First, his campaign announced that pay equity pioneer Lily Ledbetter will be addressing the Democratic Convention on Aug. 26.

Then there’s the visit by Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, believed to be on Barack Obama’s short list of potential vice presidential picks (though at the list’s bottom), to Warren today for a women’s economic town hall, where she was to be joined by Sen. Debbie Stabenow.

Michigan is considered a major swing state, and sending a heavy hitter like Sebelius - the governor of a swing state and the only woman besides Hillary Clinton seen as a viable veep pick - confirms that Obama is seriously wooing women here.

The Obama campaign arranged and promoted Sebelius’ visit and on its Web site billed it as a launch event for the group Michigan Women for Obama. Early Tuesday morning, Gov. Jennifer Granholm sent an email to the Obama list asking its members to join the group and directing them to a video by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in which the California congresswoman addressed Michigan women directly.

It could be that Sebelius is dropping into an important state like Michigan in order to raise her profile just as the campaign prepares to announce Obama’s veep pick. More likely she’s here to shore up Obama’s support among Michigan women, many of whom supported Hillary Clinton during the primaries and some of whom are still frosted that she lost.

In any case, this is impressive message coordination by the Obama campaign - two female governors, a female senator and the female Speaker of the House speaking from the same playbook, combined with a women’s economic town hall and the announcement of a convention speech by a pay equity champion, all within a three-hour span on a weekday morning. Not bad.

Just decades ago, American teenagers were forced to watch movies like “Reefer Madness,” which warned that marijuana use would lead to insanity and deviant behavior. Tom Shields, founder of the Lansing-based Marketing Resource Group, points out:

Yet, last week not a single soul showed up to protest or even offer a word of caution at the State Board of Canvassers meeting where testimony was given on the potential wording of the ballot proposal to allow for medical use of marijuana in Michigan.

What a difference 40 years makes.

Not only didn’t anyone show up at the hearing, no one has even filed a committee to oppose the proposal. No PTAs. No churches. No cop organizations. Not even the anti-smoking groups.

With so much momentum, and no public opposition, it’s important to look at the potential consequences of decriminalizing medical marijuana, Shields writes. The potential fallout includes increased snack sales, more visits to doctors who prescribe marijuana and lucrative patient supply operations.

“A look at the experience of other states with loose qualifications suggests there would be little anyone could do to prevent recreational pot users from being part of the system,” he cautions.

In a recent New Yorker article — “Dr. Kush: How medical marijuana is transforming the pot industry” — David Samuels describes how the decriminalization of medical marijuana brought new (green) jobs to California.

Yeesh. Today’s clowns are Kathleen Sebelius and Mike Huckabee, the latter causing far more cheering and veeping din than the former. If our traffic meter is any gauge, the Huckster and his so-called army are going to continue to make a bunch of noise all the way to the Republican convention, demanding the veep slot until assuaged.

Don’t ask me what “assuaged” looks like in this “with us or agin’ us” internecine squabble between the social conservatives and the fiscal conservatives within the Republican Party. The fiscal conservatives are just as piqued about Huck’s Army’s excessively zealous demands as the Hucksters are about not getting their way with a presidential candidate, and there’s no indication that a compromise is in the works.

On the other side of the political aisle, there’s rampant chatter about a handful of veep candidates. The Obama campaign could easily be messing with their constituents with visits to Indiana and Virginia, spawning alternating freak-outs among the anti-Evan Bayh and anti-Tim Kaine factions. There’s the Wesley Clark option that sets the netroots of the Democratic Party into a frenzy whenever his name comes up as a possible candidate.

And then there’s Kansas’ Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. Quiet, effective, well-liked — obviously not an option, right? Can’t possibly have this much change on a ticket all at one time; the country would spin out of control if a man of color and a woman were offered up as a leadership team. That’s where the Buts come in …but Sebelius is now touring the country to campaign for Obama, as if trying out for the veep slot. She’s going to be in Michigan today and in Iowa on Thursday for multiple stops, as our sister site points out, pondering the idea that this might be an audition.

The odds are certainly looking stronger for Sebelius if futures traders are rational indicators.

Who knows; we have another month of this clown car, even if Obama makes a rumored announcement about his selection inside the next few days. Look out, here it comes now: Veep, veep!! Veep veep!!

Hoogendyk is hoping to use fear mongering to get people to support his plan to open up the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic to more drilling. The problem is, he points out Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran and Venezuela as locations we are getting oil from.

The reality is, according to Energy Information Administration, we get our oil first from Canada, then Saudi Arabia. Russia is 10th on the list, Venezuela is fourth. Iran does not even make it into the top 15 countries supplying the U.S.

Hoogendyk will face Carl Levin, D-Detroit, in November. He has consistently been running in the mid-30’s in polls.

This new policy by Worthy is appropriate; I wish she had taken that position before meeting with those community leaders. Plea deals are negotiated by defendants and prosecutors, not by politicians or those not directly involved in the trial. I’m sure Granholm sees the entire Kilpatrick situation as an unwelcome burden dropped in her lap for which there is no good political answer, but that doesn’t mean she should be pushing the judicial system to do anything other than its job, which is to determine guilt or innocence and secure a conviction where guilty. This comes dangerously close to political interference in the judicial system, the independence of which is vital to the administration of justice.

