I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
With the retirement of Justice Souter, the talk of Gov. Jennifer Granholm as a possible nominee continues to heat up. Andrew Cohen, a CBS News legal analyst, goes so far as to call the job “hers to lose.” I don’t buy it.
I do think Granholm will end up on the federal bench at some point. And I do think it would make sense politically for this to happen sooner rather than later, in order to push Lt. Gov. John Cherry into the forefront to set him up for the 2010 gubernatorial race. But I would be very surprised if President Obama were to push Granholm all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court without any previous judicial experience.
If Granholm ends up on the Supreme Court, I think that only happens in a 2nd Obama term after giving her a few years on the federal bench to get some seasoning. She has all the credentials, of course, but it’s been a long time since anyone was nominated for the Supreme Court without already being a federal judge (the last, I believe, was Sandra Day O’Connor, but she was a state judge).
Yes, I know there are others on the presumed short list who don’t have prior judicial experience too, most obviously current Solicitor General Elena Kagan. But Kagan didn’t just graduate from Harvard Law School, as Granholm did, she was the dean of that law school. And she is universally credited with turning the school around and reestablishing it as one of the top law schools in the nation. Kagan is a rock star in the legal world; Granholm is not.
Cohen also says of Cass Sunstein, a close friend of Obama who will certainly be active in advising the president on any Supreme Court nomination, “Would be odds-on-favorite if president were not predisposed to selecting a woman or minority nominee for more balance on the Court. Check back on him for next appointment or one after that.” I hope he’s wrong about that. As much fun as it might be to see Sunstein and Scalia battle over who is the real judicial minimalist, after reading his atrocious book Radicals in Robes I think Sunstein would be a train wreck as a justice.
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