I read in The Plain Dealer that the City of Cleveland will waste $5 million to build a pedestrian bridge at the opening of North Coast Harbor and I ask, why a bridge hardly anyone will use?

This is to span a little bit of water behind the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, from the tip of a pier on the west to Voinovich Park on the east. Not many people go back there, a few in the summer, none in the fall, winter and spring.

There are a few concerns about the height of the bridge because it will open in the middle and rise 135 feet high to allow boats to pass through. Among the concerns is that it will reach into the glide path of Burke Lakefront Airport.

I'm guessing that it also will be a gathering spot for gulls, whether the bridge is open or closed. Be careful walking across that bridge. You might slip and fall off due to the gull droppings.

The reason we don’t know why the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority dumped its chief executive Adam Wasserman is because the real leader of the board – John Carney – believes it’s none of your business.

The Port Authority is one of those governmental bodies set up to avoid public input. It has an unelected board. The public, in fact, knows little if anything about its members. Probably cares less.

One aspect of the board has remained rather fixed over the years – the name Carney.

The political head of this powerful family, the late James M. Carney, twice unsuccessful candidate for mayor (once dropped out, once defeated), was chairman during the Port’s early years.

Presently, his nephew John Carney, son of the late judge John Carney, has been on the board for some years. He was chairman. To avoid the limelight or the spotlight, Carney resigned as board chairman. However, it seems he’s still in control. He is civically connected. Many boards. His wife, Tana, is a Cleveland Foundation board member. She was a judicial appointee, meaning political connections and power.

The 2010 U.S. Junior Figure Skating Championships will take place Dec. 14-19, 2010, at the Hoover Arena, operated by IceLand USA, in Strongsville, Ohio. Approximately 300 figure skaters from across the country are expected to compete at the four-day event, which is being hosted for the second time since 2007 by The Greater Cleveland Council of Figure Skating Clubs.

Qualifying rounds begin Wednesday, Dec. 16 in the West Rink. The intermediate compulsory dance competition will kick off the championship events Thursday, Dec. 17 in the West Rink. Competition concludes Saturday, Dec. 19 with the intermediate ladies and juvenile boys free skates in the West and East Rinks, respectively.

Advance event tickets may be purchased by completing the order form on the event web site, www.clevelandskating.com/jrnationals, and submitting it via fax at 440.777.1706 or e-mail at info@clevelandskating.org. Tickets may also be purchased at the arena box office during the event. Individual event tickets begin at $15. All-event passes are $50 (Wednesday-Saturday) and $35 (Thursday-Saturday). Discounted tickets are available for senior citizens and children ages 6-12. All seats are general admission.

On Monday, Cleveland police confirmed that the Cuyahoga County Coroner had identified the eighth victim in the Imperial Avenue murders. The family of 49-year-old Janice Webb was notified by police that she was amongst the 11 slain womens found at the home of Anthony Sowell.

Webb's family said that she disappeared in June.

Other victims that have so far been identified include: Amelda Hunter, 47; Crystal Dozier, 38; Michelle Mason, 45; Tishana Culver, 31; Nancy Cobbs, 43; Telacia Fortson, 31; Tonia Carmichael, 52. All were from Cleveland with the exception of Fortson who was from East Cleveland and Carmichael who was from Warrensville Heights.

On Monday, Sowell was indicted by a grand jury in connection with the assault and rape of a 36-year-old woman in September. The investigation of this attack led to the discovery of the eleven bodies at Sowell's home.

Ran into an old friend this morning at University Hospital where we older people are likely to meet. Boy was she angry. At Dennis Kucinich, a favorite of hers.

Kucinich, as you may have noted, vote NO on the health care bill the other night. He gave good reasons. It squeaked in by a couple of votes. So his NO vote was a typical Kucinich vote.

But this fan said she had given him her last dime. And I’m sure she’s given him a lot more than that.

I don’t know if Kucinich would have voted NO if his was a deciding vote. Maybe not.

But his NO vote isn’t a surprise to me. Kucinich is playing to the crowd. His crowd. And he’s a hero with his crowd.

They respond. They love the little fighter. Kucinich drew immediate attention on the local Cleveland Leader web site. Today there are nearly 7,500 hits on the posting about his vote. Most I’ve ever seen. I assume that many people around the nation have Dennis Kucinich on a Google alert. Every time his name appears they get a Google alert. They click and read about their hero.

It attests to his national drawing power as a political celebrity.