Worthy should not be concerned with the political consequences of prosecuting Kilpatrick or the political convenience of those who just want a swift end to the controversy. Such political considerations should play no part in judicial proceedings because including those considerations can only distract from the job that a prosecutor is paid to do. If she and Kilpatrick’s attorneys can negotiate a plea arrangement that serves the interests of justice in the case, they should do so. But they should do so only for that reason, not because it might serve the interests of others not involved in the case.

The US Justice Department sent target letters to the guards being investigated, The Washington Post reported Saturday. Although not identified by name, the guards were described as US military personnel.

Target letters often are a prelude to indictment, but allow the suspects to defend themselves by telling the court their own version of events. A federal grand jury has already heard the testimony of dozens of witnesses, including US and Blackwater officials and Iraqis.

This has looked like a cover up from the beginning and I was highly doubtful that there would ever be an attempt to prosecute those guards. Despite several independent investigations, including one by the Pentagon itself, that concluded that the Blackwater guards fired on an unarmed group of civilians who had not attacked them in any way, the government has held off charging them with any crime because it was not clear that they could be charged under either Iraqi or American law. It remains to be seen if they finally are charged and whether an earlier grant of partial immunity to secure their testimony will prevent a conviction.

But the Illinois senator, introduced in San Francisco by House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi as a “leader that God has blessed us with at this time,” vowed not to make the mistake of previous Democratic nominees in failing to sufficiently repel Repubican assaults.

Okay, can we just stop this nonsense now? I understand the need to reach out to religious voters and I think that Obama genuinely is a man of faith who speaks authentically about his religious views, but this rather absurdly crosses over the line. When Republicans spoke openly at the last two Republican national conventions about George W. Bush being God’s choice to lead the country, we blasted them for their presumptuousness and their irrationality. Pelosi deserves no less for saying the same ridiculous thing. This kind of shameless pandering should be condemned by all rational people.

Jenny, a 32-year-old pachyderm, has been residing in the Dallas Zoo for 22 years. When the zoo took Jenny in, she was a wreck — depressed, traumatized, prone to ramming her head into a wall and mutilating herself, thanks largely to a sadistic trainer at the circus that employed Jenny earlier in her life.

After her companion died, the zoo made plans to send her to the African Safari Park in Puebla, Mexico, where she would have five acres to enjoy with another female elephant.

The problem? Five acres can feel claustrophobic to a free-roaming elephant, who in the wild will meander several miles a day.

So elephant lovers have been pressuring the Dallas Zoo to instead send Jenny to a 2,700-acre Tennessee sanctuary for traumatized elephants.

If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because about three years ago the Detroit Zoo faced a similar dilemma. The zoo was getting ready to embark on a significant expansion of its exhibit for its elephants, Wanda and Winky, from one acre to about five acres. But during the study process, the zoo, led by its director, Ron Kagan, concluded that zoos really have no business keeping elephants at all.

“A fundamental requirement for keeping animals in captivity is that we provide an excellent quality of life,” read “Questions and Answers about not having Elephants at the Detroit Zoo” on the zoo’s Web site: 

“In order to do that we must meet a species’ and an individual’s physical, social and psychological needs. We feel that we can accomplish this for all the animals at the Detroit Zoo, but can’t for elephants. Elephants in general in captivity live shorter lives than in the wild, do not reproduce well, show numerous physical problems and often display psychological problems.”

Kagan had to wage a prolonged battle with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums to secure permission to send Wanda and Winky to the Performing Animal Welfare Sanctuary in California. The association accredits zoos and wasn’t ready to concede that elephants — a big attraction for zoo-goers — couldn’t be properly cared for in zoos.

Ultimately, though, Kagan prevailed, and the Detroit Zoo became the first zoo in the country to close its elephant exhibit for humane reasons. Much of metro Detroit eagerly followed the elephants’ precarious journey west to PAWS and their happy settlement into their new, sprawling home.

It remains unclear if officials in Dallas will take a similar stand to Kagan’s, or if they’ll acquiesce to the zoo association and the pressure to keep elephants displayed for the enjoyment of ticket buyers.

“If we stripped everything away and say what is in the best interest of Jenny, the sanctuary would win hands down,” The New York Times quotes retired Los Angeles Zoo animal curator Les Schobert. “But then you have to add in all the politics.”

Winky died this spring at the age of 56. She had to be euthanized because of severe arthritis — a condition resulting from years spent walking on concrete. But before she went, she had three happy years of retirement, wandering lush grounds and making friends with other elephants.

Here’s hoping Jenny gets to live out the rest of her years in peace, too.

Despite rising fuel and fertilizer costs, O’Brien reports optimism from Michigan farmers who are seeing higher prices for farm products, stronger exports and a surge of farming interest among young people.

According to the Michigan Department of Agriculture, more than 1 million Michigan residents are employed in agriculture production, food processing and related businesses.

People for the American Way, meanwhile, published an email that the group sent out requesting that people contact Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich), who is a close friend and adviser of McCain’s, and urge him to push the Republican nominee to put Huckabee on the ticket. That email is rather blunt:

WE WILL NOT VOTE FOR A MCCAIN TICKET UNLESS:

1) Mike Huckabee is the VP; or
2) Mike Huckabee is the KEY NOTE SPEAKER at the National GOP Convention

The email contained a quote from Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan, expressing his dismay at the McCain campaign even asking them if they would support a pro-choice candidate, saying he and others at the meeting were “shocked the question even had to be asked, and alienated that the McCain campaign appears to be even considering it.”