Molly

It amounts to refusing to acknowledge, much less assert, that he is in fact a citizen. His right to that acknowledgement IS absolute. Point granted... but this (in)action is not preventing him from fleeing our jurisdiction. It is denying it to him.

Sabre Rider... my opinion of this pack of hyperpartisan goofs is no secret. I'd bet on as much of the latter as they think they can get away with-- and they're brazen. (But I'd bet that way, regardless of the application procedure.)

Citizenship used to mean some level of protection /proprietorship, but Canadians can now expect to have no nation in their corner. Now we know that if we end up caught in some awful circumstance outside our borders, there'll be no backing. This is consistent- repeatedly illustrated. It's disgraceful, but completely consistent. This one, though, seems particularly mean-minded, since it isn't just a denial of assistance, but denial of the basic rights due a Canadian. Refusing to issue a passport? Excuse me, but if he's a Canadian citizen, get off the pot and issue the (bleep)ing passport. It may or may not help him get out of there, but it IS his right.

"Religion" does not give bad ideas, poor priorities nor outright ignorance a pass. An agnostic who didn't 'get' evolution would not be considered a viable applicant for the science ministry. An anti-choice agnostic is just as utterly wrong as a religious one. An agnostic sexist is still a sexist. A homophobe is a homophobe is a homophobe, whether GOD told him to, or he thought it up all by his ignorant self. A fool is welcome to be a fool on his own time, but not on mine.

I share the sense of irony, too, along with the (I presume) unanimous sentiment that not one single dime of ransom should be paid by Canada or anyone else, for her, or any other kidnap victim in that milieu. That said, her story reeks of mental illness.

It is what it is. This is one to be judged in retrospect. They may perform with integrity... or they may rob us blind... I hope those of us with pencils to mark X's can remember some ot this past next Tuesday, and practice a bit more than our usual 'due diligence' when the time comes to assess it.

Allow it? How about 'bother with it'? As I pointed out before, the states only interest is 'as it effects the state'. Why should the state establish standard contracts for such esoteric, exceptional-by-definition, personal relationships? What I'm pointing out, Michael, is that while there is some general agreement about what consititutes the obligations of marriage as we know it, there is no such general understanding of the nature of plural marriage, and PARTICULARLY none that is compatible with present law having to do with, and referencing itself to marriage. Law can indeed be written to cover it. But the people who choose it can more likely write up their own unique agreements and achieve greater satisfaction.

.....groooo-o-oan.... Clueless... freaking.... idiots. Putting ignorance on display. And when it is vividly pointed out that they've done the equivalent of sneezing on the birthday cake... do it again. If that inability to differentiate between science and religion was not enough basis on which to condemn them, then the fact that they are such sluggish learners certainly should be.

Why do you suppose that it would become moreso if such marriages could be licenced, than it is currently, where folks can freely make whatever co-dependency arrrangements they want? Visionseeker... wild confusion enters long before one gets to entitlements from the state. Simply determining the obligation of spouses to one another becomes challenging. Are members of a group of three collectively obliged, or do two have attatchment to the third, without obligation to one another? (As in, do three people each have two spouses, or do two of them have a single spouse, while the third has two?) If only one of them has two spouses, and the presumption in the dispersal of matrimonial property is 50/50 division, does that mean that doubly married person has committed the entirety of his/her assets, and maintains an entitlement of nil?

It's certainly an ugly setback. Bottom line: Karzai isn't 'one of the good guys', so the task looks bigger and more intractable now than even a couple of weeks ago, when it was deemed unwinnable.

What ISN'T news is that Milliken (or Dobbin, for that matter) is a Liberal. Milliken, however, was an all-party choice-- which might lead us to believe that he's capable of exercizing his duties in a non-partisan manner --which further suggests that the MP in question has exercized very poor conduct. And since it has been REPEATED poor conduct, it can be further supposed that it is done with the approval of his party-- which calls into question their claim to desire greater decorum in the house-- which suggests that there are plenty of candidates to recieve accusation of being a hypocrite.

Canada isn't a republic, concensus isn't a novelty within a parliamentary system, and nuanced party selection is possible. Apples/oranges-- and irrelevant. Harper could tap whatever talent he wanted both before and after the election. Emerson betrayed his constituents by misleading them as to his intentions during the election. ... So Harper recruited someone who was stunningly, brazenly mendacious. Birds of a feather.

But for the double reincarnation of the party, one would expect that his personal request would be the only way it could happen. As a rule, former leaders are automatically granted membership for life, if for no other reason than to avoid pea-shooter embarrassments like this. (But, who took that phone call?)

Well, we've established that we won't agree: you will continue to insist against reason that placing her in cabinet was a bribe without which she would have remained a happy Conservative, and I will continue to see that claim as being as utterly bogus as the proposal that the coalition was an undemocratic 'coup', that 'parliament was disfunctional', or, yes, even that Emmersons crossing was a good faith act. Emmersons crossing was, in fact, a pivotal moment for me. I can tell you why I found it so reprehensible. I'm a serious supporter of a rep.s right to cross-- feel very strongly that we are electing representatives, not parties; would like to see party affiliations removed from ballots. I don'[t consider it a traitorous act against a party, but rather an act of being true to onesself, and asa rule, to the folks one is supposed to be representing. It's a VERY important freedom. That freedom was deeply undermined by Emmerson/Harper. There was no shift of conditions , no change of terms, no unsupportable injustice nor necessary policy that could not be denied to consitiuents to necessitate that shift. It was simply a fraud, probably negotiated even before ballots were cast. It's the FIRST and ONLY time that I've felt that a floor crossing lacked legitimacy. I condemn that lack of legitimacy on its face, but I am particularly resentful that they would bring such an important democratic freedom into disrepute, and by so doing, threaten it's existence. It was at that moment that I realized that I could not (and breathed a sigh of relief that I did not) ever vote for that pack of moral midgets.

