Free Republic

WINDSOR, Ont. - A new bridge between Windsor, Ont., and Detroit will be named after hockey legend Gordie Howe. Howe, who is now 87, was born in Floral, Sask., and came to be known as "Mr. Hockey." The still-to-be built Gordie Howe International Bridge is expected to be operational in 2020. The Windsor-Detroit corridor is the busiest commercial land crossing between the two countries and the border has long been a bottleneck. Prime Minister Stephen Harper made the announcement today along with Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder at the river separating Canada and the U.S. Harper praised Howe as a proud...

When Gov. Rick Snyder recently proposed creating a new school district organization to serve Detroit schoolchildren, he cited a “lack of educational success” and “failing academics” and pointed out that Detroit is the “nation’s lowest performing urban school area.” However, the Detroit Public School district's most recent evaluations of its own teachers paint a picture of success in 2013-14. The district gave 8 out of 10 teachers the highest evaluation possible — “highly effective.” Full email response from DPS Spokeswoman Jennifer Mrozowski. Starting with the 2011-12 academic year, school districts have been required by state law to report on their...

Gov. Rick Snyder says his vision of new Detroit public school system does not represent a bailout because it doesn’t ask for more taxpayer dollars. But one study says that school districts around the state will have to chip in $50 per pupil, which some superintendents aren’t happy about. Snyder has proposed creating a new “Detroit Education District” to operate all public schools in the city. Alongside of this entity, the current Detroit school district would be retained in a purely administrative role for the purpose of paying off the massive debt it has accumulated. Money to service the debt...

Gov. Rick Snyder’s plan to revitalize schools within the city of Detroit has school-choice advocates concerned about potential threats to school choice in the city. Charter school advocates fear that Snyder’s plan creates a bureaucracy with the authority to stop the growth of charter schools or even shut them down if different political leadership put anti-charter board members in charge. The governor’s plan calls for the old Detroit Public Schools to be kept in existence for the administrative purpose of paying off the district’s debt. DPS has $483 million in operating debt and a combined capital and bond debt of...

Hundreds of Detroit public school teachers broke the law Thursday when they skipped school to protest Gov. Rick Snyder’s announcement in Lansing proposing an overhaul of the Detroit public school system. The action caused 18 Detroit public schools to close and more than 12,000 students to miss a day of classes. The action is considered a strike, which is illegal for government employees in Michigan, according to Patrick Wright, senior legal analyst for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Source - Detroit Federation of Teachers website. On the Detroit Federation of Teachers’ website, the union urged all DPS employees to...

Police say a state senator from Detroit is suspected of firing many shots at his girlfriend's car over the weekend. Police Chief James Craig says Virgil Smith is in custody Monday. He told reporters that a gun was seized from Smith's home. Craig says the Detroit Democrat has been cooperating with investigators. No one was injured in the shooting, which occurred early Sunday.

A Detroit-based local news anchor found herself in hot water this week after making a comment connecting Michigan’s large Muslim community to potential ISIS threats. During a Wednesday broadcast on NBC-affiliated WDIV-TV Local 4, anchor Carmen Harlan discussed a possible ISIS-connected threat in the state. “Given the fact that we have the largest Arab population outside of the Middle East, I guess this should not come as a real surprise,” she said. Seeing as the state has a substantial Muslim population, several organizations spoke out against Harlan, calling upon her and the network to officially apologize, the Lebanese Examiner reported.

A reporter for a Detroit TV station got in hot water earlier this week when she mentioned that, given the substantial Muslim population in the state, “it should not come as a real surprise” if there was a Michigan connection to Islamic State.The reporter was roundly criticized. Not for stating the obvious, but because she said the words “Muslim” and “ISIS” in the same sentence.Mediaite: During a Wednesday broadcast on NBC-affiliated WDIV-TV Local 4, anchor Carmen Harlan discussed a possible ISIS-connected threat in the state. “Given the fact that we have the largest Arab population outside of the Middle...

A film report on a practical field test of men and equipment under simulated combat conditions. The peacetime maneuvers, held in Texas in 1940 and involving 70,000 men from around the country and trucks and other vehicles from Detroit, demonstrated new standards of motorized mobility for the United

The Big Store. For generations, it was as synonymous with Christmas and fashion as it was Detroit. The store at Woodward and Gratiot avenues was absolutely massive, evolving with the Motor City until it became the tallest department store in the world. By the time it finished growing, the store’s size almost defied belief. A quick list of facts, many courtesy of the Detroit Historical Museum: The store was 2,124,316 square feet, making it second in size among department stores to only Macy’s in New York. Even then, Macy’s is only 26,000 square feet bigger. The store was spread out...

