them to put government anti-smoking advocacy more prominently on their packs than their own brands, the companies say. They want a judge to stop the labels.
Judges are supposed to be staid, calm and emotionless beings who listen attentively to the evidence and then issue a well-reasoned and balanced opinion. Most of the time, that’s what they strive to do. But judges are people and they are subject to the same emotions and frustrations that we all are. Sometimes those frustrations boil over into their written decisions and they cannot help but issue a judicial “smackdown.”
COLUMBUS — A federal judge in Ohio announced Monday that he was halting the execution of a man who was convicted in the 1984 shootings of his ex-girlfriend and her boyfriend but has said he doesn’t remember the slayings.