Defiant Gadhafi addresses Libya

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 11:51 AM - 9 Comments

In a rambling and often incomprehensible address on state television, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi addressed his country on Tuesday for the first time since mass protests consumed the cities of Benghazi and Tripoli on February 18. Blaming “foreign agencies” for the brutal violence that has thus far killed unspecified hundreds of people over the weekend, Gadhafi also proposed that the protesters were small groups of young people who were given drugs and money to attack police stations and schools. He has asked his supporters to take to the streets on Wednesday, and vowed that he would fight on until the end, saying, “Moammar Gadhafi is not a normal person that you can poison…or lead a revolution against.” His appearance on state television, broadcast from his compound in Tripoli, seemed designed to prove that he had not fled the country, possibly to Venezuela as some reports have previously implied. Violence and chaos in Libya rages on, with reports of anti-aircraft guns and warplanes being used on protesters, as well as mercenaries from sub-Saharan nations being brought in to fire upon Libyan citizens. Two air force colonels had reportedly redirected their fighter jets and defected to Malta after being to fire on demonstrators from the air. As the uprising enters its ninth day, details are still sketchy as to how many casualties have occurred, as landlines, mobile service and internet have all been cut off.

Al Jazeera English

Edge and muscle

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 11:48 AM - 40 Comments

Bob Rae considers the events in Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and Iran.

We need to develop a more effective strategy to deal with this brutality and repression.  The promotion of human rights and democracy needs some edge and some muscle.  More help to those willing to fight the fight, more consequences for regimes unwilling to change.  It is not easy to craft such a strategy, because democracy can never be seen as a foreign import, but the reality of real engagement by a courageous people can’t be met with only goodwill, let alone indifference.

Ottawa to ban salvia

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 11:39 AM - 130 Comments

The federal government plans to add the hallucinogenic herb salvia divinorum to Canada’s list of banned substances. The change would make it illegal to sell, grow, or possess salvia, which is currently sold in head shops as a “natural health product.” The effects of smoking salvia include a brief but intense 5-10 minute high that may include hallucinations. “I’m concerned about it and I don’t know a single parent who wouldn’t be concerned,” St. Boniface MP Shelly Glover said at a press conference on Tuesday. “We are very worried about the long-term effects.”

Winnipeg Free Press

Gary Doer in conversation

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 9:34 AM - 20 Comments

Photographs by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

Gary Doer is the former NDP premier of Manitoba. He became Canada’s ambassador to the U.S. in October 2009. Earlier this month, he attended the Washington meeting between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President Barack Obama that launched negotiations on “perimeter” security for the border.

Q: In Canada, there is a perception that border fixing has stalled. What do Americans think about the border? How do you change the kinds of perceptions that were reinforced by the recent U.S. government report that made headlines with its finding that only 32 miles of the border are under “operational control”? Many took that to mean it’s almost completely unsecured.

A: It didn’t make a lot of headlines around the U.S. The New York Times and most of the American media didn’t cover it as I recall. It made headlines in Canada. It was speaking to American infrastructure and investment on the U.S. side. We have been working on increasing efficiency at the border without sacrificing security.

Q: After his meeting with President Obama, Prime Minister Harper said that the border talks have nothing to do with sovereignty. But to the extent that the two countries want to standardize cargo screening, or decide what information we want to require of foreign visitors, how does a smaller, more trade-dependent country like Canada not give in each time there is a difference of opinion?

A: The Prime Minister and the President made it very clear that sovereignty is not on the table. When we were discussing border visions, we didn’t talk about a one-size-fits-all immigration policy, for example. We have different laws, different challenges and opportunities. I’ve been in meetings and the bottom line is the balance of security and the need for trade and jobs. Americans sell more goods to Canada than anywhere else. We are their best customer, more than the European Union. So when we talk to the Americans, we talk as their best customer. That is the tone of the discussion. It’s not a tone of one population size versus another. It’s a tone of best customer to another best customer. We don’t go into meetings lacking confidence about our advantages for U.S. workers, or ignoring the advantages of the U.S. market to Canadian workers.