DETROIT (Reuters) - A Detroit prosecutor who said on Facebook that people involved in Baltimore rioting should be shot has resigned, after her comments ignited fierce criticism, the prosecutor's office said on Friday. Wayne County Assistant Prosecutor Teana Walsh had posted comments about this week's unrest in Baltimore, which was sparked by the death of Freddie Gray after he was fatally injured in police custody, according to a screenshot of her page posted on MyFox Detroit.com. She described "large swarms of people throwing bricks etc at police who are fleeing from their assaults" and then suggested using guns. "Simple. Shoot...

I'm pretty sure this was posted a couple of years ago, but with Baltimore and Ferguson recently in the news (and in flames), it is worth another look. Steven Crowder's "Detroit in Ruins" is (IMO) a well done piece on Detroit's fall from grace under liberal influence, put in power by the UAW.

Baltimore is on its way to becoming the Detroit of the South. Years of misrule, neglect and union collaboration grinding its people under the heel of socialism are coming home to roost. Baltimore is closing in on fifty years of Democrat rule. This combined with a federal administration led by a president who does not love America, is driving the town toward the kind of lawlessness that Detroit has proved that cities cannot survive. With thugs ruling its streets the city is dangerously close to falling apart. Make no mistake Baltimore is owned “lock stock and barrel” by the dysfunctional,...

A woman of Arab and Jewish descent who was strip-searched at a Detroit-area airport has reached a settlement in a lawsuit filed on her behalf, the American Civil Liberties Union said Tuesday The federal government will give Shoshana Hebshi $40,000 as compensation for being humiliated on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks after armed agents forced her from a plane at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, made her undress during a search and held her for hours. American Civil Liberties Union said Tuesday.

LaTanya Dorsey is a mother who sends her daughter to a public charter school in Eastpointe. Her daughter is on the honor roll and doing very well. Dorsey didn't expect to have a say in where her daughter went to school. “Usually, it's the district that you're in is the school that you would have to attend,” Dorsey said. “That kind of surprised me — that I did have a choice to send her to another school, so I was real grateful for that.” Dorsey said that parental choice is critical to helping students attend a school that is the...

A Detroit coalition has released its long-awaited recommendations on education policy for Detroit. Though the coalition characterizes its recommendations as a way to improve the "education landscape" for all Detroit students, the coalition's main apparent goal is preserving the institution of Detroit Public Schools. DPS Bailout: To that end, the coalition recommends that taxpayers from the rest of the state pay off some of DPS' debt, take on some of DPS' employee retirement costs, increase school funding and remove the district's emergency manager to hand back control to a local school board. The coalition does not mention how much all...

In 2009, students in Detroit Public Schools posted the worst test scores ever measured on a national test. “There is no jurisdiction of any kind, at any level, at any time in the 30-year history of NAEP that has ever registered such low numbers,” said Michael Casserly, then the executive director of the council that administered the assessment. “They are barely above what one would expect simply by chance, as if the kids simply guessed at the answers.” Since then, charter schools have flourished in the city and more than half of Detroit's students attend them. A recent study from...

“We don’t want to be imprisoned by the past,” Obama said during a visit to Kingston, Jamaica. “When something doesn’t work for 50 years, you don’t just keep on doing it. You try something new.” – Barack Obama, April 9, 2015 In that case, is it time to revisit “The Great Society” as well?Detroit leadership, exclusively Democratic since 1962 “If Mayors Jerome Cavanagh and Roman Gribbs had cut the workforce in the 1960s and early 1970s as the population and property values dropped. If Mayor Dennis Archer hadn’t added more than 1,100 employees in the 1990s when the city...

DETROIT (WWJ) – After McDonald’s announced a $1 an hour raise, increased vacation time and educational benefits for employees in its non-franchise stores, local cashiers and cooks marched to one of the company’s restaurants Thursday. And it wasn’t to offer thanks. Dozens of protesters burst into the McDonald’s on W. McNichols and Livernois Thursday to have their voices heard, demanding raises to boost them to $15 an hour....

When James Craig was a young man in the 1970s, he says law-abiding people wouldn't dream of carrying guns. But then he left town to pursue a career in policing. In the years he was gone, Michigan liberalized its gun laws, making it easier for people to get concealed-carry permits. When he came back to become Detroit's police chief in 2013, he found a whole new reality. "You would have thought, given the dynamic of people who carry weapons, that we were maybe in Texas," he says. "But in fact, we were in Detroit, Michigan!" Police chiefs usually don't like...