Michigan Republican Congressman Tim Walberg is a tea partier’s tea partier. According to his rhetoric and actions in Congress, there are very few things that wouldn’t benefit from “local control”. He wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act and return healthcare programs to local control. He regularly talks about “improving education and job training initiatives through more local control“. When […]

Apparently things are just fine in Michigan because Republicans here have resorted to (a) making something illegal more illegal and (b) to restricting local municipalities from passing local regulations for their community. So much for “local control”. The first bill makes the sale of fetal tissue resulting from abortions more illegal. I say it makes it “more illegal” because it’s […]

Last night during the last presidential debate, Hillary Clinton was asked about a “grand bargain” that includes benefit cuts and raising taxes to save the Medicare trust fund by moderator Chris Wallace from FOX News. In her response, she got a dig in a Donald Trump for his use of a feature of the tax code which allows him to […]

By now you’ve probably read about Donald Trump’s wife Melania and the speech she gave at the National Republican Convention last night. Her plagiarism of Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech was first noticed by journalist Jarrett Hill whose tweet blew up the internet: CORRECTION: Melania stole a whole graph from Michelle's speech. #GOPConvention WATCH: https://t.co/8BCOwXAHSy pic.twitter.com/zudpDznGng — Jarrett Hill (@JarrettHill) July […]

An anonymous Eclectablog reader pointed me to this video from 2010 of Donald Trump talking to Larry King about undocumented Mexican workers working in this country. In a sharp contrast to his more odious 2016 campaign trail rhetoric about Mexicans being murderers and rapists and the need to build a giant wall along the Mexican border that we’ll make Mexico […]

This afternoon, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, with no apparent sense of irony or sarcasm, sent out an email titled “An historic night for Michigan”. He was referring to the previous evening when Republicans passed “bailout” legislation for Detroit Public Schools that has inadequate funding for DPS, harms children by putting unqualified, uncertified teachers in their classrooms (illegal in every other […]

The following guest post was written by my friend Jen Eyer, Vice President of Vanguard Public Affairs. Jen has spent many years in the world of journalism and most recently managed the newsroom for The Ann Arbor News, part of the MLive Media Group. You can read her full bio HERE. This piece was first published at the Vanguard Public […]

“Constitutional conservatives”, yes, even at the state level, believe that their main, driving purpose is to protect the constitution, both at the federal level and the state level. Agree or disagree, it is what they claim to want, fight for, and live for. That is, except when they disagree with said constitutions. Case in point on the state level is […]

The following essay was written by Mitchell Robinson and was originally published on his most-excellent blog at MitchellRobinson.net. Robinson is associate professor and chair of music education, and coordinator of the music student teaching program at Michigan State University. His essay is reposted here with permission. The Great Lakes Education Project is a Michigan advocacy organization dedicated to advancing the […]

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette has been waging an ideological (and legal) war against the LGBT community for years. Schuette has a long history of wasting taxpayer money. His most recent utter failure came when the Supreme Court of the United States made same-sex marriage legal in America. In addition to the money spent by state attorneys working on the […]

MIRS News Service is reporting this week that the Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) and Health and Human Services (DHHS) issued a joint statement clearing Planned Parenthood affiliates in Michigan of any illegal activities related to donations of fetal tissue. The two agencies have been investigating Planned Parenthood after Republican Senator Phil Pavlov called for the investigation in the wake […]