Troy Mayor Janice Daniels will need a slight miracle to stop the recall from going to voters this fall.

Does she deserve to be recalled?

No, I say, not for the stupid shit she keeps saying, especially about gay people. Politicians exist to say stupid stuff, and she can't help herself. But we love Brooks for it, so she can be forgiven.

But turning down the federal grant for a transportation center when it was first presented is a big problem. Eventually, I think, it was accepted after a compromise, but her first effort was to decline it.

Uh oh and oh no. You don't turn down federal dollars, because they eventually go somewhere else. The only thing local leaders need to know for sure is to accept federal dollars.

And they always do so happily.

Just this week:

In Springfield Twp, they're paving a road that would never have been paved without federal dollars.

In Oak Park, they're adding three public safety officers, after laying off 15 officers, with a federal grant.

In Detroit, they can bring back firefighters after more than 150 were let go, again thanks for a federal grant.

I think the best thing Bill Clinton did after balancing the annual budget was his police officers grants late in his presidency. It put feet on the street and made it very easy for local leaders to cover their communities without tax hikes, those constant, we need another millage requests. If you live in Waterford, you know all about those. They get hard to keep voting yes for.

So if you're a mayor, please say, Thank you very much. Not every grant is a bridge to nowhere. The federal govt is huge and yes it owes money, but when taxes return to the community, it helps the community.

By STEPHEN FRYE
Online Editor
As the nation awaited the Obamacare ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, many looked to Twitter for the first reports.

And once the ruling was made public and properly digested, Twitter's headlines turned into commentary, both about the ruling and about the headlines.
Some of the tweets decried the decision or praised the justices for saving the president's signature program. However, much of the commentary in the minutes after the ruling's publication centered on CNN and Fox News’s gaffes: proclaiming the individual mandate struck down.

What happened was the decision read that using the Commerce Clause found the mandate unconstitutional. Further reading, though, found that the majority found the mandate for health care was constitutional when considering it a tax.
Nonetheless, the egg had landed on the news organizations’ faces and much fun was made of one of the Supreme Court's most important decisions and one of the year's top stories.

Here is some of what was tweeted:

- @newsheraldjah (John A. Hutchison): It's really weird being in a room for a meeting and being the only person who knows the outcome of the federal health care law. #lakecomish
- @Poynter: Screenshot: CNN breaking news banner says individual mandate struck down http://journ.us/N6QlgX
- @USATODAY: This is a splintered, complex opinion, writes David Jackson of @theoval: http://usat.ly/MY9stT Chief Justice John Roberts was the key vote.
- @rvisconti: CNN: Supreme Court overturns gravity.
- @TheFix: Here's the deal: Winning is better than losing in politics. So, assessment that this is good for Republicans is not correct.- @LexKuhne: Word. RT @ezraklein: Wow. So Kennedy voted with conservatives, Roberts with liberals. Umpire, indeed.
- @AP: Hospital stocks sharply higher after U.S. health care ruling
- @soyceman: #FoxNews looks so depressed. #CNN looks confused. #MSNBC looks insightful.
-  @davepell: It looks like the Supreme Court has upheld Romneycare!
- @mattklewis: Conservatives have long been told they HAVE to vote for GOP prez candidates they don’t like, b/c of SCOTUS appointments. Goodbye to all that
- @jay_jaffe: CNN: less relevant than the Onion and the Daily Show when it comes to news
- @acarvin: “DEWEY DEFEATS CNN” RT @davidfolkenflik: A cable headline that will live in infamy
- @JordanSekulow: to make it clear, mandate was unconstitutional via Commerce Clause but is constitutional as a tax - #ObamaCare #SCOTUS
- @CharlesMBlow: BREAKING: Obama in Oval Office doing the cabbage patch...
-@BrianManzullo: Note to CNN: No one would have remembered you posting the #SCOTUS decision first. Now everyone will remember you for having it wrong.
- @RyanNewYork (Ryan J. Davis): Today will also be known as the day when CNN became less reliable than Twitter.
- @Will_Axford: Oh man CNN. Who knew making a mistake would make you relevant for 5 seconds again?
- @AndyStettler: Mitch McConnell: “This law is a tax...this law was sold to the American people as a deception.”
- @RonEstrada: Today is the day we took the final step toward joining our European brothers who are watching their nations crumble.

How is this for the bureaucracy that surrounds those serving life sentences? It seems like they are just forgotten about.

This is Joseph Passeno, who at 17, helped execute a very pleasant middle aged and middle class couple, Glenn and Wanda Tarr, back in 1989. They robbed each one individually, took to a park in Pontiac and then shot them each. Most sinister: Taking the husband to the park after hitting the cash machine and telling him he would be left with his wife, who was already dead.