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Nobody can keep a secret, least of all WikiLeaks

By Brian Bethune - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 9:27 AM - 48 Comments

Sean Gallup/Getty Images

As a polarizing figure, Julian Assange, the Australian founder and public face of WikiLeaks, makes Sarah Palin look like everyone’s favourite grandmother. A hero of the digital age for millions after posting thousands of government and corporate secrets online, for others—including government officials worldwide—Assange is a reckless endangerer of lives. Now in Britain fighting extradition to Sweden to face accusations of sex crimes—intentionally damaging a condom during sex with one woman and forcing sex on another while she was asleep—the 39-year-old Australian is also variously viewed as the victim of a CIA plot, a rapist or simply a cad.

But for his former No. 2 at WikiLeaks, once a hero-worshipping acolyte, Assange is pretty much all these things. As Daniel Domscheit-Berg, known (after his cat) as Daniel Schmitt in his days as WikiLeaks’ chief spokesman, writes in his just-released book, Inside WikiLeaks, never before or since has he met anyone like Assange: “So imaginative, so energetic, so brilliant, so paranoid, so power-hungry, so megalomaniac.”

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The House: Further reading

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 9:20 AM - 6 Comments

For their assistance when I was putting together last week’s piece on the House—and for the indispensable sites they respectively maintain—I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Michael Mulley of openparliament.ca and Cory Horner of howdtheyvote.ca. I also must thank Ned Franks, both for his writing on Parliament and omnibus legislation and his perspective.

Those seeking perspective and data, should start with Parliament’s own tallies of private members’ bills passed, legislation adopted and sitting days.

Beyond those, there are several other texts that proved helpful. Continue…

Endgame: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise And Fall

By Brian Bethune - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 9:11 AM - 1 Comment

While aficionados and detractors will argue over the cause-and-effect nature of the matter, it remains true that chess’s greatest players—grandmasters and world champions—have suffered mental breakdowns at statistically implausible rates. But even among his peers the American world champion Bobby Fischer stood out, particularly in two stages of his life. The first was in 1972 when, against all odds, Fischer made chess not just front page news but actually, preposterously, cool.

The excitement over Fischer’s world championship battle with Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky was sparked by Cold War fever, of course—Americans would have become absorbed in a knitting contest, so long as one of theirs was challenging a Russian—but it was fuelled by Fischer’s character. As petulant as any prima donna, he would harp endlessly about tournament playing conditions, and how his mostly Soviet competitors were colluding against him; if he was unhappy he often wouldn’t show up for matches. The months-long negotiations required to get him to Iceland to play Spassky were Byzantine, partly because Fischer was demanding what, in chess terms, was an impossible purse. Fischer looked like a crazed egomaniac at the time, but Brady, who first met Bobby when he was a 10-year-old prodigy, argues convincingly that Fischer was—then—crazy like a fox: keeping the Soviets off balance while successfully ratcheting up the prize money.

The same can’t be said for Fischer’s weird and disturbing later life—in chess terms, his own personal endgame. His anti-Semitism became vicious, and increasingly linked to his hatred for his own country. Within hours of 9/11 he phoned a Philippines radio station to exult in the situation and urge “sane” military people to take over the U.S. and “execute several hundred thousand Jews.” He died in Iceland in 2008, still paranoid, bitter and inclined, as always, to turn on those who had previously helped him. Endgame is marvellously thought-provoking, the sad and inexplicable life story of possibly the greatest ever practitioner of the game that, in the words of King James I, “filleth and troubleth men’s heads.”

This week in opinion polls

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 9:07 AM - 1 Comment

Atlantic provinces: Turns out those on Canada’s East Coast are the most prudish, at least when it comes to public displays of affection. According to a recent survey, only 63 per cent of residents there say they feel comfortable with couples kissing in public—the national average is 77 per cent. And Ontario topped Quebec as the nation’s most immodest province. Eighty-three per cent of Ontarians have no qualms with kissing in front of an audience. Only 77 per cent in Quebec said the same. Uniting Canadians was a common belief (held by 97 per cent) that fresh breath is essential for a great kiss. Of course, that wasn’t an issue for the 10 per cent who declared that they never kiss their partner.