NOT lame duck? The scandal was gaining steam, they were in minority, and the opposition was voting no confidence, in hope and expectation of winning it! It doesn't get much lamer than that! The NDP were only along for the ride for that session, and only if the budget passed. They were doomed. The only question was how long they'd be able to hang on, 'cause they weren't going to get any stronger. What the government gained by parading Belinda was a chance to win some serious PR points against the Conservatives, and a chance to change the subject for a while. If the world was talking about Belinda, they weren't talking about Gomery. They used her to embarrass Harper and MacKay all day, every day, for as long as folks would pay attention. What did she gain? As I said before, even with the hate/hate relationship she had with Harper, he would not have dared leave her out of cabinet. Papa Stronachs money and influence made such a thing downright impossible, even if her own clout within the red range of the party might not. Pastures on the other side of the fence are NEVER green for anyone who hopes to have much political future. They answer to it for the rest of their lives. 'Traitors' don't recieve much trust in any camp. She could have outwaited Harper, to run again for the leadership, wiser and more experienced, but there was no path but descent after crossing the floor. Even a 'loose cannon' neophyte knows that as a certainty. It's absurd to think she could be 'bribed' by being offered the utter end of her political career, and the chance to be publicly harrassed for months. You have a strange notion of the meaning of 'enducement'! 'Strategic grounds' means that she not only didn't like what the Conservatives were doing (openly, for quite some time before that vote) , but didn't like the WAY they were doing it, either.

Michael, if religious definitions bound the state, then religious group definitions of all sorts of things would also take precedence, and all law would turn into a limitless patchwork of 'personal belief'. The state does not seek to define terms for religious groups. That's the separation of state from church. But religious groups, likewise, cannot define terms for the state... and that's the more important separation of church from state.

... which they didn't have the wherewithal to pay for. (So much for fiscal prudence.)

LOL Me, too. Makes me want to un-focus my eyes, and recite the definition of the word 'vapid' on continuous loop.

What I did see was a bit too much emphasis on social conservatism. IMO, government is $ manager first and foremost. Give me a prudent, conservative manager of tax $, and the ones who seek to micromanage my life, whether by way of Leftish collectivism, or Rightish regimentation, can go to the depths of Hell and enjoy the place.

Why would a cabinet position in a lame duck government be a serious enticement for Belinda? It would be for many, but what did SHE stand gain from it? She would undoubtedly have been a senior minister in a Conservative cabinet, and floor-crossing permanently ended her aspirations for even higher office. I'd suggest that placing her very visibly in cabinet provided huge benefit for the government, regardless of whether she considered it desireable, and that evidence of the 'good faith' of her floor-crossing far, far, far outweighs any evidence to the contrary. It was never a secret that she was on the leftmost edge of the Conservatives, if not beyond it; that she intensely disliked, and disagreed with Stephen Harper on a lot of fundamental stuff, and that the feeling was mutual; that she was neophyte, and unpredictable enough to be a dangerously loose cannon; and that she thought the timing of that non-confidence vote was, at best, a strategic blunder. What, besides timing (which provides no evidence either way) and Conservative groupthink, makes you believe that she actually was 'bribed', or that any enticement was needed?

Yeah. As I told an old buddy from the prairies, even bad times in Ontario are pretty darned good. The economy is highly diversified, and fairly heavily domestically dependent, compared to other provinces. It's still a land of plenty, even now. There's still enough momentum to carry a tremendous amount of dead weight. If someone actually took a pair of scissors to the red tape and waste- scissors as sharp as those in any number of other provinces less accustomed to consistent easy wealth- every budget in the place would register a healthy surplus, even now. (Harris committed some colossal screw-ups, but was working on the right theory.)

LOL I had a guy from Toronto call me every expletive in the book because I dared point out that the 49th parallel passed roughly through Timmins. He was a little confused, I guess, about what the 49th 'parallel' actually meant.

Guyser and Wulf... the one that annoys me is that 'Central Canada' is about as physically central to Canada as Pluto is to our solar system, entirely south of the southernmost edge of most of the country, and its westernmost edge more than a thousand miles east of the actual centre.

Forgive a really cynical comment/question/observation from someone who's been there: If it was so very bad, why did a good businessman such as yourself keep doing it? Speaking as someone who has been there, some of the ag world rhetoric is out of line. You/we expect a completely businesslike approach to other industries (even other ag industries, like dairy), but apply a double standard when it comes to (y)ourselves. If ag commodity prices are bad, then why should the rest of us penalize ourselves to the tune of a couple of billion $, just to push up the price that you will charge us? If there's no shortage, why should we be willing to pay as though supplies were stretched? If someone from any other industry tried to feed you the lines you feed us (like that one) you'd be the first to call bs. When things started to collapse around here, yours was one of the voices suggesting that folks from Ontario should quit making cars that no one wants, come to Alberta and work in the oilpatch. Well, when grain prices were in the toilet, you should have come to Ontario to make cars, instead of giving away your grain.

US import regulations give them an enhanced impact. I have to take issue with your claim to 'give city people free food'. You produce for a primarily export market (so Canadian city people aren't eating much, if any, of what you produce.) and you get a world price-- which a free marketer has to admit, is exactly what it's worth. You aren't 'giving' anyone, anything.