Last March, I posted a guest post from Tali Wendrow, the mother of an autistic child who used to live in West Bloomfield. Through the use of a widely-debunked technique called “facilitated communication”, their then-14 year old daughter “typed”, with the help of an aide, that her father had raped her and her mother did nothing to stop him. Former […]

Constituents send a message to the Tea Party loyalist: You’re in Washington to represent all of us. While U.S. Congressman Kerry Bentivolio and Speaker John Boehner hobnobbed with supporters at an undoubtedly pricey fundraiser at the Townsend Hotel in Birmingham on Friday, constituents from across Rep. Bentivolio’s district banded together outside. And they had plenty to say to their Congressman, […]

Nice try, jerks Last month I wrote about how my favorite judge, William Collette, had found Republican redistricting in Oakland County to be unconstitutional: An Ingham County judge on Wednesday struck down a controversial state law that changed the way Oakland County’s commissioner districts are drawn. Judge William Collette said the law was unconstitutional. Plaintiffs hailed the striking down of […]

Take that! And THAT! Ingham County Circuit Judge William Collette is on a roll. Yesterday he delivered two rulings that set Michigan Republicans back on their heels. First, he ruled that an obscene and blatant power grab by Oakland County Republicans is unconstitutional. An Ingham County judge on Wednesday struck down a controversial state law that changed the way Oakland […]

This is shocking to me (though I suppose it shouldn’t be.) Pontiac’s Emergency Manager Louis Schimmel that all but gave away millions of dollars dedicated to the City of Pontiac due to a single decision he made as EM. He was able to do this with no accountability because he is, after all, completely in control of the entire government […]

[UPDATE: I have corrected this post to indicate that the Oakland County Democrats are the ones suing Governor Snyder over the redistricting there, not the Michigan Democratic Party as I initially (and incorrectly) wrote.] Governor Rick Snyder is facing two impending lawsuits. One is from the ACLU over new law prohibiting health insurance benefits for to same-sex partners of public […]

In Michigan, counties are reapportioned into districts by Reapportionment Commissions after each census. The Reapportionment Commissions are, by law, required to be made up of the county prosecutor, county treasurer, county clerk, and the two heads of the two county parties that received the most votes in the last election for secretary of state. In Oakland County, Michigan, this means […]

An effort to put “The Tea Party” on the November ballot in Michigan has failed. Not because it’s a fake group trying to help Democrats at the polls by splitting far-right wing votes (which it is.) No, it’s because the font size of the word “the” was wrong. Totally not kidding. The Michigan Court of Appeals said Monday that a […]