Ontario: Ontarians are the most stressed about jobs. Twenty-three per cent say that they or someone in their family are anxious about losing their job. That’s slightly higher than the national average (20 per cent) and eight percentage points more than those in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta: A majority (62 per cent) of residents find the idea of federal funding for professional sports facilities irksome. That’s a bit higher than the national average (55 per cent) who oppose the federal government digging into public coffers to build arenas and stadiums for professional sports teams. Meanwhile, 53 per cent of Quebecers support spending public money on such ventures.

British Columbia: An overwhelming majority of British Columbians still holds fond memories of the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games, but a smaller share feel that hosting the Olympics was a good idea. About a year since the opening ceremony, 81 per cent of residents say that the Olympics were a success—a level of enthusiasm that has held steady since the end of the Games. But 28 per cent feel that picking up the tab for the Games wasn’t worth it.

The busy woman's anti-book club

By Sarah Lazarovic - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 8:45 AM - 5 Comments

Photograph by Cole Garside

It began as a joke. I resented my husband’s book club and its ability to work through doorstoppers like Matterhorn (597 pages) with surprising alacrity, parsing narrative threads while making wild-game chili. Attempting to fashion a rival club, I found my girlfriends fell into two camps: the book-club-fatigued and the time-crunched. Whereas my mom can juggle two book clubs and seven novels on her Kindle, I can barely get through the ingredients list on my jar of peanut butter, with work, a baby and a Twitter feed all clamouring for my attention. And so I convened the Ladies Short-Form Media Auxiliary. We would drink buttery whites, eat cake and discuss magazine articles, YouTube clips and clever tweets. We’d all be on the same page, but that page wouldn’t be in a book.

Book clubs have seen their popularity rise and taper over the past decade. In the early part of the 20th century they enabled women, relegated to the home and often denied formal education, the chance to broaden their minds. Instead of reading the same book, women would read whatever they could get their hands on and then deliver detailed reports to their literature groups, writes Elizabeth Long in Book Clubs: Women and the Uses of Reading in Everyday Life.

If the role of the book club as a tool for female empowerment and education has waned over the century, its promise as a place for spirited discussion and intellectual engagement hasn’t, especially as women’s time has grown increasingly fractured. “If you don’t have a lot of leisure time, don’t have time to think interesting thoughts and talk about interesting things with people, then you really miss that,” says Long.

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Salami by the light of the crescent moon

By Julia Belluz - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 8:45 AM - 6 Comments

Photograph by Cole Garside

Every year, when the cold in Toronto levels off to a late-January sting and the moon begins to wane, Nilo Palu drives his polished gunmetal truck to a nearby slaughterhouse and hauls two butchered pigs (some 500 lb. of pork) back to his basement. He lays the mountain of meat on a wooden table near the taxidermic animals he captured on various hunting trips. Then, with a group of friends, Palu carries out an ancient tradition he has practised since his boyhood in Italy.

For these sixty- and seventysomething Italian Canadians, slaughtered pig can only become prosciutto and salami during the luna calante, after the full moon, when the silver orb recedes into the black sky. “If we don’t cure by the moon,” Palu explains with a furrowed brow, “the meat could go bad.”

Planting a garden or making wine according to the lunar cycle—the principle of biodynamics—is well documented. The movement was initiated in the early 20th century by Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, who suggested that crops should be grown organically, in harmony with the stars and planets. Before Steiner, farmers followed moon lore, and still do. (See the Farmer’s Almanac.)

But lunar curing? Experts in the world’s gastronomic capitals appeared to know nothing of the practice. “I’m afraid I’m stumped on this one,” said a New York University food studies professor. Harold McGee, the Curious Cook and author of On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, also said he’d never heard of cosmic charcuterie. The Slow Food Movement folks were similarly perplexed, as were anthropologists and food historians at the famed University of Gastronomic Sciences in northern Italy. Paolo Cornale, an academic who teaches animal production at the school, even investigated on our behalf. “I spoke with 10 people, experts and meat producers,” he reported. “To be honest, many of them have never even heard of the moon’s influence on meat production.”

