Molly

Michael, you have no idea just how sad that is. Try 'Crow Rate', and its ending. When the petition- which transcended partisanship like no issue before or since- was presented in the house, it made quite a splash, and was condemned by the Honorable member from the Yukon as NDP disruption and showmanship, while his partisan compatriots made a point of being conveniently out of town. My own MP, for instance, was attending a 'Save the Crow' rally within the constituency, instead of on parliament hill, d*** ed well saving the Crow. I handled organizion for roughly half the constituency to get that man elected. I didn't work for him again.

Two cents worth: Some naturalist pointed out that as coyotes repopulated east, there was some element of cross-breeding with wolves, so the eastern coyotes are larger and (possibly) more aggressive than the ones most of us are familiar with. That sounds credible to me. The additional suggestion was that these were likely very young ones, and it was a product of incompetent hunting/survival/judgement skills more than anything else.

Pfft!!! Does anyone here recall the White Crow petition? (I tore my MP a new one over it.)

Old news! Topaz, Molly, you should have been Reformers! I was, Bill. I was. I'm still waiting for bingo night at Stornoway.

The alternative is to provide little or no warning unless, and until all Hell has broken loose. The potential of this one is truly awful, far beyond that of seasonal flu. The risk is not at all mundane, though the eventual effect of of this flu might well prove to be. If that awful, worst-case potential isn't reached, if the mutations to make it truly deadly don't occur, that's a GOOD thing... but in the mean time, I'd rather be alerted to the prospect, and respond to it, than get the mushroom treatment.

I thought you might find this interesting: from Colin Thatchers new book 'Final Appeal'... "One of the first items discussed by the Devine cabinet after assuming office was replacing the antiquated Regina Correctional Centre, built in 1913. No one in cabinet had ever seen the facility, which likely would not have influenced the decision anyway. Attorney General Gary Lane inherited the proposal from the NDP and duly presented it to cabinet. I vividly recalled the discussion two years later while being checked into the place. In times of restraint and tight funding, a new jail rated a low priority to rural members more interested in hospitals and nursing homes for their constituencies. The proposal was quickly trashed, and the facility remained destined for perpetual turndowns until the walls began falling down. Jails are at the bottom of the totem pole for capital funding in an era of cutbacks." Note: The choice, in his opinions, was hospitals and nursing homes OR the jail. To spend money on one meant less money available to be spent on the other.

It's pretty straight up, guys... anyone who can't cost out an initiative can't claim to be fiscally responsible, and if they can't get specific enough in their objectives to even be able to analyze the effectiveness of it after the fact, they aren't pragmatic, or efficient, or any of those other good things either. I expect a heck of a lot better from anyone who's spending my money.

Priceless that you mention MP pensions. Perhaps what we need is a rule that says deficit years don't count toward their pensions....

My children are young adults, with babies of their own. All (foolishly, IMO) are more suspicious of the vaccine than they are concerned about the disease. If they were 10 years younger, I could march them in to get it done whether they were willing or not. If they were 10 years older, they'd have some exposure to and grasp of just how much damage a usually fairly benign disease can do. They are in the highest risk group by way of hubris. They haven't fully realized, and won't yet acknowledge, that they aren't invincible.

Oh come on! You know better than that. Lysteria was present in spite of best efforts to prevent it; the melamine was present because it was actively added in order to defraud consumers, manipulate tests, and make money. One is unfortunate, and the other is bloody well murder.

Argus, you won't find me defending Mcguinty any time soon. His only serious merit is that he doesn't have enough imagination to leap into anything that's utterly and immediately disastrous. The same cannot be said for his competition. IMO, Ontario is rudderless.

No Michael. "He wouldn't comment on the charges facing Mr. Chen and his co-accused, but noted that had Mr. Bennett been in the act of stealing when Mr. Chen and his employees chased, tackled and bound him, the matter would have ended there. That's what lawyer Mr. Lindsay hopes to change – to expand existing citizen's arrest laws so it's legal for property owners to arrest someone they suspect is committing or has committed a crime, even if they're not doing it at that moment. “Why should the law be difficult and tricky for the good guy?” he said. “That's what doesn't make sense to me.” "If they had simply detained the suspect and called the police, there would arguably have been no charge." is not true, because that is exactly what they did. Now if they had done precisely the same thing an hour sooner, or if they'd waited until after he grabbed whatever he was there to grab, then there would have been no charge. But I'll make'what I'm talking about' clearer by listing the available options: 1. Ignore him, do nothing, and let him steal repeatedly. 2. Phone the police, waste your breath, be frustrated while they do nothing, and let him repeatedly steal . 3. Catch him, hold him for the police, be charged with assault and kidnapping. 4. Catch him, actually assault him (vigorously) since you would be charged with assault anyway for catching him, and don't call the police... then he' just might avoid your place when he's out stealing next time, and likely won't call the police either for fear of being charged with thievery... but even if he does, it's still just his word against that of you and your accomplices, so no charges are likely... and in worst case, you could score some leniency for testifying against the thief.... So... the two options that include calling the police are the least beneficial. The two that leave the police out of it have the best cost/benefit balance. The only one that has a possible postive margin, where some good could actually come of it, is the one in which the thief is truly assaulted, and the police obstructed.

