BHS

Four words: Right to self defence. Most of those protestors cross the line which constitutes assault. I would hope doctors would receive support from the police (and court if necessary) in defending themselves and their property from assault and trespass. I'm more concerned these days with laws which would transform pharmacies from government-regulated monopoly providers of drugs into government-sanctioned monopolies which spread political or religious ideology instead of medication -- doing things like denying people the morning-after contraception pill, or HIV treatment drugs to gay men with HIV, based on "religious freedom" grounds. Pharmacies are so heavily regulated (and rare due to those regulations) that such a situation could become a nightmare for day-to-day meds. Abortion clinics in Canada have been successful in obtaining injunctions against protestors when necessary. As far as the police doing anything directly, I wouldn't hold your breath. Unless an actual physical fight broke out between protestors and patients they probably wouldn't do anything without an injunction in place. But you're going to have to point out an example of abortion protestors actually assaulting patients before you can convince me that you're worried about something real. And please, don't conflate loonies with rifles sniping abortion doctors in their homes with little old born again ladies handing out pamphlets. I've only ever heard of American pharmacists refusing to carry birth control, and I've never heard of a pharmacist refusing to carry AIDS/HIV medication anywhere. So I don't know what you're talking about, mentioning "day to day meds". Pharmacists are private businessmen who make their living supplying drugs. The broader the range of medications they carry, the more money they make. Besides which, having the right to buy and possess birth control doesn't mean having the right to buy it conveniently.

Yes <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I got a good book for Christmas. "The Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations" It's lot's of fun. Heeere's a good one .... "If Jesus had been killed 20 years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses." - Lenny Bruce (1925-66) Lenny would have been better off making a joke about them wearing a pot leaf or somesuch, as an indirect reference to his being stoned. Keeping in mind, that the neighbourhood where Jesus died probably didn't do executions by electric chair in the 1940s. Whatever. It was funnier before I wrote it down.

What a magnificent contribution to the forum. I'm looking forward to tons of inspiring reading from you.

He could also have been mugged by the legions of pissed off people in Ontario. It could have happened. I don't think there's enough teachers in Ontario to be considered "legions". Apparently you aren't familiar with their pension fund.

Wrong, there is 1% natural population growth... Population growth = Births - Deaths. The conclusion you've drawn from your formula is wrong: Net immigration (from the first post) is now being taken to mean immigration minus emmigration, and net reproduction is taken to mean births minus deaths. Please have a look at this table from Stats Canada. Taking away net immigration as a source of increased population, the average yearly net reproduction for the years 1996 to 2001 is 123 200 from a population base of 29 611 000, or about 0.4% per year, less than half of what you've calculated. The more interesting thing I notice in reviewing the Births column is that, despite a sizeable increase in the base population, the number of births from 1996-2001 is the lowest number since pre-1902. After 1931 the number of births deteriorates from cencus to cencus except for the post-war baby boom census. So not only is the argument that we're reproducing out of control not hold any water, it hasn't held any water for the better part of a century.

Black Dog: This is probably the best single paragraph I've ever read outlinining a legitimate reason for maintaining the status quo as regards the abortion issue. It requires some consideration. The reasoning is sound: if life begins at conception, so does child abuse. Anything an expectant mother does, that is in any way perceived as a potential threat to the child, might lead to restrictions on her behaviour under the strictest conceivable circumstances. (I could branch off here to expound on my distaste for nanny-statism and the "safety first" culture, but I'll hold my tongue for now.) However I believe, and I may be wrong about this, that abortion is considered a privacy issue as opposed to a child abuse/infanticide issue because there is an underlying assumption that personhood under the law begins at birth. I don't believe that overturning Roe would necessarily render this assumption invalid. The envisioned travel restrictions and post-procedural legal repercussions then become issues not of privacy versus child abuse but about freedom of the person and the presumption of innocence versus criminalizing a medical procedure that's been AMA approved. It's interesting to consider how SCOTUS and the lower courts would deal with these types of restrictions.

quinton: In your initial post you cite 1% population growth, being 300 000 new citizens per year for a country with a population of about 30 000 000, which works out well enough mathematically. I notice however that you've neglected to subtract the number of people who've died in the same year, which according to Stats Canada is about 225 000 (give or take, depending on the year). In other words, without 200 000 new immigrants per year Canada would experience a net population decrease. Any comment?

1) We aren't talking about unchecked population growth, we're talking about deliberately increasing population. 2) The ZPG movement disappeared in the eighties, due largely (I guessing) to the fact that doom and gloom prophets like Paul Ehrlich were wrong about every single prediction they ever made about the effects of increased population.

Sorry shoop. I got through "1) Stop injecting yourself with your own urine" but couldn't go any further, not after reading the other item headings on the first page. I'm not a big fan of Coulter (she's occasionally good for a laugh, with a grain of salt) but I couldn't read this. It was catty and superficial, which is appropriate for Coulter, but unlike her it wasn't funny at all. The guy could have at least been original. I heard most of these "humorous" suggestions aimed at Kate Moss a decade ago.

