Published: 10/6/2010
Just because the Detroit Election Commission chose not to put the question of legalizing marijuana on the Nov. 2 ballot doesn't mean there's no cannabis drama in this election. At least for Michigan medical marijuana activists, the contest for attorney general is crucial. "We're concerned abou...[MORE]
Published: 9/29/2010
"You were had," Maj. Robert Smith of the Oakland County Sheriff's Department told News Hits when we gave him a call after hearing from a well-informed source that a photo we'd run in this column wasn't the real deal. The picture, part of a digital press kit handed out by Rick Thompson of ...[MORE]
Published: 9/29/2010
Highest greetings from Amsterdam. My name is John Sinclair and I've been a marijuana legalization activist ever since I founded Detroit LEMAR (LEgalize MARijuana) in January 1965, following the receipt of a LEMAR flyer sent from New York City by poets Allen Ginsberg and Edward Sanders, the progenito...[MORE]
Published: 9/22/2010
After 30 hours of testimony in an unusual two-day hearing, the Michigan Parole and Commutation Board is wrestling with deciding the fate of convicted murderer Frederick Freeman: Is he a dangerous man, rightfully locked up or the victim of a wrongful conviction in a 1986 shotgun slaying? Witnesses c...[MORE]
Published: 9/22/2010
The Rev. Robert Blake sits in the office of his Highland Park church, leafing through a folder filled with stories of teenagers who have run afoul of the law. There's a 17-year-old arrested for carjacking. A 14-year-old who was skipping school and hanging with gangs. Another who committed unarmed r...[MORE]
Published: 9/15/2010
There was much tough talk when a crowd of about 250 medical marijuana advocates gathered outside the offices of Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard on Monday to protest recent raids on clinics where pot was being sold. Along with outrage over the way patients were treated — allegedly thrown ...[MORE]
Published: 9/1/2010
Speaking of boggled minds, News Hits dodged a green bullet when no one took us up on our offer to bet an ounce of purple kush that Wayne Circuit Court Judge Michael Sapala would overrule the Detroit Election Commission and order that a marijuana legalization measure be placed on the Detroit ballot f...[MORE]
Published: 9/1/2010
Last week proved to be a bad one along two fronts in the ongoing battle against the police state. At about the same time a Wayne County Circuit Court judge was upholding a Detroit Election Commission action to keep a pro-marijuana measure off the November ballot, Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchar...[MORE]
Published: 8/25/2010
"... It is important to recognize that ... the right to keep and bear arms is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for any purpose." —Guess who OK, now — which American-hating creep would write something as anti-Second Amendment as t...[MORE]
Published: 8/18/2010
Remember back in June, when 15,000 or so radical leftists descended on Detroit to raise all sorts of hell, smashing windows and looting stores and setting fires to cars as they attempted to overthrow the capitalist system as we know it? Of course, you don't remember that, because it never happened....[MORE]
Published: 8/18/2010
Attention Detroit voters: You must be idiots. Granted, that may be a harsh analysis. But, in the light of recent events, it is a conclusion News Hits has been forced to arrive at. First, the Detroit City Council decides not to place a measure on the ballot that would let the city's voters decide w...[MORE]
Published: 8/18/2010
We here at the Hits have been contemplating going to an all-marijuana all-the-time format. When it comes to weed in Michigan, there's more going on than you can shake a joint at. Since passage of the state's medical marijuana law in 2008, it has become an issue that's simply too big to ignore. Just...[MORE]
By Curt Guyette
Published: 8/11/2010
It looks as if there's going to be a showdown between the American Civil Liberties Union and Michigan cities it says are using questionable tactics in an apparent attempt to address medical marijuana-related activity within their borders. The ACLU has sent letters to the cities of Bloomfield Hills ...[MORE]
Published: 7/28/2010
You may recall the case of Walter Swift, who ended up on the cover of this rag last year ("Swift's justice," Nov. 18, 2009) when we wrote about the 26 years he spent in prison for a crime he did not commit, and the difficult time he was having adjusting to the outside world following his r...[MORE]
By Curt Guyette
Published: 7/28/2010
A small group of people gathered on Detroit's west side last week to celebrate what appeared to be a victory. It looked as if Marvin and Louise Morris, both in their late 70s, would be staying in the modest house they've lived in for 32 years. The problem, says attorney Jerome Goldberg of the Morat...[MORE]
Published: 6/23/2010
