Former Canuck Rick Rypien found dead

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 11:55 AM - 0 Comments

Former Vancouver Canucks enforcer Rick Rypien was found dead by a family member on Monday in Crowsnest Pass, Alta. Local RCMP say the death was unsuspicious. Rypien, 27, signed with the Winnipeg Jets in July after missing the majority of his last season with Canucks due to personal reasons. He was known to suffer from depression. According to the Globe and Mail, Rypien is the second “young NHL tough guy” to pass away in the off season. Former New York Rangers forward Derek Boogard was discovered dead in May—a combination of alcohol and oxycodone were found in his system.

The Globe and Mail

Britain’s smartphone abusers

By Erica Alini - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 11:50 AM - 0 Comments

Kainaz Amaria/Bloomberg/Getty Images

A new study from British telecom regulator Ofcom is warning of “a nation addicted to smartphones.” Thirty-seven per cent of adult smartphone users and 60 per cent of teenage users surveyed admitted to having succumbed to the ostensibly enslaving effects of being able to check emails and tweet one’s every thought from just about anywhere, the report said. Worrisome behaviour includes reaching for handsets first thing upon waking up, breaking up relationships via text message, and talking on the phone or thumbing away during meals. Nearly half of teenage users even admitted to using the devices while on the toilet—a confession that echoes another study’s finding that some users would be ready to fish their beloved device out of a public toilet. Yet, addictive or not, one thing is clear: smartphones are only getting more popular. In the U.K., over a quarter of adults and nearly half of teens own at least one.

Ad campaign—or slander?

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 11:43 AM - 5 Comments

Bill Clark/Getty Images

What’s the line between a negative political ad and actionable slander? Former U.S. congressman Steve Driehaus is trying to find out. The Ohio Representative, a pro-life Democrat, lost his seat in 2010 due in part to ads in his district attacking his vote for President Obama’s health care plan: the ads called the plan “taxpayer-funded abortion.” Now, Driehaus is suing the independent group that placed the ads, the Susan B. Anthony List, “because I think the truth matters.”

Throughout the controversy over “Obamacare,” many groups argued that the bill would indirectly lead to the funding of abortion, even though Obama issued an executive order ruling out such funding. The Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-life group, argues that its ads represented a valid interpretation of the law’s effects and were therefore “protected opinion.” But last week, a federal judge ruled that Driehaus has standing to sue the SBA because “the express language” of the health care bill “does not provide for taxpayer-funded abortion. That is a fact, and it is clear on its face.”

If other politicians follow Driehaus’s lead, some fear a chilling effect on independent advocacy groups, which have been amping up their ad spending since the U.S. Supreme Court lifted restraints on political advertising. Marjorie Dannenfelser, SBA president, told a reporter she worries that free speech may be imperiled. Driehaus’s attorney Paul De Marco retorted that liars can’t “hide behind the First Amendment.” Whatever the case, if the SBA and similar groups are concerned about possible lawsuits, attack ads may be a little less hostile in 2012—good news for Democrats like Driehaus.

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Pakistan’s weapon of mass distraction

By Cynthia Reynolds - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

Farah Abdi Warsameh/AP

The appointment of Pakistan’s new foreign minister is dividing opinion across the conservative nation. Hina Rabbani Khar is the first woman to ever hold the position in that country and, at 34, she’s also the youngest. While some argue her selection is a sign of hope for a new, more moderate direction for the hardline nation, others see the appointment of the wealthy businesswoman—and a member of a powerful Punjabi family—as business as usual. Some also consider her vastly inexperienced. Khar, who’s held mostly junior portfolios, slipped into government after a 2002 ruling required politicians to have a college degree; she ran for office after the rule disqualified her veteran politician father. Pakistan’s archrival India, meanwhile, is offering its own take on Khar: for the moment, it appears to have settled on style icon.

During her first official visit to Delhi last month, part of the new efforts to revive relations between the long-time foes, the press had little to say about Khar’s political skills. Instead, the media gushed over her black Hermès Birkin bag, Roberto Cavalli sunglasses, and classic strand of pearls, comparing her to Michelle Obama, Carla Bruni, even Kate Middleton. One columnist referred to her as Pakistan’s “weapon of mass distraction.” It’s not the first time the press has seized upon her image; pictures of her in trendy slim-fitting jeans have raised eyebrows throughout Pakistan, prompting traditionalists to question whether the co-owner of Polo Lounge, a trendy restaurant on downtown Lahore’s polo grounds, is out of touch with the conservative—and poor—country. Regardless, she now helms one of the most volatile relationships in world politics.
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REVIEW: Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

James’s baseball books made us take baseball seriously. Popular Crime tries to do the same for gruesome tabloid stories. Framed mostly as a series of short, anecdotal chapters in the author’s famously argumentative style (“That sounds pretty stupid to me,” he says about medical evidence in one case, “but what do I know, I’m not a doctor”), the book recounts the murders and other crimes that have seized the U.S.’s attention since its inception, from Lizzie Borden and Mary Phagan through O.J. Simpson. Even Casey Anthony turns up, though the book was published before her acquittal. James mentions that Anthony was bound to get a lot of coverage because she “is a very attractive young woman, and she lived to party.”