Still, the moon guided Palu’s annual ritual, passed down through the generations. Growing up in Friuli, he recalls holding the leg of a pig, with three other men, as it was being slaughtered. This would happen every winter when temperatures dropped and “the moon was going down, to the new moon,” the calo di luna. If they didn’t dress the hog then, the puciter, or pig master, who helped local families turn their pigs into prosciutto, warned the meat would simply turn black.

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He Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, February 21, 2011 at 9:18 PM - 8 Comments

Just a bit of frivolity after a weekend where most of the news was anything but frivolous: someone compiled a collection of scenes where Bugs Bunny dresses in drag.

The clips are only taken from the cartoons available on the DVD Golden Collections, so it omits such not-on-DVD masquerades as his appearance as a Geisha girl, or the Tasmanian She-Devil. But you get the idea.

Embedding doesn’t work for the video, but it can be viewed at this link.

I think my favourite of all the Bugs Bunny drag acts is the bobby-soxer fan in “Long-Haired Hare,” just because it’s a change of pace: for once the purpose is not to make the villain attracted to him but to pose as the sort of girl who would have a non-sexual crush on the villain. Though the outcome — a massive explosion — is the same either way.

A lack of oversight

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, February 21, 2011 at 3:26 PM - 38 Comments

Bea Vongdouangchanh looks at one of the primary gaps in the legislative process.

“There’s just a need for Parliamentarians to have more information as to what they’re signing off on, whether it’s appropriations or legislation,” said Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page, who, at the House Finance Committee last Tuesday said that “there is genuine concern that Parliament is losing control of its fiduciary responsibilities of approving financial authorities of public monies as afforded in the Constitution.” Mr. Page has been trying to get information from the government on its analysis of crime legislation and even its plan for operational freezes in the federal public service only to be stymied by the Conservatives calling that information “Cabinet confidences.”

Trouble in 'paradise'

By Richard Foot - Monday, February 21, 2011 at 11:06 AM - 1 Comment

Heather Taweel/The Guardian

Donna Dingwell faced a mother’s unthinkable nightmare last month. As she made funeral arrangements following the murder on Jan. 17 of her eldest son Kyle, 25, she was also looking for a lawyer for his accused killer—her 22-year-old son Dylan. “Everyone really felt for this mother,” says Charlottetown’s deputy police chief Gary McGuigan. “She buried one son on Saturday and would be in court on Monday with the other, who was charged with second-degree murder.”

Kyle Dingwell’s murder not only shocked his family, it caused a profound stir across Prince Edward Island, where homicides are almost unheard of. For five of the past six years, Canada’s smallest province has had the country’s lowest homicide rate—zero—according to Statistics Canada. Police on P.E.I. have not undertaken a murder investigation since 2006, when a dairy plant worker deliberately ran down a former colleague with his car.

Murder cases everywhere make headlines, but news of the Dingwell killing spread fear and anger across P.E.I., and sparked a rash of unseemly Internet gossip, before any details of the murder became known. Comments on a Charlottetown newspaper website suggested the crime might be linked to the drug trade, or caused by “immigrants.”

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Sorry to rain on everyone's parade, but . . .

By Barbara Amiel - Monday, February 21, 2011 at 10:38 AM - 14 Comments

Elliott D. Woods/Redux

Being a wet blanket is not my choice of roles. Sunny people are far more popular than Lucy van Pelt with a cloud over her head, but I just don’t get it. All this cheering and deskfuls of anchor persons beaming about people power in Egypt and congratulating one another on their good fortune and courage in being “there,” at this turning point in history. (And yes, I’m afraid this is the mandatory Egyptian column.)

I know it is a subject we must approach with tremendous respect, even though as far as I can see not much happened. The ailing 82-year-old president, Hosni Mubarak (alleged to be very ill), and backed by the Egyptian military, packed his suitcases and was replaced by exactly the same government backed by the same military. Nufi Mubarak, just like Sadat and Nasser before him, was a dictator with powers delegated to him by the military, except Mubarak wore civilian clothes—a civvy suit being more becoming for a modern dictator than the outfits of Greek colonels and Argentine juntas, decked out in opaque sunglasses and army uniforms.

