Weekend in review: Top stories, multimedia

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EAST SISTER ISLAND, Ont. - If pigs could fly. ... They might be confused with dark-colored birds called double-crested cormorants. Right or wrong, no Great Lakes bird seems to have moved so quickly from victim to villain in the public's eye. Pushed to the brink of extinction a generation ago, the double-crested cormorant - one of 38 types of cormorants worldwide and six in North America - now wreaks havoc on small, uninhabited islands in western Lake Erie.

Debbie Shoemaker used to enjoy photographing pelicans while visiting Florida. But the West Toledoan's affinity for the large shorebirds changed Thursday afternoon when a pelican flew into her face while she was swimming in the Gulf of Mexico. "The waves were rough, and I was splashing around, acting like a kid," the 50-year-old Mrs. Shoemaker said.

COLUMBUS - The shunning has begun. With one negative vote, the Ohio Democratic Party's state executive committee yesterday retroactively stripped Attorney General Marc Dann of its endorsement for the 2006 election. It echoed the call early in the week from Gov. Ted Strickland and other top Democratic officeholders for the attorney general to resign or face impeachment proceedings in the wake of a sex scandal in the attorney general's office.

As the legal wrangling in the ultra-contentious lawsuit between Michigan football coach Rich Rodriguez and his former employer West Virginia University continued, yesterday the field of play shifted to a Toledo-area hotel. There, the legal team for the Mountaineers questioned Mike Brown, the agent who represents Rodriguez, in a marathon deposition that lasted from 9 a.m. until 7:30 p.m. Brown said last night that he preferred not to comment on the myriad issues covered in the deposition until after his legal counsel had an opportunity to review the transcript from the session.

Even when you were in the dog house with your real mom, there was another

special lady who would never turn you away. She was always there when you

needed her. She always knew the right thing to say. And more often than not, she came with a pretty catchy theme song. She s your favorite TV mom. It s been 60 years since the first mom appeared on television, and it wasn t the hilarious Lucy Ricardo or perfect June Cleaver. The distinction falls to the little-known sitcom Mary Kay and Johnny, whose lead actress gave birth to a son in December, 1948 in real life and in the show, according to TV Moms by Ray Richmond.

WHEN CORN prices surged to $6 a bushel last fall because of higher demand for the fuel additive ethanol, Henry County farmer Dan Durham thought about planting more corn this spring and reaping a bigger payday. He didn t think about it long. You know, $6 corn is nice but the inputs are a lot more too. It s tempting, but it isn t, said Mr. Durham. He will plant about 380 acres of corn this season near Napoleon, the same as last season.

Bump into Jay Crawford on any given day and his response to the question, how are you doing, likely will be the same. Crawford is living the dream. He doesn't wake up in the morning to go to work. He wakes up to talk about sports. There's a big different in Crawford's mind.

Lucas County elections officials urged voters before the March 4 primary election to vote by absentee ballot to lessen waits at the polls on election day, but The Blade has learned that hundreds of those ballots were not counted because of mistakes made by voters and because the elections board sent voters faulty ballot envelopes. The Lucas County Board of Elections rejected 921 ballots because of a mistake in which voters mailed back the ballot with the identification envelope rather than inside the identification envelope. Both ballot and identification envelope went inside a second, larger, prepaid, preaddressed envelope.