When did he know it?
When did he know it? There's no question that some of the wilder criticism of Governor Snyder has gone too far. There's absolutely no evidence the governor, or anybody else, deliberately set out to...
View ArticleOil drilling in Southfield
A week ago I mentioned that Jordan Development, a major oil and gas exploration company based in Traverse City, wanted to drill a well on a church property in Southfield. Southfield is a well-settled,...
View ArticleIn order to move on, we need to know exactly what happened with Flint
It hasn't been very easy to defend Governor Rick Snyder lately, but I think he did absolutely the right thing in refusing to testify before a committee of congressional Democrats about the scandal...
View ArticleSnyder unveils a budget that's sure to bring lots of squabbles
There's a famous old saying that man proposes, God disposes. Maybe, but in state politics, governors propose, legislators dispose. The legislature has the power of the purse. Governor Rick Snyder...
View ArticleLawmakers must decide to keep Michigan healthy
I doubt that anyone who is listens to or reads my commentaries would think of turning to me for dating or relationship advice, but I am going to give you some anyway. If you are single, and want to...
View ArticleReplacing Scalia
When I learned Saturday night that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had died, I talked to a number of legal experts who weren't necessarily in tune with his thinking. Robert Sedler, a...
View ArticleDoing the Right Thing
The news these days is full of examples of where our systems have failed, sometimes disastrously, as in Flint. We have had incompetence and corruption at virtually every level. We should be seeing...
View ArticlePreserving Our Past
There are four larger-than-life cement statues on the lawn outside my office at Wayne State University. They are of Cadillac, LaSalle, Marquette and Gabriel Richard, the early French explorers who...
View ArticleBashing the Teachers
Suppose you came from fairly humble circumstances and had struggled to earn a college degree. You decide to become a teacher yourself, because that's the only way poor and disadvantaged children have...
View ArticleImprove college graduation rates with mandatory national service
When it comes to education issues, the crisis facing Detroit's Public Schools is now the elephant filling the room. The question is whether the state House of Representatives' ideological fanaticism...
View ArticleA Boomer's Presidential Lament
Well, it now seems that the race for the Republican nomination, which once had more candidates than a baseball team, is down to three real contenders. The Democrats are down to two, and something...
View ArticleWe love our guns more than our families and our children
According to police, the Uber driver arrested in Kalamazoo admitted to the shooting spree that killed six people and wounded two more on Saturday night. They do not, however, have any idea why he did...
View ArticleDetroit's Fragile Future
Seven years ago, our biggest concern in Michigan was the domestic auto industry. The question was: Could it possibly survive? Three years ago, our worries centered on Detroit, which was about to...
View ArticleNuclear Waste and Port Huron
Michigan has been so preoccupied with our own environmental disaster in Flint that we may have missed the announcement that Canada last week indefinitely delayed a decision about whether to bury...
View ArticleScrambling to hide the Truth
Yesterday was extraordinary because of two things no one could have foreseen a year ago. Michigan Republicans are now fully engaged in a desperate and probably doomed struggle to prevent their party...
View ArticleGovernor Snyder should resign
Normally I have little or no patience with those who demand elected leaders resign or be recalled or impeached every time they disagree with them. I also think Governor Rick Snyder has had two great...
View ArticleMass transit at last?
Metropolitan Detroit is famous for many things, but one we haven't heard much about lately is the near-total lack of anything resembling mass transit. I can't think of another major city in the...
View ArticleMichigan's important primary
Presidential nominating contests these days remind me of Japanese sumo wrestling matches. In Sumo, there can be hours of ritual buildup before a so-called athletic match that lasts, on average, ninety...
View ArticleTrump campaign reminiscent of an earlier GOP disaster
If you turn on any of the cable news channels, the odds are you will soon see a studio full of Republican analysts wringing their hands and discussing whether Donald Trump can be stopped. The answer,...
View ArticleIs the Party Over?
As everyone knows, there was an imitation TV wrestling match in Detroit last night otherwise known as the latest Republican presidential debate. If you missed it, I can report that the wrestlers show...
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