Dann should still resign, but the GOP (and the media) is starting to overreach

I'm not changing my mind on anything, but I will call out the media or the GOP when I think they're overreaching on the Marc Dann scandal.

First, there's the notion from State Representative and conservative glorymonger Kevin Bacon (R-"Footloose") who is claiming that a special prosecutor should be appointed to examine whether Dann committed perjury.  From the Columbus Dispatch:

A Republican state lawmaker yesterday called for a special prosecutor to investigate allegations in the scandal rocking Democratic Attorney General Marc Dann's office, including the suggestion that Dann might have committed perjury.

State Rep. Kevin Bacon of Minerva Park said he doesn't know whether laws were broken, but he said there is good reason to appoint a special prosecutor to find out.

Bacon's basis to assert that Dann may have committed perjury is because he initially responded in his first interview that he didn't know whether Utovich ever stayed overnight in the condo, but then revised his answer in his requested second interview to admit that she had. 

That is not perjury.  Everyone who was interviewed was told that they had the right to review the transcript of their testimony and request the opportunity to correct their testimony if they thought their answers were incomplete or incorrect.  It's standard legal practice to allow a witness to review and revise their earlier testimony without fear of being charged with perjury.  If every time a witness revised their earlier testimony was made into a perjury case, then witnesses simply won't ever revise incorrect testimony and make taking their testimony less reliable evidence. 

Just because it's funny, the Dispatch wants you to make sure you know that Bacon is a former prosecutor to boost his credibility:

"As a former assistant prosecutor and member of the House Judiciary Committee, I am very disturbed by some of the items that came out of the report," said Bacon, a lawyer and former Lancaster assistant prosecutor.

Bacon knows that the practice by Dann of revising his testimony isn't perjury.  If he really thought it was, he wouldn't ask for another investigation-- he'd introduce articles of impeachment instead.  The Dispatch doesn't even consider the prospect that Bacon is creating a question of law simply to justify calling for yet another investigation to keep this in the news to the benefit of his party for the fall elections.  A question that is really rhetorical, as any lawyer can tell you that witnesses are not prosecuted for perjury for doing what Dann did in clarifying his earlier answer.

Then you have the Plain Dealer's report about how Mark Weaver is practically drooling over how Marc Dann is helping the Republicans keep the General Assembly:

Weaver should know; he has experienced the collateral damage of political scandal. One of his clients, former state auditor and attorney general Betty Montgomery, lost to Dann in 2006, after he effectively linked her to a Republican investment scandal involving fund-raiser and coin dealer Tom Noe.

Though Montgomery had no direct involvement in the investment debacle, the taint of the scandal, which ensnared former Republican Gov. Bob Taft, helped sink nearly all of the party's statewide candidates in 2006.

Look, I'll throw Naugle a bone and say that if any Republicans have a claim of being a victim of collateral damage to Coingate, it'd be Ken Blackwell, Rich Cordray's opponent and Mike DeWine.  Betty Montgomery lost exactly because she had no involvement in Coingate.  As State Auditor, she turned a blind eye to questionable investments in favor of partisan loyalty.  It's absolutely absurd for the Plain Dealer to allow Weaver  to engage in this kind of revisionist history and say Montgomery lost because she was not directly involved in the scandal, when her inaction was very much part of the reason she was involved.

This is exactly what I wrote about yesterday.  Now that the media has put its influence on the line in calling for Dann's removal from office (resignation), they will write story after story about this to advance that agenda and get sloppy in their reporting.  They won't question Kevin Bacon's motives despite his history of partisan grandstanding.  They won't question anyone objective as to whether Dann's actions ordinarily would constitute as perjury.  They'll let Mark Weaver, who made a name of himself off of candidates who were voted out for their failure to police their own, now claim that his past clients were innocent victims of things beyond their control.  Marc Dann isn't an accident Attorney General because people were voting against the GOP.  He was elected because people were voting against Betty Montgomery specifically.

Because the media is now blinded by their desire to see Marc Dann gone, our party cannot afford their sloppy reporting where they allow themselves to be so easily played by the Republicans in their mutual quest.  Dann must go.