DISQUS

Probably more Ever wonder why the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan left after only two years in office during Bush's first term?

Me too, still wondering.

Ever wonder why Alberto Gonzales showed up in Michigan a scant two weeks before he announced his resignation last August, bringing a couple million in grants with him for Native American tribes? 

Still makes me scratch me head a year later; after systematically canning close to a third of the members of the Native American Issues Subcommittee -- including its chair, Margaret Chiara -- he shows up with money for the tribes??

Not that I begrudge the tribes help with law enforcement; the optics are just bad.

We will be cleaning up this mess for a decade to come, maybe more if the Siegelman case is any indication.

Pretty stupid, coming from a former FBI guy Those unnamed Middle Eastern folks to whom Rogers has referred in such a broad fashion have been alternately referred to as partners; Republicans have been very happy to support the sale of key resources to them, like American ports now owned by Dubai, or investments in banks like Citigroup.

It's as if Rogers also forgot US-SA Joint Economic Commission (JECOR), too, and how much U.S. companies like Halliburton profited from decades of involvement in this relationship, and which agencies like the CIA supported.

You'd think a former FBI guy would realize he's not only making hate speech, but pretty ignorant speech, too.

First time I've seen a figure 8 percent increased usage by residential consumers.

Now let's see a number from the energy companies that reflects how many residential customers they've lost over the last ten years, so that we can get a more realistic idea of the need for new coal-fired power plants.

Those plasma televisions are going to become very unpopular in a hurry, too, as electricity prices escalate.

BCP could be life or death for some women For some women, getting and carrying a pregnancy to term can be fatal; the anti-abortion/anti-contraception crowd systematically ignores that many women in the U.S. die during pregnancy and childbirth due to complications.  For some of these women, reliable contraception can be life-or-death.

But getting an erection is not life-or-death, no matter what men tell us.

Or they liked the location a LOT? Conveniently located near two golf courses. Hmm.

Very naive That they put up such an easily gamed poll says a lot about their lack of internet savvy.

It also says a lot about their lack of awareness of the wider community's opinion about offshore and domestic drilling.

If they don't grok this, can we trust their candidates with really complex issues?

Parents need resources and role models It's easy to say that parents need to be more responsible, but if parents don't see good role models when growing up and they  live in urban food deserts, it's difficult for them to ensure their children eat right.

Schools are another source of education on health, including food, but when schools are impoverished, mismanaged or teaching too closely to NCLB, they cannot provide the additional health education support that kids and children need.

As a parent I'll also tell you that we've changed a lot as a culture; the mainstream media has amplified our fears about "stranger danger" to the point where many of us are afraid to let our kids out of our sight.  They can't freely run outside and play like we used to do as kids for fear of violence.

Something has to give; it's not quite as simply as parents being more responsible.  The entire "village" is going to have to re-evaluate how to raise our children so that they are healthy and safe.

That's an article we've discussed Men are very much at risk for HPV-caused cancers, including oral and anal cancer. 

So why are only women subjected to vaccination? Why are women treated as if they are the carriers, when HPV can be carried by men?

You can bet we will be discussing this further.

Wow, I forgot about AutoWorld That was a debacle, wasn't it? 

It is rather sad that some folks don't believe the natural beauty of the northern part of Michigan is enough to capitalize upon -- or that business enterprise ought to scale itself to that feature.  Many folks live in Northern Michigan to get away from urban life and its incumbent crowding, along with the debris field of ill-conceived notions like AutoWorld.

It won't be this DOJ Not under this administration, since the DOJ has been complicit in the systematic violations of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture.

We have to hope that the Hague begins work on prosecution as disclosures are made, to keep the guilty parties from seeking refuge abroad.

We also have to hope that Congress finds its spine and takes its lumps and considers an independent truth commission into torture as well as a return to the independent prosecutors' law.

But again, we could be relying on another potentially complicit organization to do the policing.  Which members of Congress, particularly those among the Gang of Eight were provided details regarding the interrogations of detainees?  Are these same members of Congress potential war criminals, too?  Is this why they struggle with finding their spines?

Being conflicted means you need to sort it out I don't need to; I have family members who suffer from congenital illnesses that will kill them.

If the donors of embryos that are never destined to be implanted -- and might still fail even if they were ever implanted -- decide that these soon-to-be-discarded embryos are to be used to save others lives, I don't personally have a problem.  But then I have this horrible progressive value of saving the lives of humans who are already here with us, not the dreams of babies that will never be.

There are future mothers and fathers and their children that can be saved with stem cell research garnered from these soon-to-be-discarded embryos, too.  Save a frozen embryo for the trash, or save the children and parents of the future?

Hardly a choice for me.

State or Federal law violations? I wonder if there aren't guarantees that ensure students have access to public education?

Bothers me greatly that Detroit's literacy rate has been as low as 40%, yet massive holes like this exist in the education system.

So where do they get the embryos, Frankster? Did you read the fine print of the ballot initiative?

Did it clearly say whether these were embryos that were going to be discarded since their donors didn't want them?  Or did it say aborted embryos?

Is it moral to simply toss out discarded embryos while denying folks facing a lifetime of illness -- or a painful death -- simply because somebody couldn't be bothered with doing their homework on a ballot initiative?

A lot going on that the media ignores Was McCain acting as Bush's bagman?

Did the money that traded hands actually have much to do with the hostages, or were they a convenient tool?  Was the money really for other services rendered?

