Remiel

I disagree. It may be correct or incorrect, but it is not completely subjective.

I think it is something of an error to equate these two situations, Michael. The power of the federal government is different from that of a provincial government. Sure, the provincial government has a lot of authority to execute laws, but the federal government has much more authority to make them.

Or maybe I somehow missed the other thread... Oops...

I am kind of surprised no one has posted this yet. http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/06/03/pol-senate-page.html The first part of this I understand, and obviously firing this girl, Brittany DePape, was the correct response. In fact, she may even be lucky if that is the only consequence of her action, which was civil disobedience of a very high order, I think. But the suggestion that this raises "serious security concerns" is, I find, more scandalous than the incident itself. A young girl does her job for almost a year, and then protests in an extremely blatant but entirely peaceful way, and we are all of a sudden supposed to head for the hills because their "security" has been "compromised"? What is this country coming to when every form of protest is suddenly a major "cause for concern"?

There is no justfication for killing looters of shops or homes that does not also properly entail the killing of looters of economies and nations, and yet strangely the first is reflexive while the second is alien.

It seems to me that this study is only a measure of those who are speaking in turn, and probably does not account for heckling. Which, if you read carefully, has been mentioned as a problem. Until I can see the actual study for myself I would not be taking it for the whole truth. Civility, by itself, is not worth a whole Hell of a lot.

Quebec and Ontario do not rule the Senate. They only have fourty-eight of one hundred and five seats. Were it changed, Ontario and Quebec would have less than 20% of the seats and more than 50% of the population. And while it is certainly not the case that rep-by-pop is an enormously important principle to the Senate, given the dynamics of Canada I would not be surprised to see Ontario and Quebec intentionally hosed often enough. Equal representation only works well in the United Stats Senate, despite the inordinate size discrepancies, because there are fifty states with their own interests, most of which are not easily grouped together. Our ten provinces and three territories would have a vastly different dynamic. Even in Australia, which has six states, the biggest and smallest states are about seven million and five hundred thousand respectively, as opposed to our thirteen million and one hunded fifty thousand. And I doubt they have a similar regional dynamic to us.

I do not I was off the mark so much as I meant it weakly, not strongly. The marriage issue is what I think I specifically had in mind when I first wrote. That the state has not sanctioned secular marriage when this has been a known problem for years suggests at least a minimal religious influence. Alright, my mistake then. Okay, I knew about the Russian issue, but I was not familiar enough to understand whether the Russian "Jews" were really fake Jews or whether there was some underlying prejudice. On the issue of Ethiopians, when you say they are fake Jews, do you mean all Ethiopian "Jews" are fake, or that small contingent of them were? I had thought it was, for instance, genetically shown that the Ethiopian "Jewish" community was related to the other Jewish groups.

Depends on what you mean by Jewish, anyway. As far as I know, most of the founders (like Ben-Gurion) and theorists (like Herzl) wanted a secular Jewish state; a state for people who were ethnically Jewish. What it has transformed into however is both the full meaning of Jewish as an ethnic and religious identity. So, arguable, "a" Jewish state could easily be a democracy but "the" Jewish state has already walked down the religious path and it may be difficult to reverse it. Israel as it is is democratic but it is not a true democracy. Now, there are probably many discussions of what would have to be done for Israel to be a true democracy. It is obviously not the case that religious Jewishness has to be disentangled from the state entirely. But for starters, I think it is toxic to the health of the state that religious authorities have so much power over who is eligible for citizenship in the Jewish state under the Law of Return. It is ridiculous. I mean, given the belief that Jews are despised, how would it mak elogical sesne that any individual would pretend to be Jewish in their country of origin?

Well, more or less perhaps. New Brunswick and Nova Scotia (and I presume PEI, which was party to the original negotiations, though it did not join until a couple of years later) would never have joined without having an upper chamber to protect them to some degree from the provinces of Canada, which even then were much greater in size. I am not sure how much this aspect had to do with sober second thought rather than just legislative checking.

An argument revolving around the fact that the Senate costs X is incomplete. The cost of the not-Senate, Y, must also be provided. And I guarantee you Y is not 0.

That is nuts. Intrafaith Jewish religious violence confuses me. Like, WTF?

I am sure it will not be an amendment, and that is exactly why it is useless.

Refresh what? You know the average term of a Senator is only twelve years anyway, right? Not a great leap from the eight the "law" is proposing.

