Former Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, now secretary of Homeland Security for the U.S. government, is a staunch supporter of the death penalty. This is not a position I would normally agree with. However, when Ms. Napolitano refers to the Arizona Wo…
Continue readingAuthor: Bill Longstaff
U.S. follows lead of Taliban Jack
Googling the history of our Afghanistan adventure the other day, I encountered a snide Vancouver Sun article written in 2008 mocking “Taliban Jack” for his position on the war, sarcastically summarizing his views as, “Bring in the UN, facilitate disc…
Continue readingWar on drugs busted
Reports criticizing the War on Drugs are manifold but few carry the cachet of the Report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy. Issued this month, the report commissioners are a uniquely prestigious group that include the former presidents of Brazil,…
Continue readingWill the Conservative majority placate the West?
The West has in the past had a number of grievances against Ottawa, some legitimate, some not so much. The sense of grievance is strongest in Alberta for various reasons not the least of which was Pierre Trudeau’s National Energy Program of 1980. One b…
Continue readingDon’t mess with my vote, Jack
With 59 of their 103 seats in Quebec, we could expect the NDP to pay close attention to Quebec’s concerns. That would, of course, be appropriate. But what I wouldn’t have expected them to do is propose eroding the democratic rights of the rest of us in…
Continue readingObama and the Middle East—time for the Yankee to go home?
I realize that U.S. President Barack Obama is now campaigning for the 2012 election. And I realize also the importance of Jewish support to his campaign. And I recognize the need for politicians to pander to important constituencies. But did he have to…
Continue readingSheila Fraser—an honourable public servant
In our habitual government-bashing, we sometimes overlook the splendid contributions made to our society by our civil servants. Such a contribution, manifesting integrity and commitment to public service at its best, has been exemplified for the past t…
Continue readingDandelions win one!
Finally, a victory for that cheerful harbinger of spring, the common dandelion. The Alberta government has removed the little yellow fellow from the list of noxious weeds in the province’s Weed Control Act. Municipal bylaw officers will now no longer b…
Continue readingThe Better Life Index is a better measure
The search for a better measure of standard of living just got a big boost with the launch of Your Better Life Index by the OECD. The need for an alternative to the ubiquitous but misleading, if not outright dangerous, GDP is underlined when the presti…
Continue readingCalendar note: Sunday, May 22 is the International Day for Biological Diversity
Recognizing that the Earth’s biological resources are essential to humanity’s economic and social welfare, yet species and ecosystems are threatened as never before, the United Nations established The Convention on Biological Diversity in 1993. The C…
Continue readingReflections on the murder of Osama bin Laden
At the end of the Second World War, the Americans and their allies captured a pack of Nazis, an assortment of the most evil men on Earth. They could have lined them up against a wall and shot them and there would have been little argument. But, as the …
Continue readingWhen is bad financial management good financial management?
Consider two events and the responses to these events by two different governments. The events are remarkably similar. A party is elected to government at a time when the economy is healthy and then is blindsided by a recession referred to as the worst…
Continue readingFirst-past-the-post creates a conservative English Canada vs. a progressive Quebec
The NDP scored a number of firsts for itself in the 2011 election: the first time with seats in the triple digits, the first time as Official Opposition, the first time with strength in Quebec, and so on.
This is also the first time it has beaten the …
Continue readingMassive dual win for Harper—a majority and a Liberal Party in ruins
Stephen Harper has long had two goals, a short-term goal of winning a majority government and a long-term goal of destroying the Liberal Party. Last night he achieved the first and got a good start on the second, both in convincing fashion.
Of course …
Continue readingMeasuring democracy
It wouldn’t surprise anyone if they were told that the rich have more influence on government than the rest of us. Some scholars in the U.S. have gone further than assume this, they have actually measured it, and the results are intriguing.
Professor …
Continue readingAllan Blakeney … death of a statesman
As politicians of all sorts battle another election down to the wire, I’d like to pay my respects to one of the best. Allan Blakeney died April 16th leaving behind an impressive legacy.
Blakeney was an achiever from the beginning. He followed a gold m…
Continue readingMurdoch’s mischief … the excesses of freedom
If you were to suggest that the most powerful man in British political politics today was Prime Minister David Cameron, I would respectfully disagree. I would suggest it is Britain’s most powerful press lord, Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch’s News Internationa…
Continue readingOne man’s hero …
Two items in the news recently underlined the old difficulty of agreeing on who is a terrorist.
Last week a court in The Hague found Ante Gotovina, a Croatian commander in the 1990s war against the Serbs, guilty of waging a campaign of terror, bombing…
Continue readingPembina Institute evaluates party posltions on the environment
For a capsule look at the various parties’ environmental platforms from the perspective of an environmental research group focusing on energy, the Pembina Institute offers the following:
Bloc Québécois:
The party supports a science-based 2020 target…
Vermonters tackle corporations-as-citizens issue
According to a poll by ABC News, 76 per cent of Americans oppose their Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision to grant corporations the same rights as individuals when it comes to political speech and can therefore freely use their profits to support or oppose…
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