An Avondale bar owner's appeal for the Ohio Liquor Control Commission to give her a "second chance" and renew her liquor license falls as flat as week-old beer.

Uncle Milt's has had almost as many "second chances" as Iraq. The bar, at Burnet and Erkenbrecher avenues, once a friendly neighborhood tavern, became a magnet for nightly brawls, drug deals and prostitution. Although the liquor control division refused to renew the license last year after police raids on the place, Uncle Milt's has remained open pending appeal. The commission should deny a new liquor license.

Avondale neighborhood leader Tom Jones said it best when he wrote last April: "The owners are decent people, but they have simply lost control of their business."

Deanna Morgan, who inherited the bar from her father, Milton Howard, kept promising a family-friendly place with food service, but didn't produce it. Tuesday, she told the liquor control commission in Columbus she had hired all new managers. No wonder, given several members of her previous crew were arrested for drug dealing. Police busted bartenders and other workers for dealing crack cocaine and marijuana. Cincinnati Police Officer Jeff Smallwood testified, "Uncle Milt's clientele is basically a who's who in Avondale crime."

Employees at nearby Ronald McDonald House, which lodges out-of-town families with children at Children's Hospital, have repeatedly complained about the fights, drugs deals and hookers. Uncle Milt's new manager Fulton Jefferson Jr. objected that the bar wasn't subjected to drug raids until Ronald McDonald House opened.

Liquor Control Commissioner Wallace Edwards cut through that foggy logic with a blistering question, "So if (drug deals were) going on, and Ronald McDonald didn't say anything, it's OK?"

Cincinnati Councilman Chris Monzel helped push to revoke Uncle Milt's license, and the city has shut down other trouble spots such as Over-the-Rhine's Elder CafÈ in 1999. Havens for drug thugs keep neighborhoods from reviving. The three Ohio liquor control commissioners should back Cincinnati's efforts to rescue embattled neighborhoods.