Molly

...and leave them there for a long, long, long time, because we have to prevent them from doing the terrible harm to society that they must be doing (whatever that is. We can't think of anything, but since it's illegal, it must be wa-ay bad.) and jail isn't a hardship to low-lifes like that anyway. Some of them even like it, so jailing them is a humanitarian act.

How about we just spend it on roads, schools, hospitals instead. $240 B is a slush fund even bigger than the G8/G20 fun-money barrel-'o-pork. If he has that kind of war chest to draw from, Harper will be around even longer than WLMK!

Bwaa-haa-haaa! Had to know it.

Isn't that the half of it though? The self-aggrandizement/self-importance is poured on so thick that it wrecks the experience before you even start. For those who honestly want to watch the game, the bells and whistles are not an attraction, but an unwelcome annoyance. NFL puts me off for many of the same reasons that professional baseball leaves me cold: I only have so much time available to listen to gratuitous self-love while the one-trick wonders scratch their privates and spit. It just doesn't live up to the billing. BTW, speaking of not living up to the billing, the name that came immediately to my mind was Rocket Ishmael from way back. He was a fine runner, but nothing like the quality CFL player he was paid to be. If he hadn't been recieiving such an unholy amount of money compared to other deserving players, I'd have honestly felt sorry for him.

This is temperance-style prohibition law: http://www.canada.com/health/Days+homegrown+medicinal+could+numbered/4960241/story.html#ixzz1PUSeNOyA "OTTAWA — The federal government is expected to announce new rules for growing medical marijuana which would make it so only licensed growers would be permitted to cultivate and distribute it. "The move would eliminate individual and private growers from the current system, whereby eligible people apply to Health Canada which then issues the licence. "People in the dispensing community who have been hearing about the impending change say it's unwelcome, and will do more harm than good. "By privatizing the industry, they'll effectively be removing the rights of medical cannabis patients to produce their own cannabis," said Adam Greenblatt, a spokesman for the Canadian Association of Medical Cannabis Dispensaries. "That's problematic because you have patients who spend many years trying to find the variety that works for them, and also because some patients have invested a lot of money in growing supplies." My good neighbour, who now has a life because he now uses marijuana instead of that unlimited supply of free narcotics offered by taxpayers and the medical community, might be seriously negatively effected by these restrictions.

I could tell you a story.... it starts with a group of 60-some rural municipal politicians from all over Saskatchewan travelling to Churchill as a group ... VIA didn't look good at any point (except the dining car. The food was fine, when there was any, but no one had mentioned to the kitchen folks that there would be an extra 60 some-odd hungry guests for breakfast, lunch and dinner.) but the final strike was when the conductor locked the washrooms as the train pulled out of Thompson with an anticipated 5 hours to the next potty break. There was an abrupt revolt.

Argh. NFL gives me a hurt. Agonizingly dull. Jeeze, if you can't make 10 yards in 4 tries on a tiny field with a week to talk it over and no reason to look over your shoulder, just give it up and try a different game. See if you can find something that you are good at. (...4 seats on the shady side, under the roof at Taylor field. 52 yard line, just in front of the tv cameras/commentators. Hated leaving those behind. Still bleed green-that's a permanent condition- but in a pinch, Oskee Wee Wee, too.)

Impaired Driving is the most prosecuted criminal charge, accounting for 12% of all criminal prosecutions... 53000 of them per year, of which 14% result in jail time, averaging 73 days per jail sentence.... ... which is over half a million days of incarceration, close to 1500 person-years of jail time per year, at about $52,000/year... about $80,000,000/ year housing drunk drivers. 10 days difference to that average sentence is about $11 million.... so you have to wonder how much more likely someone is to reoffend if they are sentenced to 63 days instead of 73, or if they will be even less likely to reoffend if it's extended to 83 days. Anecdote suggests that the law of diminishing returns sets in fast, and that the recidivism rate difference between 63 days, 73 days, 83 days... 103 days, 153 days... is almost non-existent.

That was 144 years ago, Cybercoma, long before we became a fully independent monarchy (aka 'kingdom'). Time and history didn't freeze in 1867. That was a beginning, not an end.

If the two systems don't acknowledge, support, and sometimes defer to one another, they are both erring.

When he was premier, social assistance was municipal, not provincial government business. 'Workfare' would have been a huge project to take on, just to get through the groundwork. Anecdote alert: My dad was on municipal council for decades, and there were no restaurants in our little town, so my mother catered council meetings, serving a hearty lunch to them all at our kitchen table a block from council chambers. It was not unusual for discussion to continue through lunch as though we weren't there to hear it. I vividly recall an animated conversation about a fellow- a drunk with a dozen or more dependent children- who had dared write a letter saying he was going on holiday (he, not his family) and so requested that his assistance cheque be sent to him in Florida for a few months. The councillors were incensed. The most sensible suggestion was that the check be sent instead to his wife (so I think that's what they decided to do), but the most popular was ...um... better left unspoken.

Well, actually, I was the one who pointed out that 'Romanow gambit' in the very post you quoted. Glad you could remember it long enough to offer it back in reply... but it's existence excuses neither the Tory bread and circuses lawmaking nor your own nasty and unrealistic damfoolery.

