KnightSec, an arm of the hacker collective that specifically targets rapists, demanded a public apology be issued to the young woman and warned that it would release personal information of Big Red football players and staff who have defended the accused young men. No apology was issued by the hackers' deadline of Jan. 1. That day, a video was leaked of a teenage boy -- a former Steubenville High baseball team member -- captured cruelly joking about the sexual assault.

"She is so raped," he laughs, continuing an offensive tirade including the lines, "They raped her quicker than Mike Tyson!" and "they raped her more than the Duke lacrosse team!" grossly quipping that the unconscious girl was "deader than Trayvon Martin,"  even as other voices captured in the video interject, saying, "That's not cool, bro ... That's like rape. It is rape. They raped her." Other teens in the video laugh along.

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These victories came in campaigns that had no candidates — no Democrats, Republicans or other party designations. Rather, they were ballot initiatives — policy ideas put to a vote of people themselves. This is an exercise in direct democracy that was first proposed by the historic Populist movement of the 1870s. It's presently available to citizens in 26 states and hundreds of cities — and in this past year, it produced some serious progressive wins.

Unfortunately, corporations and super-wealthy individuals have now glommed onto this democratic innovation with deep-pocket vengeance, using their silos of money and expertise in PR deceit to pass some awful proposals and kill some great ones. Still, though, progressives are making good use of the initiative alternative to build winning coalitions around many big issues that the power structure refuses to address. They achieved several important public policy victories in November, even in red and purple states, showing again that populist issues can open minds, shove aside right-wing orthodoxy and overcome corporate money.

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Last weekend, the website of the locally celebrated Steubenville High School Big Red football team was replaced with a note and a video from the hackers in typical Anonymous style -- a message from a Guy Fawkes mask and a computerized voice. KnightSec warned that it would release personal information including names and Social Security numbers of Big Red players and staff if an apology was not issued to the rape victim. The hackers also released "preliminary" information, which they called "a warning shot," publishing names, addresses, phone numbers, and names of parent of 13 players allegedly involved in the rape.

"The town of Steubenville has been good at keeping this quiet and their star football team protected," the KnightSec statement read.

Last week the New York Times reported on the disturbing assault in the small Ohio town. A 16-year-old girl was, according to prosecutors, gang raped and drag from party to party by a number of star football players while she was too drunk to consent. Via the Times:

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Details made public at the plea hearing also revealed that the arsonist, Randolph Linn, was carrying a pistol when he entered the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo on September 30, only minutes after several worshippers had left, and that he had more guns in his car.

Linn, a 52-year-old truck driver from St. Joe, Ind., expressed no remorse when he admitted trying to burn down the third largest mosque in the United States. Under the terms of a plea agreement, prosecutors and Linn’s defense attorney will recommend a prison term of 20 years when he is sentenced early next year.

Accounts of the federal court hearing were provided to Hatewatch by Mahjabeen Islam, president of the mosque, who was present along with 10 other members of the mosque.

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According to a report by Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman at Politico, the union counteroffensive is setting its sights on fighting conservative state leaders in next year's gubernatorial elections, particularly in the Midwest. Via Politico:

The AFL-CIO has already built up sizable campaign operations in Pennsylvania, Florida, Nevada and Wisconsin – the site of a titanic 2012 gubernatorial recall fight – in addition to Ohio and Michigan, union officials said. The labor giant deployed new staff to those states about a year ago as part of what AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka has called the “permanent infrastructure” of national unions.

... Labor leaders have vowed to make Snyder regret signing the “right to work” law he approved this week. Beyond Michigan, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett have appeared vulnerable in polling.

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Anthony M. Hayne, 35, of Cleveland, the first to plead guilty and the last of the four to be sentenced, received a six-year term Friday after apologizing in U.S. District Court in Cleveland, Ohio, public radio station WKSU reported. A fifth defendant, Joshua S. Stafford, 23, is undergoing a psychiatric examination.

Earlier, U.S. District Court Judge David Dowd sentenced 26-year-old Douglas L. Wright to 11½ years; 20-year-old Brandon L. Baxter to 10 years, and 20-year-old Connor C. Stevens to eight years.

The men had ties to the Occupy Movement but decided it wasn’t proactive enough,  so they secretly formed an anarchist group — calling itself the Revolutionary People’s Party — and took steps to blow up a highway bridge near Cleveland after discussing bombing other targets, including a Ku Klux Klan gathering spot and a Federal Reserve Bank, court documents allege.

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This week, Ohio's Republican Senate president, Tom Niehaus, explicitly took President Obama's win as a referendum on abortion rights, saying he'd told supporters that he would only allow a vote on the bill in the event of a Romney victory. He also said the bill's proponents were incredibly annoying, including to people ostensibly on their side.

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The new Ohio law, among other provisions, “requires state licensing and inspection of breeders who annually sell 60 dogs or at least nine litters; authorizes Ohio’s agriculture director to specify standards of care; and denies licensing to anyone convicted of animal cruelty in the last 20 years.” These reforms are badly needed: a recent puppy mill case involving 241 dogs has resulted in 723 counts of animal cruelty because “dogs and pups [were] living in horrid conditions and many were sick, emaciated and had visible infections and sores.”

