Pro-marijuana caregivers burned away a chunk of credibility this week when they turned a legislative committee discussion on bills forcing them to become a registered business into a snide attack on an opposing lobbyist. more

Lansing mayoral candidates face off over felony firearms policy more

One downside of early voting is many voters decide before all the facts are in. Just as the campaign is heating up, absentee ballots arrive in the mail. In the case of the Lansing mayor’s race, residents are voting even before either of the two scheduled TV debates. more

Maybe I’m wrong, but it doesn’t feel like election season.  more

Thanks to the City Pulse recent report on school dress codes, I was reminded of one of my students. She was maybe 23 in a sea of the 18-and-19-year-olds who usually enrolled for the daytime classes I taught. more

Give credit to Mayor Andy Schor for ordering a top-to-bottom, independent review of the Lansing Police Department’s policies and procedures. more

Don’t look now, but it’s only about 100 days until Christmas, and you know what that means around the state Capitol grounds: the Christmas tree and the displaying of other Holiday symbols. more

An investigative report by City Pulse’s Todd Heywood in last week’s edition revealed some disconcerting information about another investigation, this one conducted in secret by the Lansing Police Department’s Special Operations Section. more

More than a century ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that mandatory vaccination is a permissible exercise of governmental authority in response to a public health crisis. more

The sultry heat of August will soon give way to a different kind of heat as the mercury rises in the Lansing mayor’s race. more

The story of former Shawn Deprez — how alleged harassment pushed her to take an early retirement from the Lansing Fire Department in 2019 — has mayoral candidate Kathie Dunbar’s blood boiling. more

One of Andy Schor’s first official acts as the newly elected mayor of Lansing was creating a Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Board to guide his administration on matters of consequence to the city’s communities of color. more

Republican leaders would love to turn the heads of grassroots activists. more

The light on my landline telephone answering machine was blinking.  more

Who in a potential 10-person Republican gubernatorial field should Democrats be most concerned about? Probably not the person you think. more

About mid-semester, this person showed up in my writing class at Lansing Community College. He was in 20’s, and he sat in the front row, the traditional place for smart students. But I did not know him. “Who are you?” I asked. more

Money stirs the drink in politics. And until we get around to voting next year on a host of state-level contests, the horse race over who is raising what motivates us political types. more

It’s a sad and sobering reflection on the state of our nation that equal rights for all Americans remains an elusive goal. The idea that we are all created equal and possess the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness has yet to translate into lived equality that includes people of every race, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, age, disability and all the other characteristics that define us as humans. more

Michigan’s experiment with plucking random people off the street to run an important government function took, yet, another public relations blow last week. more

The act of naming a thing gives it a firmer reality. The thing becomes knowable in a way that can be easily communicated and repeated. Inevitably, naming also reduces the possibilities of what a thing might be. The word “define” literally means to set limits on something. more