An Australian couple in Canberra recently penned an op-ed for the Canberra CityNews saying that, if the Australian government decides to recognize same-sex marriages, they will get a divorce. It’s not because they don’t love each. They do. They were high school sweethearts who have been married for 10 years. It’s not that. It’s that, if same-sex couples can get […]

UPDATE: This post has been updated and the title updated to reflect the new information. As Amy wrote about earlier today, the Michigan senate was considering a package of bills that will allow adoption agencies to discriminate against LGBT couples when placing children. So-called “sincerely-held religious beliefs”, at least for the bigots among us, include consigning some children to a […]

It’s a shocking and depressing fact that there are uneducated people out there who are afraid of vaccinations because they read somewhere or heard from someone that one time that vaccinations cause autism. They don’t. But that didn’t stop Republican Todd Courser from expressing his support for the anti-Vaxer community and to reinforce people’s unfounded and unscientific fears about the […]

I have two items of interest regarding Gov. Snyder’s failed experiment on Detroit students known as the Education Achievement Authority. The first is (not exclusive) news about EAA teacher Tiffani Eaton who was fired from her job for breaking up a fight using a broom handle last year. Once details of the event came out, including video, the public hue […]

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has been doing a LOT of bragging this year about how Michigan is the “Comeback State”. The data, he says, “is in”. However, his presentation of the data is flawed and doesn’t tell the entire story. Yes, the number of people employed in Michigan is up since he took office. However, even though Gov. Snyder claims […]

Doug Kelley is a dear friend of mine and the man who recruited me into a leadership position in the Washtenaw County Democratic Party where I am now the Chair. Doug is not only an activist – a career in itself that has spanned seven decades and includes the formation of the organization that was the predecessor to the Peace […]

It’s not often that Republican speak the truth about their overarching agenda. They more often cloak it in palatable language that makes it more appealing and disguises their heartlessness and their true goals. But every once in awhile one of their members gives us a glimpse of what their real agenda is. Mitt Romney did it when he made his […]

Another day, another scandal for Aramark, the food vendor for prisons in Michigan. With each new scandal, Gov. Rick Snyder’s dogged persistence in continuing to outsource this state government service to a private, for-profit company is called deeper and deeper into question. This time, maggots were found in potatoes in a kitchen at the G. Robert Cotton Correctional Facility near […]

Last month, I wrote about how Republican Dan Benishek, the Congressman from Michigan’s 1st Congressional District, had broken his promise not to run for a fourth term by pandering to military veterans. The true reasons for his decision to renege on his promise weren’t clear but his hypocritical pandering was blatant and nauseating. Evidence has now come to light that […]

Over the past several years, I have written about how corporate front groups, largely funded by corporatists like the Koch brothers and their network of fake grassroots (“astroturf”) groups, manipulate the media to serve their corporate bottom lines. They use this network to amplify their corporate messages, disguised as “reporting” or “news”, jacking up their search engine hits, and ensuring […]

Back in March, I penned an essay critical of Michigan tea party legislator Todd Courser’s complete freak out over a bipartisan move to create a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) endorsement for graduating high school students. If students complete six credits each of math and science, a half credit each of technology and engineering, and meet certain other criteria, […]