Kitchener

Good point. Let's criminalize alcohol.

Yes, a nine-point lead is the kiss of death in a fairly-run election. Fraud would be the worst explanation of its evaporating, when Republican officials have been working to scrub poor and black voters from the rolls in multiple states. Unless you have some positive reason to think that hang-up rates are higher for supporters of one candidate than another, then they are not an issue for representative results. Probably a larger issue is the prevalence of cellphones among the young, making them less likely to be sampled by at least some established polling methods. Since Obama seems to have polled higher among the young, when they are polled directly, the likeliest estimate is that polls have slightly underestimated support for Obama. How that will translate into actual votes, of course, is always an open question; but that has precisely zero to do with being "lied to" by that bogeyman "MSM".

Republicans are saying they support Obama in order to sound cool? Wow. Even Republicans think it's cool to support Obama. That's awesome.

Then it's irrelevant that you were born here, too; it was just a matter of luck. That should be a reductio, but now that I see it written out, I find it strangely reassuring. I find your attitudes no more Canadian than I find the Khadrs'.

Not really. Perhaps the biggest concern in the report (and biggest problem with the report, but never mind) was that very little could be done for Afghanistan unless the institutional corruption, amateurism, and tribalism entrenched in the government, judiciary, and police forces could be reversed sufficiently for the populace to begin trusting those institutions. Yet virtually nothing in the presence and combat actions of the CAF can plausibly be thought to remedy those endemic problems.

For the fourth time, they're not new. But I think you should call them new just one more time.

Right in the 10-ring.

That's why the economy just got better and better as GW Bush lowered taxes, until it reached the perfect point it's at now!

Sometimes it feels like this whole website is populated with people who read every tenth word and then fill in what they wish the post had said. After have broken it, yes. Like wearing gloves helps a murderer get away with breaking the law. Or is murder too not a crime unless you get caught? The fact that you think that electrons aren't physical, or that a computer isn't "a timing device", does not make radar unethical. It just means you don't have much of a clue.

Did something happen in the last few days to make this suddenly post-worthy? Anyhow, what's your problem with poor old JT staying at the helm? I certainly don't mind seeing the Ontario Conservatives with an unelectable leader.

Oh noes!! It's... INTERNET TUFF GUY!1!!

The lights would not be on at Maclean's without decades of massive public financial support. This "private publication" nonsense is rank hypocrisy. In 2006-7 alone, a single public program, the Publication Assistance Program, gave Maclean's over three million dollars in government money. If the chronic complainers about the CBC can cite their involuntary taxpaying support of it, so too can those who complain about supporting Maclean's as it becomes (still more of) a haven for right-wingnut shriekers like Steyn.

Explaining things to you is neither waxing philosophical about them nor ignoring them. Sorry your silly false dilemma fell apart. But that'd be your problem for writing it, not mine for pointing out its foolishness. By educating on how to avoid pregnancy in the first place: abstinence or contraception. It's not enough to bang on the keyboard, petal. You should have some basic clue first. That's a good question, which is why I mentioned it. Why don't you think about it instead of wetting your pants and spewing idiocy? But whatever rights a fetus might have, a woman certainly has rights over her body -- a fact that must be reflected in abortion law. The fact that this is obvious, I'm sure, is no barrier to your fumbling it and shouting your way through half-witted another strawman, but there you go: bodily rights have to be factored in. Here's another question for you to puzzle over with your customary degree of honest reflection: What rights would a fetus need, in order to oblige a woman to donate her body to it for months? How many people die on Earth every day because you wouldn't donate a month's wages to them, never mind nine months use of your body? Yes, it's official -- you've gone from foolish dishonesty to outright incoherence. Right. Nobody has ever had any degree of personal choice over whether and when they have children. You really have to start thinking, at least for half a moment, before making up stupid things and posting them as if you believe them.

...stupid strawmen that you project onto people you haven't met, in situations you don't know. But please, do assure us that "it's honest". Your uninformed convictions carry ever so much weight. Since I've done neither of these things, this would be just the latest in your relentless string of moronic misrepresentations.

