A kayaker on the Manistee River in the northwestern Lower Peninsula recently was stopped by officers who were checking canoes and kayaks for safety equipment. The Department of Natural Resources says a man was adamant that he didn't need a life jacket or any other flotation device.
Just moments later, he flipped his kayak and landed in 51-degree water. Conservation officers Steve Converse and Sam Koscinski pulled him into their patrol boat and took him to shore.
A judge in Grand Rapids says the state of Michigan must comply with a federal request to turn over information about the medical marijuana records of six people in the Lansing area. The Department of Community Health had refused to comply with a subpoena from federal agents without a court order. That's because Michigan's medical marijuana law has a confidentiality provision.
New University of Michigan research finds a link between bullying and sleepiness. U of M researchers looked at students in Ypsilanti public schools and found students who got in trouble for bullying were twice as likely to be sleepy during the school day or suffer from sleep apnea.
The U.S. government is $14.3 trillion in debt. When we first neared the trillion-dollar mark in 1981, President Ronald Reagan said that the height of our debt amounted to a stack of $1,000 bills about 67 miles high. That's somewhere in the thermosphere.
Today, that pile of $1,000 bills would be floating in space, more than 900 miles above the Earth. There aren't any $1,000 bills in circulation anymore, so here's an astronomical analogy about today's debt: If you stack up 14.3 trillion dollar bills, the pile would stretch to the moon and back twice.
The Associated Press reports roughly a dozen state-level Michigan Republicans already face recall threats this year, less than six months into their current terms. Governor Snyder leads the list of recall targets. Some members of the House and Senate also face recall efforts.
Recall attempts are fairly easy to start but it's far tougher to make the ballot and win an election. A successful recall of a Michigan state lawmaker has not been accomplished since 1983.
In Hulett's story, we hear the thoughts of Jack Lessenberry, who covered Kevorkian for the New York Times and Vanity Fair; the Oakland County prosecutor in 1999, David Gorcyca (who convicted Kevorkian); and Geoffrey Fieger, Kevorkian's lawyer.
Hulett reports that Kevorkian once said that Johann Sebastian Bach was his god - and that nurses caring for Kevorkian played Bach during Kevorkian's final hours.
Update 10:05 a.m.
Here's the 60 Minutes piece that led to Kevorkian's conviction in 1999. Kevorkian administers the lethal injection (previous patients reportedly administered the drugs themselves). He was daring authorities to convict him and adding more fuel to the assisted suicide debate in the country:
The New York Times reports that Kevorkian's advocacy changed how hospitals approached end of life care:
From June 1990, when he assisted in the first suicide, until March 1999, when he was sentenced to serve 10 to 25 years in a maximum security prison, Dr. Kevorkian was a controversial figure. But his critics and supporters generally agree on this: As a result of his stubborn and often intemperate advocacy for the right of the terminally ill to choose how they die, hospice care has boomed in the United States, and physicians have become more sympathetic to their pain and more willing to prescribe medication to relieve it.
Kevorkian called end of life treatment in hospitals cruel.
In this 1996 60 Minutes interview with Andy Rooney, Kevorkian said many hospitals take food and water away from a dying patient - treatment the U.S. Supreme Court supported, according to Kevorkian.
"Our august Supreme Court has validated the Nazi method of execution in concentration camps - starving them to death!"
Here's the interview (Geoffrey Fieger, Kevorkian's lawyer is by his side):
8:40 a.m.
Assisted suicide advocate, Dr. Jack Kevorkian, is dead at the age of 83.
Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the Michigan pathologist who put assisted suicide on the world’s medical ethics stage, died this morning between 2 a.m. and 2:30 a.m., said his lawyer Mayer Morganroth.
Kevorkian, 83, died at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, where he had been hospitalized for about two weeks with kidney and heart problems.
Morganroth said it appears Kevorkian suffered a pulmonary thrombosis when a blood clot from his leg broke free and lodged in his heart.
With Kevorkian were his niece Ava Janus and Morganroth.
“It was peaceful. He didn’t feel a thing,” Morganroth said.
Morganroth said the hospital staff, doctors and nurses said Kevorkian's passing was “a tremendous loss and I agree with them. He did so much.”
Morganroth said there were no artificial attempts to keep Kevorkian alive.
*correction: my first post put Kevorkian's age at death at 84, he died at age 83
The Detroit Symphony Orchestra will keep its executive director for the next few years. The DSO announced this afternoon that its Board of Directors renewed CEO Ann Parsons’ contract through 2014.
