While you were nursing your New Year's eve hangover or embedded in the myriad of football bowl games on the telly,  you probably missed the hard-hitting editorial that graced the editorial page of the Freep on Friday last.

      It was noteworthy for its "take-no-hostage" stance on the three "leaders" in the Michigan legislature, namely Gov. Jennifer Granholm, House Democratic Speaker Andy Dillon and last but not least Oakland County's own Mike Bishop at the helm of the senate GOP caucus.

      Seems the newspaper could not find one nice thing to say about the trio.

      Granholm took the biggest hit with this: "Gov. Jennifer Granholm has lived up to precisely none of the promise she exuded when she was elected in 2002."

      Dillon and Bishop were tagged with being "equally weak figures."

      The Speaker appears to be all talk and no action regarding his now infamous attempt at revamping the public employee health care system.  The paper notes he "hasn't pushed hard for it even in his own wing of the Capitol.'

      Bishop is described as the "biggest talker about the need for reform" but the paper says it's been just that, all talk.

      In fairness, the governor  had zero control over the auto industry, could do little about the depression like climate in the state as no governor can turn an economy around. 

     Dillon still has time to get some sort of health care reform even though it will not be the one he proposed and it will likely be rolled into an even bigger package of "reforms" soon to surface after the first of the year.

     As for Bishop, he gave no ground on the governor's demands to raise revenue to mute some of the $1.2 billion in service cuts Bishop demanded.

While the red-meat and right-wing of his party will pat him on the head for that, those who follow this stuff from a more moderate vantage point, argue there was a need to compromise but Bishop refused.  Points off for that.

    The relationship between the three has never been worse, but only they can decide to do something  about that.

    For the good of the state, maybe they will.

    If they don't, the Freep won't be the only news folks on their case.