Tonight in Guergis

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 10:04 PM - 37 Comments

The member for Simcoe-Grey writes an open letter. The last paragraph might be the most interesting part.

I do look forward to the RCMP’s quick resolution of this matter and trust that their objectivity will finally put to rest the very unfair and unspecified cloud of rumour that has interfered with the very important work I am proud to have done and which I intend to keep doing; representing the people of Simcoe-Grey.

Is Cannes losing ground to TIFF?

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 7:52 PM - 2 Comments

The pilgrims who come to Cannes each May seem a bit grumpier than usual this year. And it’s not just because of the volcanic ash clouds that played havoc with their flights, or the chilly weather and the wind-whipped beaches that are ruining the Riviera illusion of paradise. Even before anyone had seen a single film, critics were grousing about the festival selection. You can’t judge movies before seeing them (or I’d be out of a job), but on face value the program didn’t generate excitement. Those of us from North American were chagrined to see so few English language movies in competition. There are a couple of Brit features from stalwart social realists Mike Leigh and Ken Loach. And there is just one American movie competing for the Palme d’Or, Doug Liman’s Fair Game, starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts. The other major U.S. dramatic features in Cannes are what hard-core Cannes watcher call “window dressing”—Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and Woody Allen’s You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger. They’re playing safely out of competition, which is like going to Olympics and deciding not to compete for gold. There’s a reason for that. Cannes juries have not been kind to Hollywood over the years. So the studios are wary.

PHOTO GALLERY
Aaaand action! — PHOTOS from the opening of the 2010 Cannes Film Festival

But this is the festival that launched game-changing American movies like Easy Rider, Apocalypse Now, sex, lies and videotape and Pulp Fiction. We still show up hoping to have our minds blown by something that will take cinema by storm. That’s an increasingly rare occurrence, which may not just reflect the culture of Cannes, but of cinema itself. But even last year, there was Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds,  which welded the art house to the multiplex with incendiary mischief. There were also two superb movies by women, Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank and Jane Campion’s Bright Star. This year there’s not a single feature in competition by a female director. Even the French have been complaining about the selection—some critics here are outraged that new films by Jean-Luc Godard and Olivier Assayas have been relegated to the Un Certain Regard sidebar. Not only that, Cannes director Thierry Frémault told interviewers that he was crushed not to get the premiere of Terrence Malick’s new movie and promised next year will be better.

If Cannes is losing some of its lustre, the Toronto International Film Festival may be picking up the slack. Tonight I talked to TIFF CEO Piers Handling, who was politic enough not to gloat, yet did agree that TIFF may have assumed a dominant position in the marketplace. When I asked him if a non-stellar year in Cannes will help TIFF, Handling said: “I’ve seen this before in Cannes, and to be honest it’s no reflection on what’s going to happen in the fall.”  But then he added: “There are a whole bunch of films that did not make it here — by Paul Haggis, Robert Redford, Clint Eastwood, Terry Malick —that are definite possibilities for Toronto.”

So is Cannes losing ground to Toronto?

“Both festivals have very different philosophies and missions,” he said. “Because it’s a public festival, Toronto has always plugged into the commercial marketplace—what’s going to play. And let’s be frank, September is perfectly placed to set up the awards-season films.

“Cannes has set itself up as the ivory tower of cinema. I really admire that, but there are drawbacks in setting themselves up that way. The key art house filmmakers in the world come here. For them the holy grail is to be in Cannes. I love those films. But a lot of them don’t play well in the commercial marketplace.  You have to be grounded in the reality of the industry you’re working within. Toronto has managed to accomplish that because it’s more of a populist event. A lot of the films that have opened at the festival have gone on to play in a significant way. Like Juno, like Crash, like Slumdog Millionaire.

Still, Cannes remains unique. The reason the pilgrims keep coming back is that, for a couple of weeks a year, it turns into a fairytale town where the Hollywood  romance seems more real than in Hollywood. All the usual showbiz values are inverted: people at least pretend to believe in cinema as art.

Today I saw masterful Korean film that was sheer pleasure to watch—a brilliant, dark, sexy and stylish Gothic drama called The Housemaid. It’s the ruthless tale of  a rich and handsome cad whose impregnates his naïve new maid just as his doll-faced wife is about to give to birth to twins. It may not turn out to be a hit, or win an Oscar. But then some of the best films never get popular.

