The Professor, still missing, rises again to bait Dimora

Longtime readers know my favorite local political blogger was the anonymous Professor, author of Political Science 216, who gleefully mocked and caricatured local elected officials from 2007 to 2009. He disappeared last summer, soon after Seven Hills Mayor Dave Bentkowski's lawyer declared he had "a plan" to unmask him for a libel suit. The Professor pulled the plug on his blog and deleted his alter ago, Peter Boyd, from Facebook.

But he left behind a Facebook group. "Recall Dimora," he called it originally. But when he learned that Dimora can't be recalled, he renamed it, "Resign, Dimora, You No Good, Corrupt Pig!"

Well, a year later, Jimmy Dimora has finally learned about the group. NewsChannel 5's Duane Pohlman and WKYC TV 3's Tom Beres both asked him about it in interviews on Thursday. "It's appalling, it's disgusting, uncalled for, unwarranted," Dimora told Pohlman. "They've already found me guilty."

Dimora's angry that the Cleveland FBI chief's 19-year-old son was a member (he quickly deleted himself this week) and that Bob Bennett and Rob Frost, the Ohio and Cuyahoga County Republican chairmen, are still on it. Frost tells the Plain Dealer's Tipoff he won't quit the page.

Somewhere on Cleveland's West Side, an attorney and anonymous former blogger -- that's all I know about the Professor's true identity -- is secretly laughing. I'd love to hear what he thinks about this!

For the record, Dimora also said the allegation that he saw a prostitute in Las Vegas is "totally ridiculous." Yes, he saw a woman in his hotel room, he told Pohlman, but she did "exactly what I asked for! The massage! And that’s on phone tape! I didn’t ask for a hooker on the phone. I didn’t ask for a prostitute on the phone." There was "no sex," he added. Prosecutors charged contractor Ferris Kleem with paying the woman $1,000 as part of a conspiracy to bribe Dimora. "I know I paid her!" Dimora said. "It wasn’t nowhere near no thousand dollars!"

Here's Pohlman's story below. Or, to see Beres's piece, click here.