Take that one up with the Tories. If they weren't engaging in such flagrant, vivid stupidity, no one would have it to obsess over.

Aye and amen to that first part, but the second part... ech, here I am about to come off as a rabid Liberal partisan again, but that perception misrepresents cause and effect... I agree that statement is certainly true of the Conservatives, (and truth be told, it has often enough been true of the NDP, too), but that 'conventional wisdom' equivalency that since Conservatives do it, then all politicians (specifically, the LPC politicians) must do it too is not so true in this case-- and again, I refer you to the Law Reform Commission as evidence that some parties/partisans prefer evidence-based decision-making, and discussion of the various subjects on something more respectful than 'Animal Farm' style propagandizing. I say that as someone who has participated in the lawmaking process as Joe Civilian (for the most part, as a cardholding Progressive Conservative, too), through a wide variety of lobbying methods, but for this discussion, several times through commissions that existed exactly in order to ask for some adult and expert input (admittedly with a dash of manipulative switcheroo: pretend to ask/restrict evidence to force the conclusion you want/blame the result on the committee of civilians) (That switcheroo was Roy Romanow's signature move.) . The fact that Liberals habitually create and fund such research/recommendation bodies (and enact many of the proposals that are their fruit) while Conservatives remove and defund them, and then offer us sloganeering, 'class' bigotry and outright misrepresentations of fact in support of bad, 'conventional wisdom'-based lawmaking... 'a pox on all their houses' is not appropriate.

When I was a kid we celebrated every year by attending a community picnic at- get this- Maple Leaf Hall. There was one ball diamond on the grounds there- lots of parking and a shelterbelt of trees... Lots of fun. And the (extremely small) town I spent most of my adult life in hosts a huge 3 or 4 day slow-pitch tournament this weekend, which is also a major good time. I miss that too, but... My Sweetie and I have a date to take in a barbecue supper, and then a fine fireworks show. Not exactly rockin', but I love the company, the barbecue is being authoured by an extrordinary young chef, and I'm more than a passing fan of fireworks, so it works just fine for me. (Canada Day celebrations wouldn't be real without potato salad, made with the first homegrown new potatoes.) Small-c, relish the day.

One last nitpick for the road: I dispute the notion that longer sentences make us (feel) more safe. When discipline/consequence crosses the line into gratuitous abuse, it causes more harm than it cures. Not only does the criminal become victim, but the criminal becomes more confirmed criminal, too, from 'curable' to 'not curable'... so we face both the danger of being victimized by our own laws ((Mandatory minimums guarantee more miscarriages of justice.), but damage from criminal behaviour is likely to be increased, too.

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0004572 I could say something snarky about it apparently being done mostly by learned people and large-c Conservative politicians, because Harper and Mulroney seem to share that same determination to make sure no one with any actual expertise gets near the process... ..but I really just mean to say that even most politicians recognize their limitations, and take lawmaking seriously. They don't just sputter out a bunch of blind-ignorant mishmash blather and call it law to be imposed on an unsuspecting public.

Likewise, its offensiveness provides no testament at all to its veracity, but tells a great deal about the character of the person who wrote it.

Apparently 'we' are right, because a lawnmower is incapable of retribution. 'Retribution' means 'retaliation', 'revenge', 'reprisal', not 'result' or even 'consequences'. It's not a passive word. It demands both judgement and punishment. (Unless, of course, you mean that the kid avoids sticking his hand in the lawnmower out of fear of the slap in the head his mother will hand him for being that stupid... )

So the whole affair was largely a p***ing contest among media barons. Peerage was the accessory du jour for the up and coming billionair newspaper magnate. Next it would have been pocket-sized dogs.

(my bold) What's this 'inclined to crime' thing? Doesn't that mean 'lacking (for lack of a better term) moral limits'? ....aka 'sociopath', as in "Only a true sociopath would consistently act with no thought to the consequences."...? Bill, I'm reading 'threat of punishment is a good way to manage those who, by definition, don't respond to threat of punishment'. It does not compute. ............................................ We have to believe, though, that we are dealing with folks who are psychologically normal anyway-- folks who are misguided (or 'bad') rather than suffering from serious mental/emotional health deficiencies. (If they are that mentally unhealthy, they are generally not responsible and should be recieving treatment, not jail time.) So, if fear of retribution should be the go-to strategy (in dealing with the psychologically normal vast majority of criminals and bad guys) 'cause it works so well-- if folks refrain from certain activities primarily because they rationally assess and rationally fear punishment, why don't more people shoplift? Odds of being caught are negligible, and even if caught, prosecution is extremely unlikely.... so it makes good sense to lightfinger pretty much anything you want or need. Meh. Folks don't, because their behaviour relies on many more, and more important factors than 'fear of retribution'. Fear of retribution is not entirely irrelevant to behaviour, but it's very close.

Fear of retribution has little to do with behaviour.

This comment is, among other things, unspeakably offensive.

Good article.

When I take a thumbnail mental inventory of crooked and/or waste-of-skin senators and compare it to the numbers of seriously undesireable MPs.... well, maybe the role of the senate should be expanded instead.