That certainly makes it sound as if it is the provinces that will be responsible for paying for these elections. Talk about passing the buck... All it takes is one person to launch a Supreme Court challenge and the first law would be toast anyway. There is no way they would be able to hold up the term limit provision. It is clearly at odds with what the Constitution permits Senators.

You are making a lot of assumptions here about the quality of MPs and the potential quality of Constitutional delegates that are unwarranted. Perhaps I was not clear enough, but I was thinking such a body would not just be giving a yea or nay, but would have the greater hand in formulating the proposal that would be voted on by the federal government and the provinces. That is to say, you have it somewhat backwards. After all, this group would not be meant to replace the amending formula in any way, they would be meant to formulate the amendments.

Given the particulars of the previous statement, this is a little ambiguous. Do you mean why should Harper recognize Hamas by suggesting they should recognize Israel? The Land of Israel is about the last place on Earth where one should reflexively regard the terrorist label as meaning that a particular party cannot ever be negotiated with, given the transformations of both the Irgun and Fatah into more or less legitimate political actors. I have even read one article in the Jerusalem Post which argued that the very term "terrorist" should not be applied to such groups in Iran because they were effectively allies of Israel. While I doubt this extremely hypocritical notion is widespread even among the hardened right-wing from which it emerged, it does suggest that actions need not be dictated by such labels (all of the time). At the end of the day, terrorists are just a variety of enemy, and the best way to defeat an instituional enemy usually lies not in destroying them, but rather by bringing about (or allowing for) the conditions under which they must change.

There is definitely a way in which it would be an argument for not having direct democracy, but I do not think that it is an argument that carries against the democratic imperative. In theory, after all, direct democracy is basic. It precedes (or ought to precede) representative democracy in the sense that it establishes representative democracy. I will say this though, as a matter of compromise, that if one does not trust the general electorate to make decisions about the Constitution, and if one does not trust that traditional elite decision making by federal and provincial leaders is democratically sufficient, then it seems to me that the solution may be to hold elections for a special legislative body meant to deal solely with the matters of the Constitution, and which would be dissolved once the final decision had been made.

I saw that yesterday. I do not think Netanyahu was entirely unjustified in taking issue with the proposed statement mentioned the 1967 borders but not other elements Obama had mentioned, though it does seem on balance that it was highly questionable for Harper to go along with it.

Technically speaking, welfare states are somewhat path dependant. That is to say that it tends to be rather difficult, if not impossible, to entirely dismantle one, or even change what sort of welfare state it is. This is why Reagan and Thatcher, though we usually think of them of having been terrible (and they were), were nevertheless unable to achieve the full extent of their desired reforms. Also, Smallc and g_bambino, I think you guys are missing the point on representation. Just because we have MPs and call them our representatives does not make them truly (as opposed to rhetorically) representative in the way that is necessary for Constitutional matters in this day and age. Especially given the fact that people apparently do not understand how our representative system actually works, and it is rather questionable who exactly MPs are representing anymore (as oft times they seem more like they are representing the government to the people, not the people to the government).

I think I must agree with Smallc here that what you are suggesting is, at best, kind of pointless. Allowing the future-Prime Minister to appoint the position is only neglibly better that allowing the current-Prime Minister. I also think, however, that your suggestion for the Premiers selecting could be workable (and a somewhat appropriate throwback to the federal nature of the country). I would suggest under such a system it must, however, be unanimous consensus, and perhaps with the additional provision that nominations for consideration be in some way public.

While you are entitled to your opinion, and may even be right about some of their more harmful effects, I really do think the ship has sailed on the issue of direct democracy and Constitutional change. There is really no good reason to suppose that a state can simultaneously ignore its citizens and be legitimate. If the people themselves cannot exert their say on issue of the Constitution directly, then the country is truly a sham of a democracy. This is not necessarily to say, however, that the sort of widespread consultations that were had in the last round have to be exactly duplicated. There is still some room for discretion in who decides what question should be voted on.

This could actually become more problematic, at least in the UK if not here, when Charles likely eventually succeeds his mother. There was an article I read not so long ago that he very much engages in political activities unbecoming of a monarch, though I suppose it may be hasty too judge that he would continue to abuse his position once he was on the throne.

This is not really any different than the 1980 referral to the Supreme Court, however, where they basically said that Trudeau could unilaterally change the Constitution but would be an idiot to do so.

Whether it has been obtained privately is not of particular consequence when one considers the conditions in which it may yet be obtained have never never themselves been obtained.