After a few days of relative inactivity at Anthony Sowell's Imperial Avenue house, police homicide detectives and cadaver dogs are back on the scene. Two cadaver dogs went into an abandoned school building on East 125th and Abell Street about a block and a half from Imperial Ave. at around 12:30pm Monday. Neighbors say that the school building has been abandoned for about twenty years.

So far, a total of eleven victims have been found in Sowell's home and backyard, but police had also searched the areas around his home for more potential victims and evidence.

The Cuyahoga County Coroner says that eight victims were strangled, and seven of them still had something around their neck. One victim was manually strangled, and the other two were killed by homicidal violence. The cause of death of the last victim is undetermined.

FBI profilers were also in town over the weekend, meeting with police about Sowell. Currently, they are putting together a timeline of all of the places he lived. The FBI has offered to assist the Cleveland Police in following up on any leads on unsolved crimes outside of the Cleveland area.

After 11 bodies were found at the home of Anthony Sowell on Imperial Ave. in Cleveland, Sowell's face was plastered over the country's television news broadcasts and newspapers. It has thus far been determined that all of his victims were black women, and most were caught up in drugs and prostitution. Some were not even reported missing by their families because of the lifestyles they led. And as police in Cleveland uncovering the bodies, detectives from other cities began to wonder if Sowell might be responsible for some of their unsolved murders. Police in East Cleveland, OH; Coronado, California, and North Carolina are now investigating Sowell's possible links to crimes in those areas.

In East Cleveland, police are looking to see whether he could have been involved in the "Strawberry Murders" of the late 1980's. Sowell is suspected because he lived in East Cleveland at the time, and once he was incarcerated in 1990 on rape charges, the murders stopped.

A woman from Coronado, California, upon seeing Sowell's face on TV, called up the Coronado Police and identified him as the man who had brutally raped her in the late 1970's. A former member of the US Marines, Sowell was stationed in the area on and off during his 8-year-military career.

I heard a lot of jokes about the Browns' bye week. My favorite was John Telich's line: "The Browns were 20-point underdogs to bye week."

It was genuinely pleasant not having to worry about them. As painful as it is, in our racket we must watch because we might have to talk about them.

The Browns are sadder than a country song and after reading Randy Lerner's exclusive email interview with Tony Grossi in The Plain Dealer last week I have not one iota of hope. Randy is a very nice person, very likeable, but the poor fellow is clueless about football and he admits it.

In 11 years now the Browns have not had a general manager who had a track record. The only actual general manager was Phil Savage. It was his first crack at the position and he failed.

That's why the name Ernie Accorsi generated excitement. The same with Mike Holmgren. Too bad the Dolan brothers didn't get the Browns. They went up to $500 million but Al Lerner's pockets were bottomless with all the money he made on credit card interest rates. The Dolans' football man was Don Shula. The old Miami Dolphins coach was past his prime, but at least he had a prime.

WKYC reported on it's 6 O'Clock news that ultra popular brewer Great Lakes Brewing Company had an electrical fire this afternoon. Eye witness reports on Twitter reported the news two hours ago when Alex Null wrote:

Great Lakes is on Fire ... Might be the saddest day of my life

He added another tweet that read:

I kid you not there are 8 fire trucks at Great Lakes ...

Halls Twitter account, which goes by the screen name nullster, also snapped the photographs on this story to verify his eye-witness reporting.

There were no injuries reported at the scene. Interestingly, Cleveland labor newspaper The Cleveland Citizen has had Greats Lake Brewing Company on their boycott list for using non-union staff such as electricians and carpenters at the bar/brewery located in Ohio City.

Could the pathetic condition of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party give us a Republican for the first County executive? Is the Pee Dee already pushing a Republican, the out-of-county son of Cleveland Indians’ owner Larry Dolan for the top spot?

Ohio Rep. Matthew Dolan, it has been reported, who will have move into Cuyahoga County from Geauga County to run would enjoy at least a $1 million campaign fund to bring new leadership to us corrupt Cuyahoga County people. Read the News Herald story on Dolan’s power grab: http://news herald.com/articles/2009/11/07/news/nh1664674.txt

He sounds just the right ticket for Cleveland’s corporate elite who will not leave the city even more to its decay – except for downtown, of course.

The Pee Dee, playing out its role in trying to Republicanize Democratic Cuyahoga County, ran photos of 10 Democratic present and former officeholders plus a labor leader, asking in a headline: “What do these Democrats HAVE IN COMMON?” Easy question to answer: They’re not Republicans.