Wednesday, November 06, 2002

Rabbit on The AngryDems.com Wall of Frustration is a compilation of half-mad rants by various anonymous Democrats, many only semi-literate, following Tuesday's elections.  I have to believe that these nitwits do not represent responsible mainstream Democrats.  They are out there in the general population, though. 11:28:05 PM     Domestic relations The Michigan Supreme Court has granted leave to appeal in a case in which the Court of Appeals had held that the "grandparent visitation" sections of the Child Custody Act were unconstitutional. DeRose v. DeRose, decided in January 2002, based on the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57 (2000).  The Court of Appeals had held: [T]he lack of standards in the Michigan statute beyond 'the best interest of the child,' and specifically the failure of the statute to afford any deference to the custodial parent's decision, renders the Michigan statute unconstitutional as written.  The Court of Appeals found that the Michigan statute did not provide sufficient deference to the primary right of the custodial parent to make this determination. It may be difficult to do in a way that is consistent with the focus in Troxel. These scenarios remind us that the law cannot provide a remedy for everything in life that is "unfair". 7:01:40 PM     "What if" meets "if only" Craig Ruff of Public Sector Consultants posted an essay on October 28, pointing out that John Engler could tell us that West Michigan Republicans, in their push for Smietanka as Attorney General nominee over Engler choice Scott Romney in 1998, are ultimately reponsible for the Granholm victory: At the root of Governor Engler's carping and warring with West Michigan's GOP powerhouses Chuck Yob and Betsy DeVos is their rejection of Scott Romney and the consequent ascension of Jennifer Granholm. Few would disagree that Romney, with a magical name in state political lore, would have won and thereby sent Granholm back to Wayne County government. Surely Engler and Dick Posthumus have played the "what if" game constantly over the past four years. My own variation focuses on Candice Miller.  If only she had followed through with her plan to run for Governor this year, we would have had the nation's most prominent gubernatorial race -- two female candidates going head to head -- and I believe that Miller would have soundly trounced Granholm.   Instead, she is now going to Washington as Representative from Macomb County. 6:59:23 PM     The next day One observation: The results on the proposals tell me that the people of this state do investigate the issues and make a choice well before they reach the polls, once they get beyond personalities and address issues directly.  I would venture to say that most people were initially favorably inclined to the Healthy Michigan proposal, but decided to reject it after learning that most sound-minded people in the political sphere strongly opposed it. Another: Now that Healthy Michigan has met its deserved defeat, the Legislature should turn its attention to enacting legislation to accomplish most of what the proposal stood for: a much larger dedication of the tobacco settlement funds to health care and to alleviating the horrible financial condition that Michigan hospitals are in.  The merits of the idea -- using the tobacco money for tobacco-related health care -- were good.  It was just a terribly bad idea to try to use a constitutional amendment to accomplish the goal.  6:51:57 PM

© Copyright 2002 Franco Castalone. Last update: 12/2/2002; 7:49:20 AM.