Jack Lessenberry

Back in early summer I went to see Candice Miller, the former congresswoman who is now Macomb County Public Works Commissioner. She was mainly concerned with dealing with the now-famous sewer collapse that happened in Sterling Heights last Christmas. Miller is far more conservative than I, but I’ve always admired her can-do, no-nonsense and pragmatic approach to government. She had thrown herself completely into her new job, and was discovering new things daily. Among them, she told me, was an

Drive just a few miles south of the Ohio border, and you’ll find yourself on a bridge over the Maumee River, which runs through downtown Toledo on its way to Lake Erie. Right now, the river is an oddly beautiful emerald green, as if it had been dyed to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day six months early. Except it isn’t dye, it’s algae. The Maumee flows into Lake Erie, which has been hit with one of the largest algal blooms on record, one that stretches all the way to Canada, as well as for many miles

My guess is that nobody has ever before compared Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy Magazine and all that went with it, with Kristi Etue , the director of the Michigan State Police. I’ve never met either. I cannot imagine Etue dressed in anything other than her blue uniform, or Hefner, who died yesterday, in anything other than a velvet bathrobe.

Years ago, someone asked if I knew the difference between a legislator and members of a certain disreputable occupation. The answer was that when men gave women in the other group money, it was clear they expected something for it. Lawmakers and lobbyists aren’t always so honest. Bribing or attempting to bribe a lawmaker is illegal. But it is perfectly legal for a lobbyist, say, for an energy group, to spend lavishly on a key lawmaker, buying her or him expensive meals and paying for their

Over the past couple of weeks, people across the country have been looking back at a painful chapter in U.S. history: the Vietnam War. The conflict is the subject of a new 10-part PBS documentary by Lynn Novick and Ann Arbor native Ken Burns. Michigan Radio's Morning Edition host Doug Tribou and senior news analyst Jack Lessenberry look at the role Michganders played in Vietnam and the war's ongoing legacy in the state.

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and Speaker of the House Tom Leonard of DeWitt don’t appear to have much in common. My guess is that their ballots totally cancel each other out in every election. But they are together today on something: a plan to drastically cut auto insurance rates statewide, something especially relevant in Detroit.

I had breakfast the other day with Marti Robinson, who was a highly respected trial attorney in Detroit before President Obama appointed her to the Consumer Product Safety Commission four years ago, for a term that expires next month. Democrats still have a three-to-two majority on that commission, and once she leaves, she is certain to be replaced by a Republican. And she is very, very worried about what that will mean – and not just from a conventional partisan standpoint.

Governor Rick Snyder has done two remarkably positive things for Michigan in his nearly seven years in office, both in his first term. First, he found a way to get around a legislature corrupted by campaign donations and make a deal for a new Detroit River bridge. Granted, the Gordie Howe International Bridge has yet to be built, but it now seems all but certain it will be. That’s something crucially important for the long-term economy of this state and region. But the immediately worthwhile

When you’ve paid attention to politics for a long time, you gradually begin to think you’ve seen it all, or at least some of us did before the rise of Donald Trump. But one thing we’ve never seen before is so many candidates running so hard for attorney general and secretary of state more than a year before the election. State Senator Tonya Schuitmaker launched a video promoting her candidacy for the Republican nomination for attorney general this week, and Speaker of the House Tom Leonard is

Recently, I said in passing that I had never run for any office, and later I realized this was not strictly true. I have twice been elected to the board of the prestigious Historical Society of Michigan , and am now its president. However, I don’t get any salary, have no real power, and my stunning electoral triumph was due to the fact that I ran unopposed. I can also promise that if I get defeated for reelection, I will not immediately begin running for the presidency of the American Shetland