Say what you will about Rep. Alma Wheeler Smith, but the lady has guts.

She would almost have to, having been born in segregated South Carolina in 1941 and being the daughter of the first (and only) African-American mayor of Ann Arbor. Her parents were community organizers who "didn't believe...

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- Sarah Palin blew in here Wednesday with all the stagecraft (and subtlety) of Lady Gaga, pulling up in a luxury tour bus ensconced with the cover photo from her book, right down to her glossy lips and heavenward gaze.

Camera-waving paparazzi were there to capture...

"We are the champions, my friends," crooned Michigan Senate President Pro-Tem Randy Richardville (R-Monroe) the day after the Nov. 3 election.

Former state Rep. Mike Nofs (R-Battle Creek) had won a landslide victory for an open Senate seat, giving Republicans a firm 22-16 majority. It wasn't unexpected, nor...

Wingnuts of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but election ... after election ... after election.

That's the lesson from the far right's stinging defeat in yet another Republican congressional district this week. Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman harangued GOP Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava into dropping out --...

So here we are in Michigan with a half-baked budget at best, staring at another government shutdown on Halloween.

Why? As with many states stumbling in this economy, there's plenty of political gamesmanship at work and yes, some rank stupidity. But there are bigger questions that have gone...

By now, everyone's heard that President Barack Obama (unsuccessfully) asked New York Gov. David Paterson to step aside because the White House doesn't feel he can win. There's a fear that he'll drag the party down with him in 2010, especially in down-ballot congressional races.

So the question in...

Right now, Republicans are feeling pretty good about themselves.

President Obama's poll numbers have tumbled, health care reform has withered and raucous town hall protests have been even better summer teevee than blood-bathed shark attacks. The Politico is forecasting double-digit Democratic losses in the U.S....

I am a hopeless romantic. Give me a glass of wine, a fireplace and a little Lord Byron, and I'm a happy woman.

I have been known to reread certain works, silently cheering for Catherine and Heathcliff, Gatsby and Daisy, even Henry Miller and Anais Nin to surprise me...

In a breathless, rambling press conference outside Lake Lansing today, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm announced she wouldn't be "taking the quitter's way out" and that's why she was quittin.'

"Only dead fish go with the flow," the gov. said sagely, which observers took as some oblique reference to lutefisk, a...

The Republican comeback starts in Michigan.

Everyone knows it's coming next year. Two of the domestic automakers synonymous with the state have filed bankruptcy on President Obama's watch. Unemployment has hit 14.1 percent. The state budget has sunk at least $1.7 billion in the red despite...

You know the economy's in the gutter when Nevada's looking to tax brothels.

California could legalize pot and tax it and New York might tax soft drinks and candy. These are just some of the more creative ideas states are considering to balance their budgets, according to research by...

Yowza. In just five years, support for both gay marriage and civil unions in Michigan has jumped by more than 20 points apiece. Now 64 percent of voters favor civil unions and 47 percent back gay marriage, according to a new, independent survey by the Chicago-based Glengariff Group.

"Gay...

There is something that has been gnawing away at me for months.

In the minutes after I learned that an anti-abortion activist had blown Dr. George Tiller's brains out in the middle of his Wichita church on Sunday, that thick, sick feeling returned.

It starts with a...

During last year's Michigan presidential primary, John McCain made the mistake of saying that the hundreds of thousands of lost auto jobs weren't coming back. Mitt Romney then blathered something about the triumph of the American spirit and promptly pulled off a 9-point win.

A little more...

Jennifer Granholm is a shoo-in for the U.S. Supreme Court.

After all, if the president appoints her, Lt. Gov. John Cherry ascends to the Michigan governor's mansion and ambles into the 2010 election as an incumbent.

The Mitten State's economy is in freefall and unemployment is threatening...

Years from now, Arlen Specter's seismic switch may well be marked as the undoing of the Democrats.

No, not the Republicans. Their cyclical demise was cemented before the 2006 election by backing the ruinous Iraq War and regarding basic ethics to be as stifling (and optional) as government regulation...

What happens when a Republican strategist tries to figure out why the party keeps hemorrhaging votes?

Well, in Michigan, he loses his job.

That's what happened to Dennis Darnoi, who used to be a consultant to state Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester. But he made the mistake...

Think your state has it bad? Michigan's unemployment rate will likely hit 15 percent this year, thanks to the implosion of the auto industry.

That's the assessment of Dana Johnson, chief economist for Comerica. If either Chrysler or General Motors goes into bankruptcy, the damage would be far worse....

Hailing Joe the Plumber as an authority on tax policy is kind of like appointing the puffy-shirted FreeCreditReport.com guys expertise on the Somali pirate situation.

Of course, that's what the assorted anti-tax and right-wing groups did when they breathlessly begged the man formerly known as Samuel Wurzelbacher to headline their...