The Egyptian military clearly wanted a putsch and riddance of the old man, and the people gave them—unwittingly, no doubt—the smokescreen of a popular uprising, which everyone, protesters included, seems to have swallowed hook, line and sinker. Now we have Egypt with a suspended parliament, a continuation of the 30-year state of emergency, and lots of promises about reform that have been made routinely since 1952 when King Farouk abdicated, packed up his Ginori china, left his gold furniture and took his second wife to Monaco, much closer to the European shopping sprees he loved—the only compelling reason I should think to be a dictator.

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Officially ungrammatical

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, February 21, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 130 Comments

In a widely obtained internal memo, the Conservatives claim that the ungrammatical inclusion of the word “not” was in keeping with normal procedure.

“In this case, the Minister’s decision was to reject the recommendation provided to her, and direct that CIDA not provide funding to KAIROS,” it read. “The Minister had reviewed the memo, made her decision not to approve the funding application, and asked her staff to follow through on it.

“The Minister was travelling out of Ottawa on the day that her staff completed the paper work to implement her decision, so they, with the Minister’s authority, applied her automated signature, which is used when required because a Minister is unable to personally sign a document, and indicated her decision on the memo by clearly indicating that she did NOT approve the funding application.”

This is close to the explanation offered to Embassy last October when a spokeswoman for Ms. Oda claimed it to be a matter of antiquated paperwork. Last week though, Keith Beardsley, a former member of the  PMO, wrote that Ms. Oda could have simply not signed the document. Our Andrew Coyne suggests, if it was normal procedure, that there should be other documents with the same edit.

There, isn't that better?

By Scott Feschuk - Monday, February 21, 2011 at 9:39 AM - 48 Comments

CP; Getty Images; Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute

It was a time that few will soon forget. As the Egyptian people rose up and chased their president from office, Stephen Harper took the measure of the moment, stared history in the eye and offered the following words to posterity: Those Egyptians, he said, “are not going to put the toothpaste back in the tube on this one.”

Other world leaders reached for eloquence. Our guy reached for the Colgate. None of those fancy historical allusions for Stephen Harper! He put it in plain, straightforward talk that even a hard-working Joe who also happened to have a serious brain injury could understand: Democracy—it freshens your breath AND prevents cavities! If the regime in Iran ever falls, we can look forward to Harper’s seminal “can’t put them horses back in that barn” address.

There’s the guy we used to know! The guy who never left the continent before he became leader of the Opposition. The guy who before winning power famously declared during a CBC town hall that he felt kind of worldly because his wife had travelled overseas and told him about it and stuff.

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New poll gives Conservatives commanding lead

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 21, 2011 at 9:03 AM - 152 Comments

A new poll gives the federal Conservatives a staggering 13-point lead over Michael Ignatieff’s Liberals. At 39.7 per cent support, Stephen Harper and the Conservatives are now flirting with the 40-per-cent mark which many say is a prelude to a majority government. The Nanos Research survey showed a modest 1.6-point gain for the Conservatives. The Liberals, meanwhile, lost 4.6 points, to fall to 26.6 per cent support, while NDP support rose 1.7 points to 18.9 per cent.

CTV News

Wave of anti-government protests reaches Libya

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 21, 2011 at 8:36 AM - 7 Comments

Anti-government protests similar to the ones that brought down dictatorships in Egypt and Tunisia have spread to Libya. Demonstrations in Tripoli and in Benghazi have been met with a violent crackdown on protesters. Human rights groups estimate at least 200 have been killed by government forces. Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, a son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, ratcheted up the tension even further early Monday, threatening further violence if protests escalate. ”You can say we want democracy and rights, we can talk about it, we should have talked about it before,” the younger Gadhafi said on state television. “It’s this or war. Instead of crying over 200 deaths, we wil cry over hundreds of thousands of deaths.” Gadhafi also pointedly refuted reports indicating the government had lost the support of the military. ”We will fight to the last minute, until the last bullet,” he said.