1) The NSA isn't a product of the Bush administration. It's policies and procedures were in place long before Bush came into power. 2) If checking out false leads indicates incompetency, then every law inforcement agent in the history of the universe is incompetent. I think you've set your ideal standards a little out of the real world's grasp. Um, which ones were the real leads? I guess you can't really be sure until you investigate, or unless you're an armchair terrorism expert from Edmonton who knows everything there is to know about who the "real" bad guys are and what motivates them. Here's the thing, though: because this was a classified program, we don't yet know (and may never know) exactly what sort of results it yielded. Cheney (or Big Time or whatever you call him) has indicated without going into detail that the program has yielded results. You can choose to think the whole thing is a crock and that he's lying to protect the administration's collective ass. Fine. Just keep in mind, the people who attack Bush every day on every issue they can, trying their damnest to discredit, impeach and indict him, have very little to say about this issue. The Democrats in the know about national security seem to be okay with this. By the way, it's kind of cute the way you slipped in the authoritarian canard at the very end. I'll have to remember to accuse the Dems of being authoritarian in every post I write after November '08. Except I won't because I think better of Dems than you do of the Republicans. (Hell, I think better of the Trotskyist loons who infest every protest march on University Ave in Toronto than you do of the Republicans.) Also, as I've stated in other threads, I genuinely believe that a free media and a vigilent public combined with a healthy, mature democratic political process place an effective constraint on government's natural tendency toward authoritarianism. In other words, I believe that government will always bend toward authoritarian impulses over time, but that our system of collective self-examination prevents government from going too far in that direction, and therefore our political process is ultimately self-correcting.

I thought McCarthyism was no longer a perjorative term for the U.S. right? Plus: I suppose you would rather have the process be a simple rubber stamp (given your apparent belief in the doctrine of Presidential Infallibility), but the fact is, these confirmation hearings have always been contensious: they're suppossed to be. Aren't you the guy who always complains about people putting words into your mouth? I don't recall Shady subscribing to any doctrine of Presidential infallibility. I think you're just making things up. Besides, the Dems only have one real issue when selecting SCOTUS justices: abortion. If they can't make a case against a Republican nomination on that issue, they flounder around looking for any sort of salacious accusation they can muster, no matter how weak and pathetic it is. Being contenscious for good reasons is fine; being contenscious because you hate the President personally and want thwart his every move is petty and ridiculous and does the Dems no good.

Whatever. He was the member of a conservative group, some of who's members espoused opinions that he didn't share. If you can find evidence that he shared these opinions, please feel free to link to it. Until then, your logic holds that every member of the DNC is a complete racist, because Robert Byrd was once a Grand Wizard of the KKK.

Except that, if you accept that Chappaquiddick automatically disqualifies Ted Kennedy from public life or a political opinion ever again, you must also accept the same for Laura Bush. Something tells me, however, that you don't. Hows that? Causing an accident is accidental (obviously). Leaving the scene of a fatal accident is a criminal act, one that would have sunk the political career of anyone not named Kennedy in Massachusetts. Besides which, Laura Bush isn't a public figure any more than is Vicki Kennedy. When Laura runs for office we'll talk. Until then, the comparison is ridiculous.

This was your assertion. I am for the protection of minorities, and the quote I provided from Alito pertained to his bias, which I felt was discriminatory (plus other material from the link I provided). This goes far beyond what the constitution has to say. There will always be admission abnormalites with minorities. All I'm saying is that there has to be an equitable way to solve the problem. I agree; quotas and percentages aren't always the best way to go. But what is the alternative? Academic standing alone negates cultural differences (identity, characteristics and traditions). I didn't argue for the mandatory admission quotas by the way. That was your perception. I went back and reread my first post, which contains the Alito quote you've since deleted. Alito said he was proud of his work against racial quotas, and you said I asked if you were for racial quotas, and then extrapolated the concept to show what racial quotas might come to, and if you would be for them under those circumstances. I didn't assert anything. You are the one making assertions: 1) that Alito's stance against racial quotas is driven by racial discrimination 2) that minorities will never achieve parity with the majority, and will therefore always have to be treated differently (Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!!) 3) That Alito's stance against racial quotas is somehow against what's in the Constitution (despite your apparent familiarity with the text of the 14th Amendment)

He pledged in his prior career not to rule on cases involving Vanguard (since he owned a significant share of their mutual funds). He then violated this sworn commitment later, and made rulings which had potentially direct impact on his own personal wealth. That's a failed character test, sorry. Readers who want to know more about this issue can read this Guardian article, which is hardly biased in Alito's favour. Please note that Alito's "sworn committment" was made on a Senate questionaire and not as a part of his judicial oath. Please also note that Alito's financial holdings were not directly affected by this ruling, and that Alito ruled correctly in the case. His ruling was vacated and a new panel hearing the case arrived at the same conclusion.