There’s a lot of business done in Cannes, of all kinds. Every level of B-movie is for sale in the market, and the hotels are plastered with crass movie posters. But as night falls and the red carpet lights up and the streets fill with thousands of fans, the marketplace gives way to the kind of absurdly elegant red-carpet ritual that only the French are capable of.

Tonight I walked home along the Croisette, by  the beach where a crowd sat  in folding chairs on the sand watching a black-and-white Frank Sinatra  in From Here To Eternity. Suddenly a massive display of fireworks set to Chinese music lit up the Mediterranean sky and drowned out the soundtrack. Another night of art to burn in the magic kingdom of Cannes.

"The government put other conditions on the table."

By Andrew Coyne - Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 7:04 PM - 168 Comments

What a surprise…

Talks to avoid a parliamentary showdown and a possible snap election have bogged down as parties haggle over the finer details of a deal to let MPs view uncensored Afghan detainee records.

Bloc Québécois House Leader Pierre Paquette suggested the parties are still significantly divided as he emerged from morning negotiations Thursday with the Conservatives, Liberals and NDP.

“The government put other conditions on the table,” Mr. Paquette told reporters. “Their position is not the same . . . so we are far from a solution.”

What could possibly be going on?

…the negotiations into which the government has lately entered are in all likelihood a diversion. The aim is to stall, and probe for divisions within and between the parties, notably the Liberals’ palpable fear of an election. The differences between government and opposition will be made to appear as if they were over questions of detail, rather than fundamental principles. So that when, inevitably, the negotiations break down, the government will sigh and claim that it went the extra mile, as it strove to balance its conflicting obligations, but was thwarted by an intransigent and unreasonable opposition.

So the question is, will the opposition allow themselves to be played in this way? Will they heed the voices telling them that this is not worth fighting an election over? Will they chicken out? Or will they, you should pardon the expression, man up?

UPDATE, FRIDAY 11 AM: It seems, notwithstanding my explicit predictions to the contrary, that they have a deal. Facts 1, Coyne 0.

If Law & Order Gets Canceled But Other Law & Orders Don't…

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 6:28 PM - 0 Comments

Next Day Update: It seems to be inching closer to being “official,” to the point that the Hollywood Reporter can call it “official.” Since NBC is simultaneously ordering Law and Order L.A., that’s a victory for California over New York. And they can make right turns on red lights!

Next Day Update # 2: More seriously, this cancellation — now officially confirmed — is going to be a pretty big blow to New York, particularly the many theatre actors who were able to get national/international exposure with guest roles as a) criminals b) suspects c) witnesses who don’t feel like talking about what they saw and continue to do their work while the detectives interrogate them.

I never really thought about the possibility that Law & Order might go off the air before its many other spinoffs, but if this Deadline Hollywood Daily rumour is true (“if”), it might happen. I’ll post a link if it’s officially announced or if it’s officially denied, but at the moment, the word appears to be that while “negotiations are ongoing” (perhaps over the possibility of moving the whole thing to TNT), it’s not looking good for the show’s chances to beat Gunsmoke‘s record for most live-action seasons.

Update: TNT has announced that they’re not bidding for first-run episodes.

There have of course been spinoffs that stayed on the air after their parent shows got canceled, but I can’t think of a lot of precedents (in the U.S. anyway) for “franchise” spinoffs, with same format and title, outlasting the original — at least in the sense of being on after it’s canceled, not actually having more seasions. But of course that’s because the L&O, CSI type of franchise is a fairly new thing. I don’t think we can rule out the possibility that CSI: Miami might someday wind up running longer than CSI.

The Commons: Does anyone here know how to balance a cheque book?

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 6:05 PM - 58 Comments

The Scene. Bob Rae opened this afternoon’s session with a vigorous display, lecturing the government on the need to reconcile environmental and economic policy and even thumping his desk with his right hand—his flare seemed to ignite a certain passion on all sides. So this last afternoon before a blessed break week was full of vim, most notably on the matter of our overdrawn national bank account.

“Mr. Speaker, it is the wrong choice to cut taxes for the largest and wealthiest corporations while the global economy remains fragile,” Bonnie Crombie cried from the back row of the Liberal side. “It is the wrong choice to cut taxes for the largest and wealthiest corporations while a debt crisis rages in Europe. It is the wrong choice to cut taxes for the largest and wealthiest corporations when markets fluctuate at the drop of a hat. Why does the government plan to borrow money and mortgage our children’s future to pay for its reckless corporate tax cuts?”

