Free Republic

DETROIT — Authorities captured the son of the slain leader of a radical Detroit-area Islamic group in Canada on Thursday, a day after the FBI arrested several members and a raid at a suburban warehouse ended in gunfire. The FBI asked for the public's help in catching two of the 11 suspects in the case still at large, and they emphasized that the group, a faction of the radical U.S. Sunni Islamic group Ummah, held beliefs that were not at all representative of mainstream Islam.... The Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested Mujahid Carswell, the 30-year-old son slain group leader Luqman...

by Peter Luke | Lansing Bureau Wednesday March 11, 2009, 6:54 PM LANSING -- Michigan residents bought fewer Michigan lottery tickets, cigarettes, clothes, restaurant meals and household goods, as they saw the stock market plummet and the economic outlook darken. The sharp pullback in consumer spending sent sales tax receipts downward 18 percent in February, or more than $100 million. It will force Gov. Jennifer Granholm and lawmakers to cut the budget more, agree on tax increases or use more of the federal economic stimulus money to balance the state's books. It was the steepest monthly decline in 25 years....

A Hometown Bank Heeds a Call to Serve Its Islamic ClientsBy SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN Published: March 6, 2009 ANN ARBOR, MICH. Until a stranger without an appointment showed up one day in late 2001, Stephen L. Ranzini was feeling rather pleased with himself. University Bank here, which he led as president, had just won a national award for community service. The honor attested to Mr. Ranzini’s success in working with local black ministers and a nonprofit agency to increase home-ownership in African-American neighborhoods. Then, disturbing the aura of satisfaction, a well-dressed man arrived and insisted on seeing the president. “If...

A Southern Wayne High School teacher accused of a sex offense turned herself in to the Wayne County Sheriff's Office on Monday. An investigation was launched into allegations against exceptional children's teacher Shannon Grace Herring, 32, on Nov. 18, when Southern Wayne principal John Boldt filed a police report with the school resource officer, Deputy Russell Rice. The alleged sexual incident, described only as "sexual activity" by the Sheriff's Office, did not take place on the school campus, Capt. Tom Effler said. When Rice and Boldt filled out their police incident report, they alleged "improper student teacher contact," as the...

Cobo convention center, one of the many aging buildings downtown, is threatening to become the latest tinderbox in resurgent racial hostilities between the mostly black city and its predominantly white suburbs. With calls for self-determination in how the venue operates, members of Detroit's embattled City Council have reopened wounds more than four decades old. (snip) Last week, Council President Monica Conyers, who is black, told a white Teamsters' union official during a contentious meeting on whether to accept the deal that most of the people who work at Cobo during the annual North American International Auto Show "don't look like...

“You just sit and you worry,” said Pat Weber, a construction administrator in Fennville who was laid off more than a year ago. “In the last year, I’ve put in for more than 100 jobs. I stopped counting after 110. It’s just so defeating.” All around Fennville and its neighbors here in southwest Michigan, front lawns are peppered with for-sale signs and merchants complain about slow days. But while this remains a beautiful place with none of the obvious blight of Detroit on the other side of the state, residents say the hardship beneath the surface is very real. It...

Here it is. The United American Committee's billboard to alert about the threat of Sharia. It's on the Detroit-Toledo I-75 expressway. The message is clear, "Sharia Law Threatens America"