"To love someone," wrote Jean Vanier, "is to show them their beauty, their worth, and their importance." That can be a tall order, but a few Halifax members of the Asperger's Syndrome Parents' Empowerment Network give it a good shot in this short video, produced by Halifax filmmakers John Hillis, Michael MacDonald, Caley MacLennan, Kimberlee McTaggert, Andrew Starzomski, and Amy Spurway: H/T: Valerie Patterson...

In an email cri de coeur last week, musician Robert Speirs lambasted Halifax TV newscasters for publishing the names of five men allegedly lured into motel meetings with a police officer they believed to be a a 16-year-old girl. Bill Turpin, former editor of the late lamented Halifax Daily News, makes the case for printing names of people accused of crimes, even bogus crimes concocted to entrap them. I understand Mr. Speirs’ distress over the plight of the men identified as the accused in the on-line child luring case last week and his sense that the media are persecuting them. But publicity...

[caption id="attachment_11400" align="alignleft" width="125"] McGuire[/caption] [caption id="attachment_11401" align="alignright" width="125"] Cannon[/caption] In the moral panic that arose in response to Tom Flanagan's comments on child pornography last week, most of those who rushed to join the lynch mob were guilty of self-righteousness abetted by misrepresentation. CBC New executive Jennifer McGuire and University of Calgary President Elizabeth Cannon, however, deserve special mention for their failure to uphold the responsibility their instituions have for protecting controversial speech. Both had a duty to uphold a core principle of their organizations, and they weren't up to the task....

Two reader responses to the angry rant from a utility customer who objected to receiving generic holiday greetings at Christmastime. Jeffrey Shallit writes: This guy represents everything that is bad about Christian North America. He doesn't understand freedom of religion; he feels so threatened by non-Christians he wants to resort to violence; and he assumes everyone who is Canadian is necessarily Christian (forget about all those damned, Jews, I suppose, not to mention native Canadians who might follow traditional native religions). Although not Jewish myself, I grew up in a suburb of Philadelphia that was predominantly Jewish. Many lost members of their family...

As you have no doubt heard, police busted a house at Southside Boularderie Island yesterday, just a few miles down the road from Contrarian HQ. They found an eyebrow-raising array of firearms, along with cocaine, ecstasy, steroids, and my personal favorite, pot. An RCMP news release cataloged the seized items in a handy bulleted list. The release also included this statement from Inspector John Ryan: Yesterday's seizure reinforces the clear link between drugs and violence. Wrong. Yesterday's seizure reinforces the clear link between prohibition and violence. Eliminate the prohibition on drugs, and you'll eliminate the artificial prices that enrich and encourage gun-toting thugs. Overnight. Al Capone taught our grandparents this...

In a tacit acknowledgement that Community Services bolloxed the crisis it brought on at Cape Breton's Talbot House Recovery Centre, the province has stripped the department of responsibility for all five addiction recovery centres in Nova Scotia. From now on, provincial funding, service agreements, and oversight will fall under the Department of Health and Wellness. [caption id="attachment_11009" align="alignleft" width="200"] Peterson-Rafuse[/caption] The decision comes just in time for Health to assume responsibility for evaluating a proposal from Talbot House to restore provincial funding it received as Cape Breton's only addiction recovery centre. That avoids the sticky problem of having Community Services officials, with...

Contractors belatedly install a wheelchair ramp at the Chickenburger outlet on Queen St. in Halifax Monday afternoon. Background here. Congratulations to Gus Reed for making HRM a little more inclusive than it was yesterday. The city insists that installing the ramp was a condition of Mickey MacDonald's "temporary" occupancy permit all along, but the chronology of events tells a different story. July 4 — Reed, who uses a wheelchair, meets with MacDonald to protest against the newly opened restaurant's inaccessibility. The owner is adamant that a ramp is not feasible. July 6 — Reed writes to Brad Anguish, HRM's Director, Community & Recreation Services, to complain...

Contrarian reader Denis Falvey, a physician and retired Armed Forces Major, responds to our curmudgeonly friend's tale of abuse at the hands of the province's doctor and patient monitoring program prescription monitoring program: Your curmudgeonly friend is correct, on pretty much all points. The so-called war on drugs, like any war, is having serious consequences for innocent bystanders. And, like most wars, it has devolved into destructive nonsense. Drugs are illegal as a result of a misguided attempt to impose morality, back in the early 20th century. After a generation of murder and mayhem, alcohol prohibition was seen by virtually everyone to be...

A curmudgeonly friend writes: Last winter, the Nova Scotia Prescription Monitoring Program ruined my wife’s first vacation in eight years. The Program exists to restrain the abuse of prescription drugs, something I thought prescriptions themselves were for. To this end, among other things, the Program provides the police with information about legal (that is to say legal) drugs you are taking (you may have thought that information was confidential). But the hammer in the Program’s toolbox is its ability to intimidate doctors out of doing what they believe is right for their patients. To wit, from the Program’s FAQ: “If the Program has reason to believe...

Chickenburger, the iconic Halifax restaurant chain, recently opened a new outlet in a renovated building on Queen St., just off Spring Garden Road. Despite the requirements of the NS Building Code Act, the renovations did not include wheelchair access. No one who uses a wheelchair can eat at Chickenburger. No one who uses a wheelchair can work at Chickenburger. How can this happen in 2012? How can a community-spirited businessman like Mickey MacDonald thumb his nose at potential customers and employees who use wheelchairs? More importantly, how did the city allow this to happen? HRM is one of the most over-regulated cities in...