Jack Lessenberry

According to the Special Theory of Relativity, time slows down as you approach the speed of light. I think that’s also true for political campaigns, especially this one. Every day seems longer and more interminable as we get closer to the actual election, and more and more weird and fantastic stuff seems to be happening.

I’ve been fascinated by politics my entire life, and have usually regarded election night the same way football fans regard the Super Bowl. Whether the candidates I supported won or lost, I felt sort of a letdown after it was over; I’d have to wait another four years before a new presidential contest.

David MacNaughton, Canada’s relatively new ambassador to the United States, came to Detroit yesterday, to speak to an important but too-little known group, CUSBA, or the Canada-United States Business Association. Our relationship with Canada is, by far, the most important one there is for both countries. Canadians always know that; Americans tend to forget. Detroit-Windsor is also easily both countries’ most economically important border crossing. The Canadian consulate graciously invited me to

Type some words like “will the Republican Party survive this election” into any search engine, and you’ll find stories predicting its coming collapse. Without any doubt, the GOP is now being torn by an internal civil war, and most of its key figures privately or publicly have written off Donald Trump’s chances.

When I was eight years old, something historic happened: The first-ever televised presidential debate between major party candidates. My lower middle-class Detroit-area family watched it together, as did many American families, and I was encouraged to pay attention. The following day, my fourth-grade teacher encouraged discussion about the debate. I am sure much of it was over my head, but I remember very vividly that everyone thought it an important event. However, I don’t think our mothers

Here’s what the Michigan Constitution says about state aid to private schools: No public monies or property shall be appropriated or paid or any public credit utilized, by the legislature or any other political subdivision or agency of the state directly or indirectly to aid or maintain any private, denominational or other nonpublic, pre-elementary, elementary, or secondary school. No payment, credit, tax benefit, exemption or deductions, tuition voucher, subsidy, grant or loan of public monies

For many years, few people paid any attention to the politics of Michigan Supreme Court justices. Nor were elections for the state’s highest court usually exciting. That’s because there used to be a presumption that judges were more or less above politics, and that once on the bench, they should remain there as long as they were honest and competent, until the magic age of 70, after which, under the Michigan Constitution, they may finish a current term, but are no longer eligible to run again.

If this election follows the familiar pattern, Donald Trump will lose Oakland County, Michigan’s second-largest and easily most affluent county, and lose it badly. Oakland was once reliably Republican. But the party’s move to the right on social issues hasn’t played well with largely highly educated Oakland voters, especially professional women.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if a President of the United States went stark raving mad? As in, thinking he or she was an eggplant? Actually, there IS a system to deal with that. As I understand it, all that would have to happen would be for the vice president and a majority of the cabinet to sign a declaration that the president was not competent, and send it to Congress.

There’s general agreement that education in Michigan is an unholy mess that is getting worse. Test scores confirm it is failing hundreds of thousands of students, which has huge implications for our future and that of our state. We are spending billions on a system that doesn’t work, and narrowly based ideological remedies aren’t helping. When I look at a system that is failing to teach far too many Tommys and Tamikas to read, and which is making higher education unaffordable for those who can,