That's another reason a new bridge is needed. Gov. Rick Snyder tried to secure legislative approval — but Moroun paid off key committee heads in the form of "campaign contributions" and other donations. The governor couldn't even get the Legislature to take a vote. But Snyder found a legal way to circumvent Moroun and struck a deal with Canada. 

The two governments agreed on a New International Trade Crossing two miles downriver. Besides the other benefits, the NITC will create at least 10,000 good-paying jobs, many of them permanent ones. Enraged, Moroun shelled out millions to canvassers to collect enough signatures to get Proposal 6 on the ballot. Since then, he's coughed up roughly another $31 million, mainly for incessant TV ads that are nonstop lies. 

"You should believe nothing said in those ads," Norton said, correctly. "None of what they say is true. None of it. These ads are an insult to the people of Canada, which is why I'm so active in speaking out. 

"These ads, it's worth remembering, are paid for by the same scoundrels who reneged for six years on the Gateway project, designed to improve U.S. access to their bridge, taking the people of Michigan for a $230 million ride." 

Gateway, remember, only got done after a judge threw Matty Moroun in jail last winter, took the project away from the Morouns, and made them pay the state to get it done right. Some people really are bad to the bone. 

Can Michigan voters be so stupid as to sign their rights and their hope for a better future away to this gang? 

The answer is entirely up to you.

High Noon in the library stacks: Thanks to the current Supreme Court's reading of the Second Amendment, and millions of morons who cling to their weapons the way a baby does his blanket, we live in an age of insane gun worship. 

That means a never-ending series of entirely predictable atrocities, from the losers who murder their children, to the creature who shot up the theater in Colorado last summer. 

Yet this wasn't enough for two judges on the Michigan Court of Appeals. Last week, Henry Saad and his comrade Jane Beckering ruled that Lansing's Capitol Area District Library could not continue to ask people carrying guns to leave. 

Why? Well, they said Michigan law says that local units of government aren't allowed to set different firearms rules. There was one dissenter: Judge Elizabeth Gleicher, long one of the brighter lights in the Michigan judiciary, who said the law her colleagues cited doesn't even apply to district libraries. 

But common sense wasn't what her conservative colleagues had any interest in. As Brian Dickerson of the Detroit Free Press observed, "My problem isn't that (they) have decided to enforce a law I don't like; my problem is that they don't seem to have read the law they're claiming to uphold."

Jack Lessenberry opines weekly for Metro Times. Send comments to letters@metrotimes.com.

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