This one is extra special, though, Army Guy. Mr. Chen is not being punished for catching the guy. He really had no choice about that, since the alternative seemed to be to simply let him take whatever he wished, whenever he wished. Mr. Chen is, in fact, being punished for notifying the police: Not calling the police is the only change of action that would improve his circumstances. Calling the police is the only element of his action that makes his situation worse than it was. That's the special absurdity of this.

....or the boy with his finger in the dike, calling for help. He's pointing at stuff that we need to pay a lot more attention to, and in saying 'it's the same as China', showing us the nature of the path we are on. (I'll shut up now.)

I'm equally lost. 'There is massive corruption in Quebec politics' is the (old news) message. The federal implications are..... well... that some of the politics in Quebec is federal. What are you trying to say that isn't already well known, and what makes this a federal, rather than a Quebec story?

Excuse me, Michael, but isn't that exactly what happenned to Adil Charqouwi (however the heck you spell his name)? Yes, Bire is guilty of hyperbole, but he's not entirely wrong. Not by a long shot.

Didn't forsee? Are you kidding me? A deficit in Ontario- a serious one- was a given! Manufacturing was crashing! It didn't take a finance minister nor an economist to read that writing on the wall. The only question was how bad, and the round answer was 'extremely'. The absurdity is that Harper and Flaherty seemed to be the last two people in the country to realize it!

He has a point, though. There has been a whole bunch of small movements that undermine citizen/human rights lately and we have been shockingly complacent about it. The latest one to hit the plate is the suggestion that 'reasonable suspicion' should no longer be required in order to demand breathalyzer tests. It's just one in a long list that give authourities the freedom to punish and harrass without the reasonable and rightful check of due process.

If the kidnapping charges are intended to discourage vigilantism, they will fail miserably. I sure know what changes I'd make to a 'do-over' (and you'd better believe that Mr. Chen and an awful lot of other law-abiding folks are thinking along the same lines). I'd make sure the assault was meaningful enough to reform a thief, and save the phone call!

Around Cape Horne.... how the heck could 'citizens assemblies' have more legitimacy than duly elected representatives?

I just took a quick peek at that, and saw Ontario- 28% undecided. That's a very large number for an important block of voters. Undecided so often = in the process of shifting.

It's an asinine situation. If all goes down a reasonable path, the charges will be thrown out, and the thief will face additional charges for the dozens of other incidents of theft, some of which we hope are still retrievable from security cameras. If he has been as ubiquitous a problem as the stories indicate, he should be liable for multiple counts, and might even have a stack of 30 day sentences that add up to years. Discounting his sentence to entice him to testify .... that's just about about the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

Jeeze, Fellow traveller, maybe you should be the one to tell us all about Mr. Devine's guardianship of the books. Then you can move on to Mulroney while you are at it. If you make a list of the last 30 years worth of fiscal f***ups, how many Liberals are on the list?

You nailed it, Topaz. Rae and Devine should stand side by side as cautionary tales for Harper. This pattern... the fine populist principles touted by neophytes, shucked aside for expediency's sake, the smug, partisan 'We're right because we're us and not them.'... is all too familiar.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SK1999.PNG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sask2003.PNG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sask07.PNG For you, Punked. You tell me the meaning of these maps. If you don't understand them to mean that Jesus himself couldn't get elected as an NDP candidate in a rural riding, post-Romanow, then you don't know as much about politics as you think you do, and certainly not as much about Saskatchewan politics. I'll even throw in these ones to help you follow the visible history, though they are less direct in telling what folks in the coffee shops were saying. (There was a lot of talk about 'None of the above' as a ballot option in '95.) I wish WIKI obliged with the two preceeding them, too. : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SK1995.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SKElection1991.png