Al-Jazeera English

TMX-LSE: merger impossible?

By Jason Kirby - Monday, February 21, 2011 at 6:30 AM - 2 Comments

Photograph by Andrew Tolson

The “history-making” stock exchange nuptials now under way have revealed once and for all how globalized capital markets have become. Just consider the United Nations of characters who masterminded the deals. Canada’s TMX Group, which is run by an American, announced plans last week to merge with the London Stock Exchange, of which a Frenchman is CEO. Shortly after that, the German Deutsche Börse AG, led by a Swiss executive, said it was in talks to buy New York’s NYSE Euronext, whose chairman hails from Holland. But all that intermingling in the boardrooms did little to prepare people for the idea that the Toronto Stock Exchange is about to become a whole lot less Canadian.

Since the deals became public, critics have worried about what they entail. A columnist in Montreal’s La Presse said the transaction with London marks “the beginning of the end for ultimate Canadian control” of the stock market. For some in the U.S., the overture from Germany for what the Wall Street Journal called the “citadel of American capitalism” stung particularly hard. Officially, the arrangement is a merger, but most see it as a takeover, and John Whitehead, a former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs Group, said the sale of the New York Stock Exchange is “an insult to all America,” while Jim Cramer, the host of Mad Money on CNBC, bemoaned, “Everything is for sale in this country.”

In presenting the offer from London, TMX Group CEO Thomas Kloet and LSE chief executive Xavier Rolet went to great lengths to present it as a “merger of equals.” But looking at the terms of the $3.2-billion all-share agreement, which would give the U.K. company control of 55 per cent of the combined business, Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan said it doesn’t appear all that equal to him. Nor is he keen on the idea that Dubai, which currently owns nearly 21 per cent of the LSE, will have a major seat at the table. “I’m not sure I want them owning our stock exchange,” he told one newspaper. Duncan has the power to veto the deal, as does Quebec, since the TMX Group was formed after the 2008 merger of the TSX Group and the Montreal Exchange.

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Why Canada has nothing to fear but itself

By Andrew Coyne - Monday, February 21, 2011 at 6:00 AM - 28 Comments

Norm Betts/Bloomberg/Getty Images

This is, as it is often said, Canada’s moment. Relatively unharmed by recession, with the soundest public finances and strongest banking system in the developed world, we have a historic opportunity to discard once and for all our self-image as a small country, and join the front ranks of global economic powers.

And yet, we’re in danger of blowing it. With the world at our feet, at the very instant we should be pressing our advantage, we seem instead to have decided to turn inward. Those old Canadian devils—fear of foreigners, a vacuum of national leadership, petty provincialism—are conspiring to rob us of our place in the sun.

All three were very much in display in the Potash fiasco, in which the premier of a province with three per cent of the country’s population was able to bend the government of Canada this way and that like a voodoo doll, merely by uttering the incantation “strategic asset”—as if a resource buried thousands of feet below the ground could be made to disappear at the stroke of a pen. Or as if a majority foreign-owned company headquartered in Chicago was somehow a jewel of national pride and identity.

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How far to the right will U.S. conservatives go?

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Sunday, February 20, 2011 at 9:33 PM - 22 Comments

Alex Brandon/AP

Eleven thousand conservatives gathered in a Washington hotel last week to rally, strategize and audition wannabe presidential candidates. The halls at the Conservative Political Action Conference were packed with activists, radio hosts, Tea Partiers in colonial regalia—and thick with giddy disbelief. Speaker after speaker reminded the crowd that only two years ago, in the wake of Obama-mania, pundits predicted Democratic majorities as far as the eye could see. Or, as Grover Norquist, head of the Americans for Tax Reform told the audience, “It’s tough to remember two years ago, how dark it looked for liberty!”

Now the House of Representatives is theirs, control of the U.S. Senate is within reach in 2012, and the White House looks vulnerable too. They’ve made spending cuts the topic of the day. “Conservatives are excited,” conference organizer and outgoing head of the American Conservative Union, David Keene, said in an interview, adding that November’s mid-term election “represented not only a partisan victory but one of the strongest ideological victories in American history.”