The Finance Minister did not have an answer for this one, but he did have aspersions (and in this place that’ll do). Continue…

The troops who wear the bomb-proof suits

By macleans.ca - Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 5:58 PM - 0 Comments

Consider it the real life Hurt Locker. In a schoolyard in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, NATO’s frontline troops spend their days diffusing bombs—a tireless pursuit that’s far more gritty than the Hollywood version. As EOD commander, Technical Sergeant Neil Newma, told the London Times, the school has become a battleground. “We want to open the school and they don’t want us in there—it’s as simple as that,” he says. “It boils down to the counter-insurgency thing. If I had my way I’d blow the whole school. One day our luck will run out.”

London Times

They Killed Little Orphan Annie

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 5:10 PM - 0 Comments

Little Orphan Annie, a legacy strip so over-the-hill that even the comic-strip mockery sites didn’t know it still existed, has been canceled. Obviously, this can’t be considered a great loss. Having been reminded that the strip was still being published, I took a look at it and found out that it’s as bad as you’d expect. In fact, I think the satire sites made a big mistake in not making fun of it (or maybe, like Nancy, it’s just too far gone to even make fun of). Still, the original strip is one of the great creations of American comics, so I can’t help but feel a little pang of sadness at seeing it go.

It’s hard to explain why Harold Gray’s strip is so great, since the most famous things about it — the blank eyeballs and Gray’s open hatred of the New Deal and unions — don’t sound too appealing when described. But the combination of sentimentality, social commentary, adventure, and appalling politics — all wrapped up in a lead character who is impossible not to like — made it one of the most personal and fascinating creations on the comics page.  Gray would portray Daddy Warbucks as a heroic fascist in one panel, and have you crying over his love for Annie in the next panel. Literally:

Well, the irony is Warbucks probably wishes the law (or even a union!) were around to protect him now that he’s being forced out of his job.

More blood spills in Thailand

By macleans.ca - Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 5:08 PM - 0 Comments

On Thursday, a leading protester in Thailand was shot through the head while speaking to journalists. The killing took place at the posh Bangkok intersection where, for months, demonstrators have gathered to demand the prime minister’s resignation. Things came to a head on Wednesday, when the rebel National United Front of Democracy Against Dictatorship (more commonly known as the Red Shirts) ignored a government order to vacate their protest grounds. “We will fight with our bare hands. We will stay,” a party leader challenged. On Thursday, Thai officials retaliated, announcing that they would seal off roads and shut down power to the area. Things soon turned violent, and a reported 20 people were wounded. It is unclear whether Thailand’s government or military was involved in Thursday’s shooting of the Red Shirt leader.

CNN

Aaaand action! PHOTOS from the opening of the 2010 Cannes Film Festival

By Andrew Tolson - Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 4:59 PM - 0 Comments

The stars are out in Cannes. Check back during the festival for updated photos.

http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/05/13/aaaand-action/

Beach Junkies! Here's A Sneak Peek At Next Winter

By Takeoffeh.com, Nina Slawek - Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 4:55 PM - 2 Comments

Tour operators are launching each season’s product line earlier and earlier. For years, the new winter designs went to market in September. This year, Transat has taken the lead by announcing their line-up in April. According to Transat’s Commercial Director, Nancy Jackson, “some consumers like to plan early. We felt that by being first to market with the winter product, we give them the opportunity to have first crack at some amazing savings.”

Andrew Dawson, President of Tour Operations at the Sunwing Travel Group, who also launched early, offers a similar observation: “The early bookers get to reap the rewards of some really aggressive advanced booking discounts we’ve negotiated”.

What’s hot for next winter? Well, besides the Caribbean sun, a few new spots are hitting the runways and bound to get some rave reviews. The season runs from November 1, 2010 to April 30, 2011.

El Salvador – [Nolitours]
Certainly not what comes to mind as the traditional winter getaway destination. But the Pacific coastline of El Salvador harbours some beautiful beaches which offer uniformly hot temperatures.  Surfing is gaining popularity in recent years as more surfers visit many beaches on the coast of La Libertad and the east side of the country, finding surfing spots that are not yet overcrowded.

The eastern part of El Salvador is where you’ll find a more rural atmosphere. This is also the country’s hotbed of ecotourism.  To the north are several hidden natural beauties which should be discovered before the area’s tourism industry catches on.