Note, the state says he doesn't have an tattoos:

Here he is:

He drives this green truck:

And he picked up the wallet left on the Burger King counter on the 4900 block of Dixie Highway way back in April, 4.29 to be exact during the late morning.

One more thing, Waterford police report this is still under investigation. What kind of investigating had they done throughout May and for the first three weeks of June, before finally reaching out to the public? Now if it took Burger King more than a month to share its surveillance, then they are just begging to be victimized because they owe it to their customers to help them recover stolen items.

Of course, the world is filled with assholes. I just hope this guy didn't cost the victim too much time and money.

Michigan's governor is about to sign legislation banning sale of synthetic marijuana, or K2, or Spice. It's too bad we need a law to dictate what common sense should mandate.

That's ok, teenagers will be still be able to get cigarettes.

A drunken driving crackdown on M-59 angered business owners, who lost business that Saturday night. Anti-drunken driving advocates were happy though.
Here are two lobbies that both have broad public opinion.
Cigarettes, too, have a strong lobby, so even though they are banned from being burned in public, they are legal to sell and possess.

It all comes down to the lobby. If you want to change something, you need a strong lobby behind you.

And I must say I'm happy that our OneToughNerd governor, Rick Snyder, has gotten around the Maroun lobby to build this new bridge. Let's hope it goes smoothly, because extra lanes of traffic mean speedier crossings. And we all know, TIME IS MONEY.

Now if only they could finish that bridge at Avon and Livernois roads in Rochester Hills.

Whether on a lake or in a driveway, summer is here and everyone needs to heed the reminder that they need to be careful out there.

Sure, summer is official in a week or two, but summer break is here or arriving for tens of thousands of students, and this weekend presented a taste of what could come any hot summer day.

Oakland County already had its first drowning, a man succumbing in recent weeks while swimming a neighborhood lake in the Wixom area.

That is one of the more common accidents, drowning, whether in a pool, a swimming hole or a large lake. It happens to children who fall in while attended or unattended, teenagers with friends, adults out on boats or jumping in for a cooldown. It can happen to anyone.

On lakes, there are also boats and personal watercraft, which over the years have collided into one another, struck islands or rocks, slammed into docks, or even rammed onto the shore. People get hurt or killed when struck, when falling in, or even when being hit by propellers.

In West Bloomfield, just this weekend two very young youngsters bumped on personal watercraft (while be led to shore by their parents, one accidentally started it) and a speed boat hit a pontoon.

Accidental injuries and deaths also occur outside of water. Just this weekend, a toddler died after being bumped by a backing up vehicle in Orion Township. It's a tragedy that takes only a split second to occur.

With summer comes the sun, and the sun heats up cars faster than we realize. Keep pets and children safe and don't forget them for a haircut, quick shopping excursion. You'll get no sympathy when a police car is waiting by your car as you walk out. Forgetting is easy, as the prime minister of Great Britain proved, when he and his wife left their 8-year-old at a pub this weekend. But don't forget;  you'll never forgive yourself.

Then there's fireworks, all-terrain vehicles, motorcycles, teenagers piling into cars. On top of that, we have Spice, or K2, or synthetic marijuana, as well as the regular illicit drugs and summer's all time favorite problem-causer: alcohol.

Again, it's a dangerous world out there. Please be careful.

As the state, county and several municipalities embark on banning k2, spice, or other forms of synthetic marijuana, I hope they word their laws, provisions or ordinances well.

This week heats up the anti-k2 effort, and that's greatly needed, yes, but it comes on a week when the Michigan Supreme Court started to clean up the Medical Marijuana laws.

K2 has been blamed in the death of an 18 year old in Bloomfield Twp, a young man who was found dead on a private beach. Police described it as an overdose.

K2 is blamed on the murderous rampage that police say Tucker Cipriano and a friend went on inside the Cipriano household. The pair had been smoking it and sought money to buy more.

K2 is blamed, by her defense attorney, on the fear a grandmother felt at her apparently troubled teenage grandson, a fear the attorney says that drove her to not only buy a gun but to quickly use it to kill the grandson.

Now comes the rush to ban it.

The state is slowly considering it, many locals have emphasized. Too slow for some, the West Bloomfield Board of Trustees will take it. Then Keego Harbor jumped on board, and now comes the county with the sheriff and executive holding a press conference, not next week, but today, to tell about their plans.

Of course, rushing to do so matters little if the laws aren't written correctly.

And as the state rewrites its medical marijuana laws and the Supreme Court corrects lower court rulings, it's important to get these right the first time.