The Whitest Kids U'Know present Matt Clint for Senator: Money Quote: For the last 15 years, I've lived my life in such a bland, uncontroversial, and repressed manner that it's almost unnatural. Why? Because I've been preparing to be your representative since I was a child....
A Toronto police officer enters a defunct film studio lot that has been fortified for use as a detention center for protesters arrested during next week's G8 and G20 summit meetings. The temporary jail stretches along a lengthy portion of Eastern Ave. in Toronto's Leslieville neighborhood. Satellite imagery shows the dormant film studio between Eastern Ave. and Lake Shore Blvd., before its conversion into a summit detention center. Security officials will not confirm that the newly fortified and heavily policed compound will serve as a temporary jail, but the taking of these photos Saturday attracted polite but persistent questioning...
Workers install security fencing near the CBC building on Front Street in Toronto in preparation for next week's G8 and G20 summits. This is not the perimeter fence, but one of a series of internal fences that will form - take your pick - an obstacle course, security sub-zones, or guides to assist in herding any demonstrators who may penetrate the outer perimeter. The National Post has a graphic depicting the scale of the $1.2 billion security lockdown to be enforced by 7,100 police and para-police. Facilities to be closed during the weekend include the Rogers Centre, the Princess of Wales Theatre,...
The Lewiston (NY) - Queenston (ON) Bridge Friday morning. I...
The US blogosphere is in a lather over a video of US Sen. Bob Ethridge (D-NC), looking tired and emotional, grabbing a student who tried to question him on a DC sidewalk. Glenn Greenwald wants the Senator charged with assault. Lest we be too smug, remember how then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien, apparently sober, throttled Emploment Insurance protester Bill Clennett at a Flag Day rally in 1996, throwing him to the ground and breaking one of his teeth. A third party did lay a charge of assault against Chretien, but the Attorney General of Quebec declined to proceed with the case....
Most of the dignitaries had cleared out by the time Contrarian showed up for an inaugural stroll along Louisbourg's freshly opened Lighthouse Trail Saturday. The footing is sure, the viewscapes sublime. The eponymous lighthouse, near the site of the original 1731 structure erected by the French, is down at the heels. Commemorative plaques placed on the lighthouse by the Historical Sites and Monuments Board of Canada display a curious bit of politically correct non-evenhandedness: The French displayed "valour and endurance against overwhelming odds." The British? They were "commanded by Gorham and Wolfe." C'est la Guerre!...
First Fivethirtyeight.com gets Canadian politics bassackwards, now the Daily Dish's Andrew Sullivan compounds the error: The Americanization of British politics continues. First the TV debates, now fixed parliamentary terms. If that's true, it means that the new government will not be a caretaker before another snap election, but a potential fusion of the Liberal and Tory brands over several years - perhaps the embryo of a whole new center-right party. It feels a little like Canada's Progressive Tories. [Emphasis added.] Canada's Progressive Tories? How is it possible for US* journalists to misperceive Canadian politics so utterly? The Conservative Party of Canada was...
One hates to discourage any American foray in Canadian political analysis, but Fivethirtyeight.com [bad link fixed], the normally reliable US political blog that draws on the statistical tools of Sabermetrics, badly bollixed one such attempt yesterday. The website, which is predicting a near Conservative majority in today's British election, carries an article by research assistant Thomas Dollar, urging Tory Leader David Cameron to follow Stephen Harper's example and "Go Big or Go Home." Moneyquote: Harper's 2008 budget would have cut Federal funding of parliamentary elections--to the benefit of the Conservatives. All opposition parties formed an ABC coalition--Anyone but Conservative--to defeat...
How does a government that takes human rights obligations seriously handle warnings of detainee abuse? It would be too easy to ignore these warning signs, only to find that detainees previously held by UK have been mistreated while in Afg hands. The fallout of that, as we have seen from Canada’s experience, would, at best, be unwelcome. Read on: Source. Hat tip: Cheryl Cook via @DougSaunders...
Writing on the US website The Daily Beast, Ottawa patent consultant and occasional Globe and Mail columnist Sheema Khan condemns Quebec Premier Jean Charest's bill to ban the traditional Muslim niqab. In a stand reminiscent of Maurice Duplessis's Grande Noirceur, Charest would ban religious veils on grounds they "subjugate" women. Khan, who holds a PhD in physics from Harvard, nails the double-standard at play: The most vehement reactions against face-veiling have come from women, who have projected their own fears, assumptions, and judgments onto attire worn by a minority within a minority. They think of the bad old...