Note the emphasis on plural: services.

And I won't even mention the sticky business of crashed planes carrying illicit drug cargo for which the U.S., Mexico, Venezuela and Colombia have difficulty agreeing on ownership.

It would be nice if the mainstream media ever sifted through this stuff.

I think that's a follow-up article, Minni Wow, you said a mouthful in that comment!

Partisan nature disturbs me Why is this Task Force only house Republicans -- particularly when they are a minority in the state house?

With the gross amount of profiteering that's happened with DHS and DOD contracts under a Republican administration, I am concerned there is inadequate oversight and balance when there is a gross weighting towards one party on this so-called task force.

Excellent question There's an invisible firewall between the BIG papers and the small papers that never seems to be transcended, too...it's unusual to see stories survive that firewall without being distorted and twisted around by the time it makes the BIG paper (as you well know).

The BIG papers don't seem to notice this, and their product is weak for it, likely hurts their circulation.

Depends a lot on the city Actually, Flint would not be a strong example since its mayor recently made massive cuts in the police force.  They will have too few officers to cover this fairly large urban center.

Foot patrols might work in areas identified as "hot spots".  In Saginaw, for example, there are areas where there have been many concentrated reports of gunfire that might be worth establishing regular foot patrols and perhaps sending a mobile station in the form of a van to help these foot patrols.

But another concept that this state doesn't explore well is the concept of "broken window" policing.  By asking the help of the community to focus on code enforcement and blight reduction -- replacing broken windows, improving overall street appearance -- the amount of crime may actually fall without changing the patrol process.  There are studies on this effect, which could ultimately help reduce gas consumption spent on police response.

Completely irresponsible We saw how cooperative and collaborative the house and senate were last year, when they weren't under the pressure of an election season.  How are we supposed to reasonably expect them to be grown-up and mature when they come back from break and amicably resolve the dispute over school funding?

How do I explain this to my kids, that grown-ups can walk away from their chores like this without a by-your-leave and leave kids like them hanging, because they can't figure out how to get to yes?  What kind of example is this, especially for kids who are already struggling mightily?

Thanks for covering this, Jim, even if it sets my blood pressure boiling.  Confirms for me that we need to clean out the legislature until we get grownups in office.

Thanks for your comment You're right about the revenue, but there's a larger issue with newspapers' inability to migrate from brick-and-mortar operations because they lost sight of the relationship between advertising and eyeballs.

Even on the internet, if a site cannot produce enough readers, an advertiser will not buy space.  Sites like Craigslist and Monster only make it easier to target key demographics -- cable TV can to do the same.

If a newspaper has nothing worth reading, whether it's investigative reporting or want ads, it can't sell ads; this won't change as they migrate to an internet-only delivery system.

As for the perceived opinion on janitors: I came away with a very different impression than you did.  Management for many corporations when severely cutting costs will reduce anything they term "non-core functions" -- which means any services that do not directly create salable content will be cut.  That means coffee service is long gone, housekeeping is long gone, yard work cut back to the point just before local code enforcement will complain, and staff might be lucky not to have to bring in their own tissue and toilet paper.

Been there, done that, would have been grateful to see a janitor instead of having to mop the john floor on my breaks.  And yes, I brought my own mop.

Shhhh...don't give them any ideas! I'm already afraid they're taking notes from Silvio Berlusconi's government in Italy on fingerprinting all Roma children (often referred to as gypsies) in an alleged effort to combat crime.  Talk about profiling...

Thanks for the tip But does Stanhope possess Carlin's love of and respect for words?

That was one of the groovy things about him; he really understood their power, could make us laugh while slipping us the shiv without ever being vulgar simply because he was so much in love with words.

You're funny Surely you must be joking that Michelle McManus would do anything at all to impede rampant corporatism, including the privatization of prisons.

Although I believe what we may be looking at, in my personal opinion, is a model for a future detention center.  Which wouldn't give McManus a moment's trepidation, would it?

Thanks for your readership, always nice to see you here in comments.

Big effing shoes to fill I've lost some heroes over the last three years, the kind of folks who thought outside the box and walked the walk.

Hunter S. Thompson

Kurt Vonnegut


Arthur C. Clarke

And now to add George Carlin is damned painful.

Thanks for this, Ed; I'd forgotten how entwined Carlin was with my earliest adult years.  I cut my teeth on his work.  He set the bar for humor that has rarely ever been met since.

And now it's up to us to dangerous, funny and necessary, or nurture those who will take up that baton.

Advocating a corporate solution? Obviously GM realizes something is wrong with the public transport system -- but rather than seeing itself as a partner with the city, it has adopted a got-ours-screw-you attitude.

What about the employees of businesses that support GM with services; aren't their employees deserving of timely and safe transport? 

In the big picture, GM owns a lion's share of the blame for Detroit's decline; GM didn't reinvest in the city but chose instead to bail out to locations farther from the city's center.  When it returned, it brought a got-ours-screw-you attitude. 

I hate even using this example, but look at Grand Rapids and Amway for comparison; while I detest the ownership mentality and politics of the DeVos-Van Andels, at least they are fully aware that they are key to the city's success and reinvest in the city and its services.  Were GM and other major corporations that call Detroit home to actually work together cooperatively and collaboratively to help the city with the transport problem, we wouldn't have to point to GR; it's not a lack of resources but political will that is at the root of the Detroit public transport problem.