[UPDATED]: Accept nothing short of unconditional surrender

(Boy, you have a few client meetings and court appearances, and the whole State goes nuts in your absence...)

Marc Dann wants to now use the promise of his resignation as a bargaining chip.  Speaker Husted and the Democratic leadership told him to pound sand.  Good.  As much as I can't wait until Dann slithers back into the darkness from which he arose, I don't want to see getting our hands dirty helping him hide his dirty laundry.

Most of the media is reporting that Dann's condition was that the IG investigation that passed the General Assembly be scrapped altogether.  Jill at WLST has an interesting catch from the Warren Tribune Chronicle:

State Rep. Bob Hagan, D-Youngstown, said Marc Dann will not resign today despite published reports to the contrary.

Hagan told the Tribune Chronicle this afternoon that he served as emissary between House and Senate leaders to broker a deal for Dannás resignation. However, Hagan said when the House refused to take an emergency clause out of a bill to allow the inspector general to investigate, a deal for Dannás resignation fell through.

The emergency clause allows the inspector general to investigate immediately. Hagan said Dann wanted more time.

How much time?

Rep. Robert Hagan, a Youngstown Democrat, says Dann wanted a bill allowing the state watchdog to investigate his office to take effect in 90 days.

(This is because the General Assembly was passing the bill as an emergency measure which requires a supermajority to pass but allows the bill to become law immediately.  Non-emergency bills, which most bills are, don't become law for ninety days after the Governor signs them.)

Gee, why would Marc Dann want to delay the beginning of an investigation for ninety days?  Is it because he hopes by then the political climate would change? Maybe, if he resigned and an investigation didn't even BEGIN until August, he'd be old news by then. Maybe it's because it's going to take him that long to shred everything?

But more importantly, why would the Attorney General, who over a week ago promised that he had disclosed all his dirty laundry, fear this investigation?

Well, we already know that Dann lied when he said that from today's Dispatch:

Dann spokesman Ted Hart initially said yesterday that he was unaware of an FBI probe. Hart, however, then talked to Dann, who told him that he knew the Ohio Organized Crime Investigations Commission had initiated a gambling investigation.

Dann, who is chairman of the commission, "recused himself from that investigation from the beginning," Hart said.

So Dann knew that someone at the Ohio Organized Crime Investigations Commission would ask the FBI to investigate Dann for his campaign activities with skill game vendors because he had to recuse himself from the Commission he chairs over it.

And yet, Dann made no hint or mention of it in his press conference when he repeatedly claimed he was coming clean and that there wouldn't be anymore painful or embarassing disclosures to be had.

Dann is a liar. 

Sources said Dann told a number of legislators that an investigation by Charles “would cause all sorts of problems” for him and he offered to leave office if the bill is scotched.

The decision to introduce legislation to have the IG investigate Dann was a direct result of last week's Democratic call for Dann to resign or be impeached.  Today, the General Assembly passed that legislation and the House Democratic Caucus introduced the articles of impeachment.

The result? 

Dann was holed up in his office with Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher this afternoon, reportedly negotiating the terms of his resignation. (Dispatch)

With Rep. Hagan, one of the sponsors of the impeachment resolution, serving as a negotiator for Marc Dann, apparently.

Maybe Marc Dann should have asked the Lt. Governor that if he'd fix tonight's Mega Millions drawing tonight, he'd resign.  He probably had as much of chance as getting that than getting the growing number of investigations into him to stop.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer, which was one of the first to jump on the news Dann might be resigning, looks downright idiotic for their editorial today.  The threat of the public glare that comes with impeachment is what drove today's developments and it has come far closer to getting Dann out of office than anything the Plain Dealer has suggested, but I won't hold my breath waiting to see their mea culpa.

I wonder what the pro-Dann Toledo Blade and Youngstown Vindicator think about Dann trying to use a resignation letter as a get-out-free card?

[UPDATE]:  State Rep. Hagan has to have the most laughable quote so far in the entire Dann saga as he tried to spin yesterday's developments and why Dann wanted the emergency clause struck.  From the Plain Dealer:

"All he is trying to do is resign, and they're not accepting his resignation for political reasons," Hagan said. "My conversation with Bill Harris was very clear and very direct. I'll have Marc Dann's resignation within one hour, Bill, if you agree to take that (emergency clause) out of there."

Hagan speculated that Dann and his attorney hoped that a 90-day cooling off period could make a new attorney general's transition easier and perhaps make the inspector general's investigation unnecessary.

Dann is trying to use the promise of his resignation as a political bargaining chip, and its everyone else who is "playing politics" because they won't let him.  And Dann's only thinking about the office don't you know, except that he isn't because what he is really hoping is that he won't be investigated.

The irony of it all is that after grandstanding about Coingate as a means to be elected as Ohio's Attorney General, Dann now faces an investigation by the very man who was the one who actually prosecuted Governor Taft over his golf outings and Tom Noe, something Dann never actually did.