The management of the Lakeside Bar and Grill, Camden, Tennessee, has exercised its discretion to bar firearms. ...

14 December, 2009

In light of the seemingly imminent demise of Canada's long gun registry, readers may be interested in the latest gun control developments in the United States, where the Associated Press reports that 24 states have passed 47 new laws loosening gun restrictions over the last two years. Arizona, Florida, Louisiana and Utah have made it illegal for businesses to bar employees from storing guns in cars parked on company lots. Tennessee and Montana have passed laws that exempt weapons made and owned in-state from federal restrictions. In Tennessee, this would include the .50-caliber shoulder-fired rifle made by Barrett Firearms Manufacturing, which the...

14 December, 2009

Haligonian Warren Reed has a sobering take on our discussion about potential "cures" for people with Down syndrome: I am still stuck on the Down Syndrome thread.  As Canadians with disabilities will tell you, Canada has a medical model of disability. The approach is, "let's fix what's wrong with you," rather than, "let's fix what's wrong with us." Hence the inaccessible buses, devilish sidewalks, and antediluvian building codes. The result is a hidden and large group of people who are disenfranchised, undervalued, ignored, and sometimes abused.  See the shocking account in Monday's Chronicle-Herald. One of my big defeats was an unsuccessful complaint...

11 December, 2009

Contrarian reader Cliff White writes: What a wonderful letter: short, succinct, to the point, and balanced. I've personally found this whole affair very disturbing.  Although the media in general have been very good in following it and keeping it on the front burner, they have also, at times, let what seems to me the main issues slide out of focus. The issue is not whether there was proof that Canadian detainees were tortured. Anyone with a scintilla  of sense knew torture by Afghan forces was common place and it you'd have to be a complete fool to suggest that, for some reason, only...

11 December, 2009

Ten days ago, we speculated on the embarrassment Globe and Mail journalists must feel over columnist Christie Blatchford's obsequiousness to the Harper government, as displayed in her columns attacking diplomat Richard Colvin. Paul Wells of Maclean's has an interesting and detailed follow-up in his Inkless Wells blog. Moneyquote: In 20 years in journalism I have never seen anything resembling the systematic and sustained repudiation to which Christie Blatchford, the Globe and Mail’s marquee columnist, is being subjected by her own newspaper. There is room in any good paper for disagreements among colleagues, and frankly there should, for a long time now,...

11 December, 2009

The following is the full text of the open letter from 38 former Canadian ambassadors, protesting the Harper government's attacks on Richard Colvin: The issues raised by the Richard Colvin affair are profound. Colvin, a Foreign Service Officer dedicated to discharging his responsibilities to the best of his ability under difficult circumstances, was unfairly  subjected to personal attacks as a result of his testimony provided in response to a summons from a parliamentary committee. While criticism of his testimony was perfectly legitimate, aspersions cast on his personal integrity were not. A fundamental requirement of a Foreign Service Officer is that he or she...

09 December, 2009

Twenty-three former Canadian ambassadors have condemned the Harper Government's treatment of diplomat Richard Colvin in a letter released to The Globe and Mail. The ambassadors singled out Peter MacKay, who accused Colvin of accepting the word of "people who throw acid in the faces of schoolchildren." "[MacKay] savaged [Colvin] in public, and ridiculed him, and that's not the way to treat a guy who's doing his job," Paul Durand, a former Canadian ambassador to the Organization of American States, to Chile and to Costa Rica, told the Globe. "He is not a whistleblower. He was hauled before a parliamentary committee and...

08 December, 2009

The UK Telegraph has a witty tee-up for the Copenhagen conference, where celebrity travel and other extravagances will produce the equivalent of 41,000 tonnes of CO2, an amount equal to that produced by a small British city over the same period. Among the nuggets: [T]his being Scandinavia, even the prostitutes are doing their bit for the planet. Outraged by a council postcard urging delegates to "be sustainable, don't buy sex," the local sex workers' union – they have unions here – has announced that all its 1,400 members will give free intercourse to anyone with a climate conference delegate's pass. The term...

08 December, 2009

James Fallows, the Atlantic writer who is a thoughtful observer of US foreign affairs and an admirer of President Obama, says the president's newly announced war strategy rests on two "judgment calls." 1) Whether Al Qaeda/related terrorist groups really do depend so heavily on a specific geographic base in Afghanistan that, if the U.S. can disrupt them there, we won't have to apply similar efforts later on in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, or anyplace else. 2) Whether a limited increase in U.S. troops, for a limited amount of time, really can make a decisive difference -- in the long-term stability of the Afghan...

08 December, 2009

Contrarian reader Dana Doiron offers a subtly different take on Elizabeth May's performance in the recent Munk debate on climate change: I suspect that May was uncomfortable with the black and white (not another crayon issue) framing of the proposition.  One can support individual and collective action in response to climate change without making it the end-all and be-all, just as one can support our soldiers while having reservations about the conflict to which they have been deployed....

08 December, 2009
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