As reported Friday, it’s now the Ohio Department of Public Safety’s top lawyer fired for intercepting e-mails seen as confidential messages to another agency not under his jurisdiction.
That DPS firing created a smile for some people with current or former Northeast Ohio bases.
Consider:
n The emails, for example, were legally supposed to be going only to Ohio Inspector General Tom Charles, not to the DPS.. Charles is the Columbus-based veteran crime-busting watchdog over many a government agency and politician Democrat or Republican.
He’s also the same Charles who once resided in Geauga County and who once attended Lakeland Community College based in Lake County’s Kirtland.
It was the same Charles who got all those Lake and Geauga people busted in a separate case last year involving the Ohio Department of Transportation regional office. But never mind:
n State Sen. Tim Grendell, R-Chester Township?
Right. He called together the Senate committee which rejected re-appointment of the DPS female director, the fired lawyer’s former boss. The current DPS chief is the one who fired the lawyer.
n Kent Markus, a Democrat and lawyer who is Gov. Ted Strickland’s chief legal counsel?
The same Markus used to live in Lake County’s Kirtland and Cuyahoga’s Lyndhurst.
For the governor, Markus was monitoring everything and everybody in the whole Public Safety case.
The Columbus media quoted Markus as stressing that the fired email snooper acted without the governor’s knowledge or permission.
n In the race between Democrat Strickland and Republican John Kasich, it might be interesting to see how these latest developments affect the contest in the next few days.

--David W. Jones