No. Obviously they are meant to help people get away with breaking the law. FTA Lawyer's question marks basically say it all here. Radar isn't physical? Publish the paper; you'll be the most famous physicist in the world. Yes.

We're talking about actual things, not stuff you make up.

The slogan is about a goal (as slogans typically are) -- it's not meant to be a 3-word empirical study. "Rare" is an allusion to the conviction that an important way of addressing moral concerns about abortion is to educate about, and provide access to, contraception. Realism about the problem (as opposed to empty, ill-informed moralizing) requires seeing abortion policy and law as part of a general approach balancing bodily rights, reproductive autonomy, and the moral weightiness of unborn (and especially near-term) fetuses.

I suspect that neither you nor I knows what you're talking about now.

Yeah, possibly maybe, perhaps, some, may have, sort of. There's Dole, taking the hard stand in defense of reality. Problem is, there's basically nobody with clean hands left in the Repubs, the Dems, or the media to point out the hypocrisy of a turd like McLellan, when the topic is concocting, spreading, or rolling over for the deceptions and exciting chest-thumping of 2001-3.

I can't speak to the issue of what you notice or remember from TV. Personally I see virtually no supporters of abortion access on television outside of brief references during elections; and those I do see rarely get enough air-time to differentiate their positions from the one I just summarized. So it's hard to know what you take yourself to be saying here. But certainly the Democratic party in the US, and both especially both Clintons, have made "safe, legal, and rare" a mantra on the abortion issue over the past 15 years. Including on TV.

There's nothing even faintly problematic about holding that abortion is a blanket right, and finding some abortions appalling. One can similarly hold that free speech is a blanket right, while holding some people's utterances to be disgusting and shameful. Or that adults have the right to drink alcohol; yet that some people's drinking is appalling. The consistency of these attitudes is clear to anyone capable of stringing two thoughts together. Indeed, many supporters of access to abortion seem to have just such a consistent attitude; hence the slogan that abortions should be "safe, legal, and rare."

And the more apologizing and damage-control they have to do for it, the harder they'll think about allowing such practices next time. Similarly, I was all for a wide-scope investigation into Mulroney's lies and sleaze. Let's make it a complete no-brainer that if you take lobbyist money in paper sacks in hotel rooms, it will come back to haunt you for as long as you live. What word would you prefer -- a hysterical panic? The point of the thread is the revelation about the Liberals. I am contemptuous of the solid core of posters here who greet every Conservative gaffe and ethical brownout with "But the Liberals!" So... don't be like those posters. The Conservatives' efforts to reduce transparency is a concern, yes. But it's not the central point here. Then start a thread on it, or revive one of the existing threads on this topic.

Drag it out into the open; it's the only way. The Liberals should continue to have their noses rubbed in the messes they made. A concern is that the consistent efforts of the Conservatives to make it easier to hide government misconduct will result in fewer such revelations -- from any federal government, of whatever governing party.

Yes. But that too is true of the draft. And it's also not to say that we can't recognize and mitigate the dilemma of those caught in the situation while it's being dealt with in the courts. My cousins are Syrian, and their family moved to Canada when the boys were getting old enough to have to serve in Assad's army. I doubt there is anything formally illegal about the constitution of Syria's army; nevertheless, the urge to avoid doing immoral things under orders from its leadership strikes me as a good reason to indulge someone's wish to come and stay in Canada. In this case too it's hard to make a legally compelling argument for why refugee status must be granted. But it seems like the right thing to do, in at least this sense: Just as I suspect that Canadians generally are glad that we gave sanctuary to unwilling soldiers during Vietnam, we would be glad to have done so in this case as well. I very much doubt that 30 years hence we'll be proud of having sent these people back.

So is the draft. I think you'll find, upon reading my post, that I did not say it was illegal. I said it introduced a greater element of involuntary service, since it is an involuntary extension of the service period. Which is true.