As many of you may know, my friend and fellow AmericanStreet blogger Jeff Coryell has had his photographic work stolen and used in a lying attack ad by Republican Rep. Earl Martin (Ohio House 57th). Now, that is pretty bad especially when you consider that Jeffs Blog Ohio2006 clearly has a Creative Commons License displayed. The Creative Commons License states that Jeffs work can only be used under certain circumstances one being that the user must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor and two - that the work may not be altered, transformed, or built upon. There are other conditions as well but, these two were most certainly violated by Earl Martin. Originally, I thought well perhaps Martin was lazy and incompetent and “overlooked” the clearly displayed “This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License” statement and graphic. Ya know, accidents can happen. But, this is not just a case of your average incompentent Republican, this is much more, this is an example of what is wrong with the entire Republican party. Let me explain -

As the Ohio Blogosphere was trying to help protect Jeffs rights by asking Rep. Martin to abide by the Creative Commons License, Mr. Martin and the Ohio Republican Party responded: First, they gave Jeff the bureaucratic run around. You are familiar with this technique, they put you on hold for hours and then when you get through - say, that they can’t help you and transfer you to another dept where you wait on hold and so on and so on in circles until you give up. So. that was a jerk move - All they had to do was be friendly to Jeff, He is an easy guy to get along with and I am sure they could have worked out something. But that isn’t the worst of it, the next thing they did kinda shocked me.

When an Elyria Chronicle reporter picked up the story, the Ohio Republicans finally gave a response and what was it - they don’t care if they broke the law or not:

Scott] Borgemenke [chief of staff for Speaker of the House Jon Husted] said the issue is being examined, but will not [sic] the ad will not be changed whatever is found.

We will not change the ad, he said. He can take us to court if he wants to.

I was amazed. Sometimes, you believe this is what they are thinking, but for them to come right out and say it. Amazing. There have been numerous examples of this with the current crop of Republicans. The strategy - that you can say and do anything, right or wrong, even illegal as long as you win the election - is prevelant with these Karl Rove Republicans. Why not? It has worked for them, but now we need to stop them. We can see through them, we know they are corrupt , we know they think they are above the law - So, it is up to us to make some noise, expose them to everyone.

If you have a blog or an email list please write about what the Republicans are doing here.

Also, Please contact your local press and let them know that you think this is an important story. A story that illustrates the corrupt Republican mindset, a story of the little guy taking on the Republican Party, and a story that demonstrates that “all politics are local”.