Margarita Island – [Nolitours, Sunwing, Signature]
Margarita Island is situated in the Caribbean sea, off the northeastern coast of Venezuela. The island is formed by two peninsulas joined by an isthmus. There are at least 50 unique and magnificent Margarita beaches which are scattered along 106 miles of coastline. Its location as an island in the Caribbean Sea offers lots of beaches to explore which range from crowded to solitary and most of them virgin.

All beaches are open to the public, including those at the luxury hotels. The east coast beaches that are swept by the trade winds from El Yaque to Playa El Agua are famous for windsurfing, while Playa Parguito and El Tirano mainly attract bodysurfing enthusiasts. Swimmers will particularly enjoy the clean, clear waters of the beaches that lie to the east of Pampatar, including Playa El Terminal, below the La Caranta fort.

Mazatlan – [new for Westjet, Sunwing]
According to WestJet, Mazatlan has qualities that embrace old and new, luxurious and down to earth, activity and soothing tranquility.

The Pearl of the Pacific boasts serious sailfish and marlin fishing, traditional colonial architecture and a lively Mexican culture. Meander along delightful esplanades on balmy evenings, feast on freshly caught seafood or laze on golden beaches to the sounds of crashing waves.

Out Islands, Bahamas – [Air Canada Vacations]
The Out Islands of the Bahamas are some of the most beautiful in the Caribbean and Air Canada Vacations recently launched service to the area. Many of the unnamed beaches and coves of the islands, including extensive offshore reef areas, are protected. There are over 55 world class resorts and boutique hotels which range from five star luxury to fishing lodges.

The Exumas are a 120-mile-long island chain-within-the-chain of the Out Islands, with the Exuma Cays scattered in a long line extending north. These Cays are the most exotic of the Out Islands – soft pink sand and storybook aquamarine waters.

By Nina Slawek
Nina Slawek is co-founder of TakeOffeh.com and Canada’s number one travel trade website, OpenJaw.com

Photo Credits: elsalvador.travel, upload.wikipedia.com, top-things-to-do.com, bahamas.com

Scott Jefrey Pineo 1986-2010

By Rachel Mendleson - Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 4:40 PM - 6 Comments

Illustration by Genevieve Simms

Scott Jefrey Pineo was born on June 23, 1986, in Saint John, N.B., to Jefrey, at the time a carpenter, and Susan, who worked in an insurance agency. A happy baby with sandy hair and blue eyes (which later turned green), Scott was “always interested in what was happening around him,” says Jefrey. He was just out of diapers when his dad first took him brook fishing near their home in Morrisdale, a small community on the Saint John River. Holding a twig with some line tied to the end, Scott got a bite. Says Jefrey, “He caught a fish and he was hooked.”

An outgoing boy with an “abundance of energy,” Scott was drawn to the calming nature of the sport, and “the thrill of having a tug on the end of your line,” says Jefrey. When he was small, his family, which grew to include younger sister Jillian, moved to Grand Bay-Westfield, on the other side of the Saint John River. In the spring, the river would swell up over the banks, flowing under the railroad tracks and into roadside ditches near their house. With his cousin by his side, Scott “would be out there at the first crack of fishing season,” reeling in 10- to 12-inch trout, says Jefrey.

Continue…

Joel Quarrington's radical tune-up

By Paul Wells - Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 4:00 PM - 1 Comment

Photograph by Blair Gable

Last month Joel Quarrington won a Juno award, in the category of Classical Album of the Year: Solo or Chamber Ensemble. A few days later Quarrington’s colleagues in Ottawa’s National Arts Centre Orchestra threw a surprise reception for him. There were speeches and cake.

Quarrington is the orchestra’s principal double bassist. Partly because his instrument is normally viewed as lumbering and ungainly, he didn’t get excited when Garden Scene, his latest album of virtuoso bass pieces with piano accompaniment, was nominated for a Juno. Violinists usually win that sort of thing. “It’s not in my nature that I would have ever gone to that event,” Quarrington said.

Continue…

A coalition worth getting behind

By Andrew Coyne - Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 4:00 PM - 29 Comments

Alastair Grant/AP

Presumably the Tory press can now stand down. In the immediate aftermath of last week’s inconclusive British election, the headlines were filled with dread. “Now for the Shabby Deals,” the Daily Mail prophesied. When it seemed, some days later, Gordon Brown’s resignation might yet allow Labour to strike a power-sharing agreement with the Liberal Democrats to keep the Conservatives out, the tabloids’ worst fears appeared to have been confirmed. “This Shabby Stitch-up,” the Daily Express fumed, while the Mail was forced to reach for a new adjective: “A Squalid Day for Democracy.”

