michigan

The Senate this afternoon defeated an amendment to an appropriations bill proposed by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) that would have prevented the Pentagon from using funds to adapt or build any new facilities in the United States to house Guantanamo detainees. That would have included anyone charged, tried or convicted in a U.S. federal court. [...]

The push is on to dilute the climate change bills moving through Congress, and it’s not coming only from conservatives. Mother Jones’ Kate Sheppard reports today that 14 Senate Democrats are urging their leadership to amend the proposal to grant more free polluting permits to the coal-burning utilities that emit the most greenhouse gases. In [...]

In June, when the Cash-for-Clunkers program — which provided a government subsidy to people who traded in older low-mileage vehicles to buy new, supposedly better-mileage vehicles — was humming to the tune of $1 billion, we wrote a piece warning that the program was hardly the environmental benefit its Capitol Hill supporters were claiming. Instead, [...]

Check out Rachel Maddow going hard on Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) for publicly revealing that the U.S. intelligence community is intercepting the communications of al-Qaeda-sympathetic cleric Anwar Aulaqi, a former U.S. preacher now in Yemen whom Fort Hood murder suspect Nidal Malik Hasan apparently contacted before the shooting.

Pranksters with too much time on the hands are alleviating their boredom by scavaging around Detroit’s ample supply of abandoned and vacant properties, The Wall Street Journal reports. A staff  videographer even documented a group of perpetrators in the act of pushing a dump truck out a fourth-floor window of an old Packard plant. Click [...]

Over at WalletPop, they’ve looked closer into a big recent auction of foreclosed properties in Detroit, and it’s an even bleaker situation than first reported.
The Wayne County auction of some 9,000 repossessed properties last week resulted in more than 80 percent of them failing to draw a single bid. And that’s even with the minimum [...]

The Michigan Messenger’s Todd Heywood reports:
While the state is coming down from its second temporary shut down in two years, ever increasing unemployment and unresolved budget issues, Michigan House Republicans this week introduced legislation to amend the state constitution to define life as beginning at fertilization.
The resolution to amend the constitution was introduced by Democratic [...]

From The Michigan Messenger:
Rep. Bart Stupak [D-Mich.] has reconsidered earlier legislation that would have given several acres of Coast Guard property in Cheboygan [Mich.] to a Christian school free of charge after constitutional law scholars pointed out that the land transfer would violate the First Amendment separation between church and state.

I ran into Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.), the fourth-ranking member of the House Republican leadership, before this morning’s Big Government press conference — he had intended to speak, but had to run out early. McCotter is one of the relatively few House Republicans who’s come out for GOP candidate Dede Scozzafava in the NY-23 special [...]

The Michigan Messenger’s Todd Heywood reports:
The Standish City Council unanimously approved a resolution targeting President Barack Obama and federal authorities with one message: Send us your prisoners.