Bad news: We have a surplus

Prosperity is the greatest enemy of fiscal discipline. When fortunes begin to reverse, the urgency to cut spending, find savings and use resources more efficiently wanes.

Press’ wake-up a nightmare for Obama

If a scandal falls in Washington and the media heavyweights ignore it, does it make a noise?

Success starts with a good mom

Going through my mother's things, I came across my sixth-grade report card. Ouch. Your permanent record is less painful viewed through the filter of an aging memory than it is on paper.

Trump looks at Detroit, and 2016

The host of television’s “Celebrity Apprentice” was more optimistic about the Motor City than he was about the GOP, which he says is tying itself in knots to pander for votes.

Column: Detroit settles on new police chief

Detroit may be just a week or two away from having a new police chief. A job offer should go out late this week to Cincinnati Police Chief James Craig, a native Detroiter who is the consensus choice of Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr and the city's Police Commission.

Column: Let’s all stop trashing Detroit

Detroit may as well be a designated garbage dump for the way we treat it. Nobody’s innocent. Detroiters blame suburbanites for coming into the city for fireworks, boat races and the like and leaving behind mountains of trash. And that’s true. But it’s also true that litter is ankle deep along almost any Detroit street, thrown there by residents who have to live among it.

Good luck, work, shield us from terror

It's better to be lucky than good. Better still to be both lucky and good.

Still clinging to our guns

Expanding background checks to include the few commercial transactions for which they're not already required should have been easy. It would have given anti-gun zealots a meaningless victory and would have put to rest, at least for now, the post-Newtown assault on the Second Amendment.

Finley: Why the media ignored Philly doctor’s trial

For the past 18 days, the wizards at the University of Michigan Mott Children’s Hospital have been working their magic to give my newest grandson the opportunity to live.

Obama lives high on our dime

On the same night I began hunting for the scraps of paper I'll need for my tax return, President Barack Obama, his wife, kids and a bunch of their buddies were enjoying a live concert of Memphis soul music in a White House now closed to the public because of budget sequestration.

Agema bigotry opens door to new GOP voices

Perhaps some good will come out of the latest embarrassment for the Republican Party, the one wrought by Michigan GOP national committeeman Dave Agema.