But now the Lib Dems have changed partners, the Tories are in, and all is well. Still, those of a less partisan bent were left with a bad taste in their mouths. The Globe and Mail’s Jeffrey Simpson, for one. “What a miserable spectacle is unfolding in Britain,” he wrote at the height of the drama, aghast that “a party that won nine per cent of the seats” should wield such power, not only to pick the prime minister, but even to insist on reform of the electoral system as the price of their support. Yet wasn’t the past week the best advertisement against it? Should the Lib Dems get their fondest wish, he warned, and persuade the British public to switch to proportional representation, this sort of deal-making would become the norm.

Continue…

Will the Habs play in the Stanley Cup final?

By macleans.ca - Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 3:55 PM - 17 Comments

C-section closures debated

By macleans.ca - Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 3:53 PM - 0 Comments

Surgeons close the wound left after cesarean section in a number of ways, including staples or different types of stitches, which may need to be removed or are absorbed back into the body. But until now, little has been known about the cosmetic appearance that results after different methods. Reuters reports on a new study that says women seem to have similar results whether the wound is closed with stitches or staples. In it, Italian researchers looked at 180 women undergoing a C-section who had one of four methods of wound closure: staples or one of three different types of stitches, including absorbable types and those that had to be removed. Similar aesthetic results were generally achieved regardless of the type of wound closure, although results varied from patient to patient, and depend on other factors like skin tone, smoking, and some medical condition like diabetes.

Reuters

FDA could do better: experts

By macleans.ca - Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 3:51 PM - 0 Comments

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is hampered by the crude tools it uses to examine the benefits of food, drugs and supplements, according to a panel of experts who are calling for an entirely new set of standards, Reuters reports. Its standards for assessing the health claims of food and supplements are not as strict as those used for drugs, which is a mistake, said the panel appointed by the Institute of Medicine, which advises the federal government. It recommended a new framework to compare companies’ studies to support their health and safety claims. In the report, it noted that relying on so-called biomarkers has confused the process. These can include temperature, levels of cholesterol, and blood sugar. But while drugs used to treat diabetes, for example, are often approved just because they lower blood sugar, this doesn’t necessarily mean they make patients healthier, the report said. For example, GlaxoSmithKline Plc’s diabetes drug Avandia lowers blood sugar, but raises the risk of heart failure and heart attack. “Congress may need to strengthen FDA authority to accomplish this goal,” the report says.

Reuters

Aaaand action!

By macleans.ca - Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 3:42 PM - 0 Comments

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Making things messier

By macleans.ca - Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 3:40 PM - 3 Comments

Alex Brandon/AP

Several unsuccessful attempts at capping the broken Deepwater Horizon oil well in the Gulf of Mexico have revealed some grave disadvantages to drilling at 5,000 feet below sea level.

And yet, this situation has provided a few advantages as well. For one, the depth and distance from shore have given authorities significant lead time in preparing for impact, if and when the oil slick reaches the Gulf Coast. It also provides plenty of time for political posturing over who’s going to pay for it all.

Continue…

Day 16 of 14 (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 3:37 PM - 14 Comments

Never mind the prediction part of that last update. Talks have ended for the day. All parties will convene again tomorrow morning at 9am.

The Bloc’s Pierre Paquette emerged from today’s session to say the government had put “other conditions on the table.” I’m being cautioned though against fretting that the talks are in trouble.

Blame the Director

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 3:22 PM - 4 Comments

New York magazine has a piece on NBC’s disappointment with the new Rockford Files pilot with Dermot Mulroney, written by David Shore and produced by Shore and Steve Carell. I can certainly believe most of what the piece says: that the pilot didn’t turn out well and that the network would have dumped the project already if it wasn’t for the importance of keeping Shore and Carell happy. What seems more dubious is that the anonymous “insiders,” who appear to share Angel Martin’s ability to keep their mouths shut, put most of the blame on the director.

What went wrong? NBC isn’t talking, but two people familiar with the situation said Rockford turned out to be more rehash than reinvention. The insiders place most of the blame on pilot director Michael Watkins (a TV-drama veteran who has helmed episodes of everything from Quantum Leap to NYPD Blue to Justified), saying he severely weakened a solid script with lackluster, even listless direction.

“The pilot looked like it was shot in the seventies,” said one person familiar with NBC’s response, claiming everything from the lighting to the pacing looked dated — and not in a cool, retro way. “You didn’t even know it was the current day until Jim pulled out his cell phone. It looked like Stephen J. Cannell directed it himself.”

