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, Michigan’s longtime Senator who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, told the New York Times that it is unlikely that the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay will be closed by the end of President Obama’s presidential term. And he largely blames the Obama administration for that:
“There is a lot of inertia” against closing the prison, “and the administration is not putting a lot of energy behind their position that I can see,” said Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and supports the Illinois plan. He added that “the odds are that it will still be open” by the next presidential inauguration.
Interestingly, one of his Republican colleagues put more blame on the GOP:
And Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who also supports shutting it, said the effort is “on life support and it’s unlikely to close any time soon.” He attributed the collapse to some fellow Republicans’ “demagoguery” and the administration’s poor planning and decision-making “paralysis.”
I think both are to blame. The problem for the administration is that they’ve made all kinds of very bold statements of principle about the necessity of closing Gitmo, just as they have about the necessity of civilian trials for detainees — another issue on which they have backed off. When you make such unequivocal moral positions and then don’t do what is necessary to meet those standards, you end up looking dishonest, hypocritical or both.
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