in 1897, the cincinnati inquirer had to use teeny, teeny, teeny, tiny font. possibly 6-point font maybe. to try to get all the news on to the page. the type is so small you practically need a magnifying glass in order to read the cincinnati enquirer. the newspaper at the time covered everything, from a shooting at a local church, to sick kittens feared to be spreading disease. to the type of rope to be used in an upcoming double hanging. the ropes have been completed and delivered over to sheriff plummer. each rope is 23 feet in length. they were made by frank vonderheide, main street cordage dealer, and most of the work was done by mr. vonderheide himself. made of silver finished sewing
here s a fat tuesday helping of scrambled politics. house speaker john boehner expects to retain the speakership in a cake walk. he tells the cincinnati inquirer, he will be re-elected. congressman steve king is disappointed. arizona did not adopt the recently anti-gay. when you re in the private sector and you re an individual entrepreneur with got given rights that our founding fathers declined in the declaration you should be able to make your own decisions on what you do in that private business. the congressman was also torn on whether people choose to be gay. in the end, he said he believes
out certainly in the northeast eastern ohio area. i want to ask you about a story on the front page of cincinnati inquirer here. it is a rule here in ohio that has to do with absentee ballot. if you request it and vote on election day, you ll be told to cast a provisional ballot and those provisional ballots then are not counted until november 17th. understandable why they have this in the law. but the law of unintended consequences on this. how concerned are you that you guys have a big push to get people to vote early in absentee and your vote will be provisional if you re down by a point or two in the raw vote on election night. one thing that s happening in
that yesterday houston did with all early in-person voting across the state on weekends leading up to the election. even that is certainly not fair because histories show that blacks who vote before election day tend to vote in person than absentee. with me, ted strickland, the former governor of ohio, and barry horstman of the great cincinnati inquirer. great to have you on, governor strickland. the republicans have so flagrant here to first of all try to shut down only democratic counties where people are going to vote democrat or for president obama then to win so far in basically saying, yeah, you can vote by paper absentee ballot, but that s a republican way of voting. you re not going to vote the way blacks especially and democrats generally like to vote, which is show up at the opportunities they have to vote before election day. once again, we have something like 90,000 people who voted last time around in 2008, the weekend before the election, now they won t be able to vote.
howard wilkieson, columnist with cincinnati inquirer since 1982. gene bopreaux, professor of politics, xavier university. thank you for being here. ben, let me start with you. what we re hearing and seeing on the ground and in the polls it appears that mitt romney is making a bit of a move. is that what you are seeing? it appears this way. romney did rounds with local media because he gets his message out to a broader audience. the romney effect here he realizes there are two kind of conservatives in ohio. there is overlap. we are talking about social con seventives ark big bloc conservatives a big bloc. and physical conservatives. the knock has been to attack santorum as not being fiscal conservative and it seems to be gain traction. bret: we have been bouncing around the state to tell people about different parts. ohio has different demographics when it comes to voters. ohio is a microcosm of the