Except, of course, that Kennedy has been sitting in the Senate for forty years, and Laura Bush is a librarian. I'm sure plenty of conservative folk have accidently killed loved ones in car wrecks, but they aren't drunk politicians trying to hide their affairs by running away from car accidents either. And Democrats slam Laura for this all the time, like they slammed Alito's wife for crying. Because they would never cry when their loved ones are being publicly raked over the coals on the nakedly partisan assumption they espouse opinions they don't espouse. Or like the woman he's replacing. Because that's the real issue driving the thug tactics. If you hold Alito in lower regard than the people questioning him, I have serious doubts about you're ability to judge character.

That's a lousy comparison, in that it begs the question of whether a crime as been committed to begin with. As for murdering the constitution, I gather you're no fan of Roe v Wade either.

As did every administration throughout the twentieth century, to varying degrees. Besides which, if the next attack came from "protestors" or "political groups" that the administration had treated with kid gloves the anti-Bush people would be the first ones shrieking that Bush hadn't done his job, a la the 911 commission. As for using government resources for attacking political foes, I refer you to the precedent Clinton set when he used the FBI to dig up dirt on his enemies. Not that you're a big fan of Clinton either, and not that I'm defending the practice. It's just that I read a lot of posts in this forum that seem to imply that no presidential malfeasance predates January 2001.

There are other examples of incest in those books you've missed, including Lot's fathering children through his daughters. In Leviticus, the next book of the bible (and later in the Biblical narative) almost all forms of incest are expressly forbidden. Leviticus 18

We seem to have a chicken-or-egg conundrum going. Is there gang culture because of high incarceration rates or high incarceration rates because of gang culture? Similarly (but not), while I agree that the incarceration ratio of blacks to whites is unsatisfactorially high, I don't buy into the automatic assumption that this indicates a systematic failure of American justice. Generational poverty issues (stemming as much from poor lifestyle choices as from lack of opportunity) and the gang/ghetto culture they breed occurs at much to a higher proportion in the black demographic. Since we've already agreed that gang culture and incarceration are linked, does it not stand to reason that at least part of the problem of over-representation for blacks in prison populations stems from something other than white racism?

BD: I see you've tried in an earlier post to get me to refute your arguments about why what Bush has done (in a unique situation that neither Clinton nor Carter faced) is different from what Clinton and Carter did. But I'm not going to. You win. Well, sort of. The legality of FISA's curtailment of Presidential authority to approve wiretaps has never been tested by the Supreme Court and in such at test it would likely fail, so the likelihood of legal fallout is pretty much nil. And as Bush himself said (paraphrasing from memory), "If you're talking to Al Qaeda, we want to know about it". Which, in one short sentence, explains why there's unlikely to be any significant political fallout either. But I'm bored with this topic. My primary interest with this turn of events is how it compares to the Plame controversy. But as of this writing I've not yet heard anything more than rumours about an inquiry into the leak, so the whole thing has been pretty much off of my radar for about a week or so now.

Black Dog: I was going to reply in point-by-point mode, but I don't have enough to say to make it worthwhile. Good post though. I have to say, you've made a better case for PR than anyone I've ever encountered who was for it. One thing: contra your views on low voter turnout, my own opinion is that people stay away from the polls because they aren't worried about the outcome of the election. In other words, they don't care if the encumbents return to power, and aren't concerned if one of the other likely parties forms the government either. You might see this as a sense of powerlessness; I see it as a confirmation that things are going generally well with how the country is being governed or likely to be governed. Staying away from the polls is as valid an option in a free and well governed society as is scrupulous care in voting habits. I would like to add that while I have a strong dislike of both the Liberals and the Conservatives who came before them, I still do consider our government to be generally well run, and I owe that largely to the quality of our political process and Westminster heritage rather than to the quality of our politicians. (You might, at this point, point back to posts I've written previously calling for sweeping changes to the way our government is elected and run, which is fair. But the 1982 Constitution Act got the ball rolling as far as change goes, and there is really much point in going back to a more formally Westminster style of Parliament even if it were possible. I merely wish to see further changes made to counter the abuses of power that can be seen manifested in our current system.)

Sparhawk and sage: interesting posts and valid points.

Again, keeping in mind, that animals enjoy no protection as persons under the law. Laws preventing animal cruelty are a modern manifestation of our moral opinion of cruelty in general, but have no historical or constituional basis.

Agreed. But I think you will find that true of most crimes. I disagree. I think you'll find that most laws work to promote the public good even when removed from any moral or religious context. For instance, laws against speeding have no overt moral context. Further, even if murder were morally acceptible it would still be in society's best interest to ban it.