Ohio animal activists remain concerned that veterinarians who conduct the newly legislated inspections could be in the pockets of the the "puppy mill" industry, but, as Think Progress noted, the new bill is seen as a step in the right direction in a state with an abysmal animal rights track record.

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A judge sentenced 53-year-old Susan Warren of Elyria (eh-LEER'-ee-uh) on Monday in Cleveland on her guilty plea to attempted burglary. She also must do 20 hours of community service.

The woman told authorities she was driving by the Westlake house and "wanted something to do." She broke in, washed some coffee cups, took out the trash, vacuumed and dusted inside the house. Then she left a bill written on a napkin and included her phone number.

Warren says she owns a cleaning business and sometimes enters homes, cleans them and leaves a bill.

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A release claiming to be from hacker collective Anonymous alleges there was more behind Rove's freak-out than first met the eye. The group says that it foiled Rove's attempt to steal the election in Florida, Virginia and Ohio by using the GOP's ORCA system.

Two weeks prior to Election Night, a typical Anonymous video was released warning Rove against rigging the election. "We want you to know that we are watching you, waiting for you to make this mistake of thinking you can rig this election to your favor," Anonymous' ubiquitous Guy Fawkes character warned.

Then, following Obama's win and Rove's very public outburst, a group calling themselves "The Protectors," believed to be comprised of Anonymous hackers, sent a letter to election transparency non-profit, Velvet Revolution, claiming to have thwarted attempts by GOP strategists to flip votes and rig the election in three swing states.

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Watch:

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Perhaps the biggest recipient of that schadenfreude is Karl Rove. Rove has had a rough week, to put it mildly. After his infamous meltdown on Fox News Tuesday night – at one point in the evening Fox anchor Megyn Kelly asked him if his calculations were “math you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better” – things have just continued to go downhill. Here’s how.

1. Researchers find that Rove’s super PAC was one of the election’s biggest losers.

Researchers at the watchdog group the Sunlight Foundation found that Rove’s American Crossroads super PAC came in second to last, ahead of only the NRA, in terms of how much “bang for their buck” they got in this election. TheAmerican Prospect explains:

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In a court affidavit filed Thursday, Ohio State medical center anesthesiologist Sergio Bergese said that, owing to Post's obesity, it would be very unlikely that an IV could be placed in his veins to deliver the lethal dose without causing extreme pain.

“Given his unique physical and medical condition, there is a substantial risk that any attempt to execute him will result in serious physical and psychological pain to him, as well as an execution involving a torturous and lingering death,” the filing said.

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It began at around 11:18 p.m., when Fox News called the election and posted its gaudy graphic: “Barack Obama Re-elected President.” Brit Hume, Megyn Kelly and a host of pundits offered up brief postmortems. Even the house organ of the Republican Party had conceded.

But then, abruptly, at 11:25, the narrative changed dramatically. “I have great respect for our decision desk,” said Fox’s Chris Wallace, “and I can see that they’re very happy [at Obama headquarters] in Chicago, but I have to tell you that the Romney camp has real doubts by the call that has been made by us and by other networks.”

Enter Karl Rove — Machiavellian GOP party boss, master numbers cruncher, and Fox News analyst — to challenge the verdict that everyone had anxiously awaited. Wallace got right to the point and asked Rove if he thought Ohio was locked up for Obama.

“No, I don’t,” Rove said.

“We’ve got a quarter of the vote,” he explained. “Now remember, here is the thing about Ohio. A third of the vote or more is cast early and is won overwhelmingly by the Democrats.”

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According to poll workers, there were lines in the early morning — before the polls opened at 6:30 a.m. But by noon the business of voting was proceeding smoothly and steadily in this residential neighborhood in northeast Columbus. There were no signs of the long lines reported at Ohio State University and in other areas of the capital.

These are well-established and immaculately maintained streets, with a population that is mostly African-American. That was expected to tilt the vote toward the president, something residents are not at all shy about.

“Barack Obama is my voice that is not being heard,” said Micah Hollins, an 18-year-old student, who was voting at Eastgate Elementary School. “I think he is the voice for a lot of people."

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I called up Ned Foley, professor at The Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law and director of Election Law @ Moritz, a bipartisan center on electoral procedure, to guide me through the wilderness.

Foley, it should be noted, thinks that the possibility we won’t know the winner of the presidential race by late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning is “quite unlikely,” despite the fact that the chattering classes have been talking about Ohio as this year’s potential Florida.

That being said, semper paratus (always ready).

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Mandel's wife's cousins took out an ad in the Cleveland Jewish News to publish their open letter blasting Mandel for his anti-gays views. Nine of his relatives signed onto the missive, most of them from the Ratner family, a prominent Jewish family in Cleveland into which Mandel married. "Your discriminatory stance violates these core values of our family," they wrote.

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The story included a copy of the contract [PDF] between Republican Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted's office and ES&S, the nation's largest e-voting system manufacturer, for a new, last-minute piece of software created to the custom specifications of the secretary of state. The contract itself describes the software as "High-level enhancements to ES&S' election reporting software that extend beyond the current features and functionality of the software to facilitate a custom-developed State Election Results Reporting File."

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