More than 19 months after voters approved the Michigan Medical Marijuana Act, the battle over the medicinal herb continues to blaze. Ferndale is one of the state's latest battlegrounds. The City Council there unsuccessfully attempted to close Clinical Relief LLC, a medical marijuana center, two we...[MORE]
Published: 6/9/2010
Wait, wait — don't shoot! The video is harrowing. Shot last November, the event was captured by a film crew shooting a movie in Detroit. They were making a movie titled Vigilante, about militant activist Hayward Brown, who became a controversial cause celébre when he beat assault and ...[MORE]
Published: 6/2/2010
Michigan's medical marijuana community was abuzz with the news that a so-called "smokers club" in the Lansing suburb of Williamston Township had been raided by police last week. The Lansing State Journal reported that the club's owner, the Rev. Frederick Wayne Dagit, had previously claime...[MORE]
Published: 5/26/2010
Mohammad Abdollahi knew he could be sacrificing his future in America — and maybe even his life — when he participated in a protest at the office of Sen. John McCain last week. The 24-year-old former student — known as Mo to his friends — has been living in Ann Arbor since t...[MORE]
By Curt Guyette
Published: 5/19/2010
The issue of campaign finance reform is a little bit like a schoolyard shoving match. One side gives a push. The other side pushes back. On Monday, a group of Michigan legislators responded to a massive thump to the chest delivered earlier this year when the U.S. Supreme Court opened the floodgates...[MORE]
Published: 5/19/2010
That's right. Harass the bastards first, of course. Illegal immigrants have ruined this country. They took all our jobs and wrecked the auto industry and are why I have bad teeth. No doubt about it. Now, while I agree heartily with those sentiments, they aren't originally mine; they are based on so...[MORE]
Published: 5/5/2010
Chanting "Education not deportation," a dozen marchers set off on foot from southwest Detroit's Clark Park Thursday morning, heading to Ann Arbor, where President Barack Obama spoke at Saturday's commencement. By Friday, they felt like national celebrities when CNN listed one of the walke...[MORE]
By Curt Guyette
Published: 4/14/2010
Last week, lawyers for the city of Detroit and the Detroit International Bridge Co. were again in court, this time arguing over who has legal control of a section of 23rd Street the bridge company has fenced off and paved over as part of the controversial Gateway Project. It seems like a lot of tax...[MORE]
Published: 3/31/2010
After the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office dropped its efforts at his retrial in a decade-old murder, Dwayne Provience's ankle tether came off "I'm free, Mom," he said moments later as his mother, Vonzella Battle, sobbed in his arms. "You don't have to worry no more." Provience...[MORE]
Published: 3/31/2010
As the chair of the Michigan House subcommittee that deals with the state transportation department budget, Rep. Lee Gonzales (D-Flint) admits he should have been paying better attention at a certain moment last week. It was a few hours into the House Appropriations Committee meeting March 24. Legi...[MORE]
By Curt Guyette
Published: 3/24/2010
John Sinclair's long strange trip is taking another twist Arrested in 1969 for giving two joints to an undercover narc, the poet, writer and political activist paid a heavy price for assuming a high profile in the counterculture of the 1960s. Sentenced to 10 years, he served 29 months in prison &md...[MORE]
Published: 3/17/2010
In what legal experts say is a highly unusual move, a Wayne County prosecutor wants University of Michigan Law School students to testify against a man they've been working to exonerate. Innocence Clinic co-director David Moran is asking Wayne County Circuit Judge Tim Kenny to strike the students f...[MORE]
Published: 3/10/2010
The old aphorism that a lie can make it halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on came to mind last week when News Hits found a little-noted story about the group ACORN, which we've been keeping an eye on since this rag recently wrote abut the right-wing attack machine's at...[MORE]
Published: 3/10/2010
The case of Dwayne Provience keeps getting more and more bizarre. Convicted in 2001 of gunning down an alleged drug dealer named Rene Hunter at an intersection on Detroit's northwest side, Provience was sentenced to serve as much as 62 years in prison for a crime he says he never committed. That c...[MORE]
Published: 3/3/2010
As the U.S. House of Representatives last week was considering a resolution to help protect people in Iraq, Sister Beth Murphy was receiving tragic news pointing to the measure's need. Murphy, the volunteer services coordinator at the Archdiocese of Detroit, learned that relatives of one of her Ira...[MORE]
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