But beneath the triumphalism ran an undercurrent of anxiety. “Are we going to let Washington co-opt the Tea Party?” Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell asked, summing up the fear in the room. The crowd roared “No!” and the newly elected lawmakers concurred. “A lot of us freshmen don’t really have a lot of knowledge about the ways of Washington—and frankly, we don’t really care,” declared Rep. Kristi Noem, a newbie from South Dakota.

Click here for the full interview with David Keene

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In honour of Presidents Day

By John Parisella - Sunday, February 20, 2011 at 9:32 PM - 12 Comments

Every third monday in February, the U.S. celebrates a national holiday honouring George Washington and his successors as president. The presidency was not originally meant to be the most important elected office in the world. The separation of powers between the exceutive and legislative (Congress) branches made sure that American Revolution would not replace a royal monarch with a civil one. Also, at the time of the founding Constitution, the new nation was far from being the superpower it would become less than 200 years later. Yet, no one today would dispute that the American president, despite the checks and balances of the U.S. Constitution, is the most consequential political actor in the world.

Whether it is FDR announcing direct U.S. involvement in WWII after Pearl Harbour, Truman dropping the bomb at Hiroshima to end the war, JFK confronting the Soviets in the Cuban Missile Crisis and deciding to launch the program to put a man on the moon, Nixon going to China, Reagan telling the Soviets to tear down the Berlin Wall, or Bush choosing to go to war after 9/11, a president’s decisions can go a long way to steer the course of history. As a Canadian living in the United States, I choose to honour this February 21st holiday by highlighting those inspirational presidents who made an impact on me and otherwise made a significant contribution to improve the human condition:

-Abraham Lincoln for the abolition of slavery;
-Franklin D. Roosevelt for social security;
-Lyndon B. Johnson for the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, as well as Medicare, Medicaid and the War on Poverty;
- and Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton for active, inspiring and productive post-presidencies.

I know there have been many other significant presidencies and they deserve to be highlighted. It is also too early to draw conclusions on the current presidency of Barack Obama (although healthcare reform, if it lasts, and the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ will be historic). Fifteen presidents governed a nation that condoned slavery, and women did not have the right to vote until the 28th president. But the rhetoric and vision of Jefferson and Adams, as well as the contributions of Andrew Jackson, have contributed to making Presidents Day a worthwhile celebration.

Tough presidential decisions have been made in the course of history around the world that have improved the lot of many in the world. Overall, the two-party system has produced men (and, hopefully soon, women) of stature, though only few of true greatness out of the 44 who have served.

What is truly inspiring and worth honouring this President’s’ Day is the stability and vibrancy of the world’s most successful democracy, and the importance of role the occupants of the office of the presidency have played in building it. Happy Presidents Day to my American friends.

Dear Radiohead: Funny prank, guys, but where’s the REAL new album?

By Scott Feschuk - Sunday, February 20, 2011 at 10:07 AM - 52 Comments

I love Radiohead. LOVE THEM. I will buy and listen to anything the band deigns to put out, even if it’s 37 minutes of Thom Yorke half-heartedly mumble-singing over a drum machine while watching a movie and eating corn chips, which I’m pretty sure is how The King of Limbs was made.

But still: the new record makes me sad. This is a band that has proved itself capable of kicking as many as 17 kinds of ass. (By way of comparison, the Beatles at their peak kicked only 22 kinds of ass – coincidentally, the exact same number of ass-kinds that Nickelback has sucked.) OK Computer alone contains more top-notch songwriting than every record that James Mercer has recorded, or imagined, or ever listened to – and I like the Shins. Nine out of 10 hipsters agree: Radiohead makes Continue…

Looks like a nice place to work

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, February 18, 2011 at 5:58 PM - 48 Comments

It seems to me that the best part about the temporary House of Commons is that even the artists couldn’t be bothered in their renderings to pretend that many MPs, visitors or journalists will actually be attending to what goes on there every day.

As well, I will confess that I selfishly hope we spend the rest of the month discussing the cost of that temporary House, while continuing to ignore what goes on in the present House on a daily basis. If only to bolster the case for this story.