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.
Sen. Carl Levin has joined former Governor John Engler in endorsing the idea of holding the detainees currently being held at Guantanamo Bay in Michigan in order to bring federal dollars into the state. CQ Politics reports:
Most lawmakers view the prospect of moving prisoners from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to their districts as a negative proposition. But at least one Democratic senator is open to the idea as a potential economic boost to his struggling state.
Carl Levin , chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said that construction and staffing at a new maximum-security prison in Michigan could help his cash-starved state.
“If the governor and the local officials are open to it, that’s something that should be considered,” said Levin, making the point that each state should make its own determination.
And I cannot allow the incredible statement at the bottom of this article by John McCain to go unnoticed:
Even Levin’s Republican counterpart on the committee, John McCain of Arizona, said he was open to the possibility of moving Guantánamo detainees to secure facilities in the United States, saying, “It depends on the circumstances.”
But McCain said the issue has been muddied by the public perception that the administration would release dangerous prisoners to walk the streets in U.S. neighborhoods. “Whether that’s accurate or inaccurate, that’s the impression that the American people have,” McCain said.
Since I hate to see Sen. McCain have to wonder how the American people could ever have gotten the crazy idea that the Obama administration was going to release terrorists on to the streets of Michigan, let me suggest an answer: Maybe it’s because his Republican colleagues have been putting out TV commercials claiming exactly that.
Maybe it comes from legislators like Rep. Pete Hoekstra, who told a press conference that Obama was going to take the terrorists out of Gitmo and “plunk them down in the middle of Michigan, in the middle of Kansas, in the middle of Virginia or in the middle of New York.”
Perhaps if the Republicans hadn’t spent the last few weeks trying to convince Americans that Obama was going to release Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohamed from Gitmo so they could start umpiring their local little league games on the weekends, they wouldn’t have that misconception. It’s just a thought.
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