Michigan governor likes 'year of our Lord'

LANSING, Mich., March 29 (UPI) -- Michigan's Gov. Jennifer Granholm wants "in the year of our Lord" returned to the date on official state documents.

The phrase was removed -- the Democratic governor was not consulted -- and replaced with numerals the day she took office 15 months ago, according to the governor's spokeswoman Liz Boyd.

Granholm's legal counsel, Kelly Keenan, told the Detroit Free Press the decision to stop using the phrase was based on the (Granholm's) administration's belief that it was "pretty insensitive" to non-Christians."

"We have Bahai ... and Buddhist friends," Keenan said, and the governor is a fan of the plain English movement in legal writing and the elimination of the phrase was "no great anti-Christian conspiracy."

The Free Press said the U.S. Constitution included the phrase, but the Web site of the Council for Secular Humanism said, "Conventional forms of dating have nothing to do with religious commitment or belief."

Boyd added she is not sure the governor was all that thankful the issue was brought in the first place.