Earlier this month, Ukrainian “businessmen” Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman were arrested at Dulles International Airport. They were apprehended as they were attempting to leave the country on one-way tickets on a Lufthansa Airlines flight to Frankfurt after having lunch with Rudy Giuliani. The two were indicted on campaign finance crimes: The indictment of the two men, Lev Parnas and […]

If you were looking for a more reprehensible proponent of the worst of Republican ideology than Michigan Attorney General and Republican nominee for governor Bill Schuette, you’d have to work pretty hard. But Bill Schuette, who seems to spend more time off the job than on, apparently used that free time to come up with someone who is a perfect […]

As the inimitable Ari Berman talked about in detail in our podcast a few weeks ago, one of the chief ways of disenfranchising poor people – particularly minorities – is to make it hard for them to vote. And one of the ways they do that is by passing laws that require a photo ID to vote on Election Day. […]

Faced with the prospect of citizens in Michigan having the audacity, the gall, the nerve, the chutzpah to have a voice in how our state is run, Republicans decided it was high time to make it harder to amend the constitution or to put citizen initiatives on the ballot in our fine state. Today the House passed S.B. 776, a […]

Not an authority on education achievement, apparently A couple of weeks ago, after listening to a WKAR interview with Education Achievement Authority Chancellor John Covington and the lawmaker who sponsored the bill that would expand the EAA statewide, Lisa Lyons, I wondered aloud if perhaps Ms. Lyons had already seen the MEAP scores that were released yesterday. Lyons, the chair […]

As faculty and students at Eastern Michigan University gather at a rally today to urge their Board of Regents to sever their educational institution’s relationship with Governor Snyder’s failed Educational Achievement Authority experiment in Detroit, lawmakers in Lansing are whipping votes to pass legislation that will expand it statewide and codify it into law. Yesterday’s bombshell news that State Superintendent […]

I don’t normally just reprint press releases but this one is so well done and so perfect that I couldn’t really add much to it. Ellen Lipton has been a fierce, fierce warrior in the battle to save Michigan’s public schools. Along with Sen. Hopgood, she was, for far too long, a lone voice calling out the Education Achievement Authority […]

Spin, baby, spin

Yesterday, EAA Chancellor John Covington and Republican Chair of the House Education Committee Rep. Lisa Lyons appeared on the Current State program to discuss the Education Achievement Authority. In clear defensive mode, both of them sought to characterize anyone who opposes the EAA as the only solution to the intractable problems facing the Detroit Public School system as “defending the status quo” and being “outright criminal”.

The audio, excerpts, and commentary after the jump.

I do believe the Democrats were told to go Cheney themselves In the dead of night last night, Michigan House Republicans passed a bill that would allow the state government to dissolve small school districts facing financial crises. The bills, House Bills 4813 (and a companion bill 4815), was originally introduced in a bipartisan fashion by Democrat David Rutledge of […]

May justice be served

The Ingham County Circuit Court has chosen to convene a one-person grand jury to investigate the election fraud misdeeds of Michigan House Speaker Jase Bolger and newly-minted Republican House caucus member Roy Schmidt. This same type of arrangement was used recently to investigate fraudulent behavior by Democrats to run fake tea party candidates and resulted in convictions. The justice that will investigate is Ingham County Circuit Judge Rosemarie Aquilina who was chosen by random draw.

More after the jump.