Now, I’m not saying that under no circumstances can a director screw up a TV pilot. But it does sound very convenient to place the blame on the member of the team who will not be continuing with the show if it gets picked up, and who NBC isn’t worried about alienating. The tone of the insider comments seems to imply that the writer-producer was an innocent bystander or perhaps even a wronged man (his “solid script” was destroyed by the director) and that he had no influence on the way the show was shot, lit and paced. (Not to mention that the rest of the blame in that piece is given to the lead actor, who was chosen by…) It could happen, but you have to think we’d be hearing different things if the showrunner was someone who wasn’t already producing a very valuable property for the studio. As Jeremy Mongeau put it, “the director is the screenwriter of the television world,” the perfect scapegoat.

By the way, you might notice that the comments section of the New York piece contains an angry comment from Steve Cannell’s loyal right-hand man Jo Swerling, responding to the insiders’ shot at Cannell’s directing abilities. Cannell hasn’t actually directed anything in 30 years, but he did a solid job in the few Rockford episodes he directed himself. Ironically, one of the episodes he directed himself was the Lance White episode, which includes a dead-on parody of the kind of poorly-shot ’70s cop shows that, according to the article, this Rockford pilot resembles.

Mitchel Raphael on who Laureen Harper got Paul Gross to call and dancing Senators

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 3:20 PM - 1 Comment

Peter Milliken’s ‘luxury’ lodgings
In the course of reporting on Peter Milliken’s decision to release uncensored documents about transferred Afghan detainees, the National Post’s Don Martin noted that the Speaker’s job “comes with a luxury apartment inside the Centre Block.” Years back, tired of journalists constantly referring to the Centre Block apartment as “luxurious,” Milliken invited some of them in to take a look at the lodgings: it’s basically two large walk-in closets with a cheap single bed. That stopped the journalists for a while—until Martin’s story. Milliken’s fabulous official residence, the Farm at Kingsmere, is of course another story.

Continue…

Win Bill!

By macleans.ca - Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 2:24 PM - 3 Comments

Bill Clinton has come up with an ingenious, if immodest, way to pay off the US $771,000 remaining of the US$25.2 million debt Hillary Clinton racked up during her failed presidential bid: he’s making himself the prize in a raffle. A online donation of as little as US$5 could win one lucky person a day hanging out with the former president New York. It’s the second time in a year that Clinton has served himself as a lottery prize to whittle down his wife’s debt, a remedy that makes some of their supporters cringe, the Times of London reports. (As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton is barred from raising money herself to pay it off.) It isn’t simply that the Clintons, who earn a combined income of more than US$100 million are turning to small-base donors to erase the debt. It’s the the name of the creditor to whom she owes all the money: Mark Penn, her former pollster and chief strategist.

Times Online

Criminal charges likely in Gulf oil spill

By macleans.ca - Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 2:21 PM - 5 Comments

Federal investigators are likely to file criminal charges against at least one of the companies involved in the Gulf of Mexico spill, environmental law experts say, a fact that raises the prospects of significantly higher penalties than a current $75 million cap on civil liability. Though the government investigation is in its early stages, it’s “just a matter of time until the Justice Department steps in—if it hasn’t already—to initiate a criminal inquiry and take punitive action, Washington-based website McClatchyDC reports. David M. Uhlmann, who headed the Justice Department’s environmental crimes section during the Clinton and Bush administrations believes criminal charges will be brought. “There is no question there’ll be an enforcement action,” he says. That would have broad legal implications for BP and the two other companies involved. The White House is asking Congress to lift the current $75 million cap on liability under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, but there’s no cap on criminal penalties. In fact, prosecutors in such cases can seek twice the cost of environmental and economic damages resulting from the spill.

McClatchyDC

Out of line

By macleans.ca - Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 2:08 PM - 0 Comments

There is nothing more frustrating for women than seeing men zip in and out of public bathrooms, while they wait in endless lines. So much so, that groups in the U.S. have fought for, and won, increased numbers of women’s stalls in arenas, museums and other public spaces. Now it is the turn of Congress to consider the issue as H.R. 4869, the Restroom Gender Parity in Federal Buildings Act, winds its way through the political process. Along the way, the Post’s Dana Milbank, never one to shy away from a naturally hilarious topic, includes every bathroom pun he can think of, including a deliciously clever use of No. 1 and No. 2.

Washington Post