Parsons led the Detroit Symphony through the recent dispute with its unions that shutdown the DSO for much of the past year. The six month strike came to an end after musicians agreed to a 25% cut in pay.
In hopes of luring back its fans, the DSO is cutting ticket prices for the upcoming symphony season.
Seventy years ago, Ford Motor Company recognized the UAW. Ford was the last major automaker to recognize the union, and that decision marked the starting point of the union’s “Golden Age.”
In this interview, Michigan Radio's Jenn White talks with Jack Lessenberry, Michigan Radio’s political analyst about unions past and present. And what lessons can be learned from those "golden years."
In 1941, the UAW signed contracts with General Motors and Chrysler, but Henry Ford remained opposed to unionization. After several days of strikes Ford gave in and soon after the first contracts took effect.
President Obama congratulated a crowd of Chrysler auto workers today in Toledo for their hard work as he stood surrounded by an assembly line of Jeeps. He stressed the importance of the 2008 bailout of Chrysler and G-M to the rest of the auto industry, including Ford:
U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Katherine Sebelius toured the Henry Ford Hospital today as part of the government's initiative to reduce patient care mistakes.
"We spend way too many dollars on care that was not needed in the first place because we're trying to fix mistakes that shouldn't have happened in the first place," she said during a roundtable discussion.
I remember going into the hospital to have an operation on my left knee awhile back. Nurses put a sleeve over my right leg, and it seemed like a dozen different doctors and nurses asked me which leg was being operated on.
"Don't they know?" I thought.
Then I realized they were going through a system of checks and balances to make sure doctors cut open the correct leg.
If they cut open the wrong leg, it would have been bad, but at least I would have survived.
A 1999 Institute of Medicine study estimated that as many as 98,000 Americans die every year from preventable medical errors, and the government says that number didn't improve much in the following decade.
A rally in Lansing on March 16, 2011. Recall efforts are underway for several Republican leaders. The last time the state saw this many recall efforts was in 1983 targeting Democrats.
A wave of recall efforts is rolling through the state Capitol. There are about half a dozen recall campaigns under way, and all of them target Republicans.
Recall campaign organizers have a difficult, but not impossible, task ahead of them to get the recalls on the ballot.
The last time a swath of recall campaigns swept over a political party in control of the House, Senate and executive office was in 1983.
He says the last time a group of recall campaigns swept over a single political party in Michigan was in 1983.
Bill Ballenger is the editor of the Inside Michigan Politics newsletter. He says the last time a group of recall campaigns swept over a single political party in Michigan was in 1983.
"There were a whole bunch of recalls mounted that year, upwards of maybe a dozen, against Democratic legislators over the hike in the state income tax in 1983. Of all those recall efforts, two actually made it to the ballot."
Ballenger says talk of tax hikes got people motivated in 1983, but that’s not the case this time around.
“In fact it’s just the opposite,” said Ballenger.
He says most of the complaints levied against lawmakers and Governor Rick Snyder are about cuts to funding and programs, and an expansion of the control of emergency managers.
One of the more publicized recall efforts is against state Representative Al Pscholka, who sponsored the emergency manager legislation.
There are also recall efforts against Governor Snyder and state Senator Mike Nofs, Ballenger says Senator Nofs could face the biggest test among the current recall campaigns because he is in a swing district.
President Obama will visit a Chrysler plant in Ohio today, a day after the U.S. Treasury reached a deal to sell its remaining 6.6% stake in Chrysler to Fiat.
Meanwhile, the Treasury still owns 26% of General Motors. But GM North American President Mark Reuss says it’s up to the U.S. Treasury to decide when to get out of the car business completely.
Reuss says the government’s part-ownership of GM matters to American taxpayers and customers. It also matters to GM executives and workers.
But it's not up to GM when the Treasury sells its stock.
The Jim Tressel era at Ohio State started on January 18, 2001.
It so happened the Buckeyes had a basketball game that night against Michigan, so it was a good time to introduce their new football coach. When Tressel stood up to speak, he knew exactly what they wanted.
He was hired on the heels of John Cooper, whose record at Ohio State was second only to that of Woody Hayes. But Cooper’s teams lost to Michigan an inexcusable ten times. Can’t do that. And you can’t say, “It’s just another game,” either – which might have been his biggest mistake.
Knowing all this, when Tressel told the crowd, "I can assure you that you will be proud of your young people in the classroom, in the community, and most especially in 310 days in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on the football field. The place went nuts. “At last,” they said, “somebody gets it!”
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