What James wants to demonstrate is that these crime stories “are very often the basis on which new laws are proposed and old ones modified.” Sometimes coverage of an individual case can even change society: whitewashed portrayals of Robert Stroud, the “Birdman of Alcatraz,” led to “careless application of the principles of prisoner’s rights” and thereby to the modern backlash against the rights of the accused. Just as baseball gets us interested in math and probability, James says, “we were, in our involvement in the O.J. Simpson case, asking ourselves very, very serious questions.”

It sometimes feels as if James could make his arguments more convincingly if he would slow down and make them without rambling so much. He offers a system for “categorizing crime stories” to figure out whether they will be media favourites but, unlike in his baseball books, in Popular Crime, James doesn’t take time to develop a full-fledged methodology. And when he offers his opinions on whether people were actually guilty or innocent—like his explanation of why Lizzie Borden could not have killed her parents—we can sometimes be uncomfortably reminded of the time he argued that Pete Rose might have been framed.

REVIEW: Revenger

By Jane Christmas - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 10:15 AM - 0 Comments

As the sun sets on the reign and life of Elizabeth I, speculation ignites over her successor. Much jockeying ensues in the campaign to be next in line to the throne: will it be James I of Scotland? The Spanish Infanta? Or, lurking behind door number three, the ambitious and caddish Earl of Essex?

Enter John Shakespeare, a Tudor version of James Bond (that is, if Bond had a wife and a struggling playwright brother named Will). Shakespeare is hired by two influential and cunning players with their own agendas who each dispatch him with seemingly random directives to dig up evidence of a plot against the Queen. Throw in several grisly murders, a wife whose affections for her husband have turned sour, a Catholic-hating courtier, a vengeance-fuelled Irishman, a lone survivor of the lost colony of Roanoke, a royal wedding that could bring the country to the brink of insurrection and the discovery that brother Will has taken on a writing gig that could cost him his life, and you have more threads than a tailor’s spool rack.

They eventually come together in this taut, clever thriller. The action is fast and furious, shifting from one precarious episode to another and turning this into a terrific page-turner. Clements is so masterful in his depiction of the Elizabethan era that you can’t help feeling a part of the action, whether it’s among the tangled sheets in a courtesan’s bed, racing along the docks of a clamorous shipyard or sitting in the ruins of a stone crofter’s cottage listening to a hunted woman spill the beans about a tragic expedition.

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Let’s all hate Ottawa

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 22 Comments

Mohammed Adam considers the deserted embassy across from Parliament Hill as a symbol of the capital’s plight.

Longtime city watcher Rhys Phillips agrees. “One thing about Ottawa that is probably unique to Canadian culture is that the country almost hates its capital,” he says.

That resentment, Dewar says, has infected decision-makers in Ottawa and created a “paralysis or reluctance” to champion and promote the capital. “Ottawa is used elsewhere in the country as some kind of punching bag, not a capital city we should be proud of,” he says.

The best way to settle the best politician debate

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 5 Comments

From the comment thread of this post, reader rg suggests one way to settle this theoretical contest.

I think the better metric is how much a leader improved the position of their party, relative to before their tenure as leader. That kind of metric could capture Layton’s 2011 gains. Harper is less impressive on that metric – in 2000 37.7% of Canadians voted for one of the constituent parties of the CPC. Harper fell below that mark in 2004 and 2006, but edged it slightly in 2008 and 2011. Of course Harper looks better if you take the poll position of the Alliance and PC’s at the point when he became leader.

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Lunch box lunacy

By Jessica Allen - Monday, August 15, 2011 at 6:32 PM - 27 Comments

Newsflash: the contents of kids’ lunch pails are potentially poisonous! Or at least that’s what a study released last Monday in the journal Pediatrics (and reported on by Reuters, the Toronto Star and our own website) suggests. Apparently, 90 per cent of the perishable contents in more than 700 preschoolers’ packed lunches weren’t cold enough and could therefore leading to food poisoning on account of harmful bacteria multiplying. One of the doctoral students who worked on the study told Reuters that, “[It’s] an eye opener more than anything else.  It shows there is a problem.”

Really? Am I the only one that made it through primary, elementary and high school without ever having refrigerated my packed lunch? It wasn’t even an option. I called my mom last night to make sure I was remembering things correctly:

Me: Did it ever cross your mind that the lunches you packed me when I was a kid weren’t being refrigerated at school?

Mom: What’s going on?

Me: Well, there was this report released last Monday and—

Mom: Oh I saw that on the news and thought it was some sort of joke report.

Me: What do you mean, a joke?

Mom: You know how they do a joke news report on April Fool’s Day or track Santa on Christmas Eve? I thought it was one of those things. I mean, who the hell ever died of a packed lunch?

Me:  Did you ever think about putting in an ice pack in my lunch?

Mom: Of course not!

Me: Well, this report said that nearly half of the tested lunches had ice packs in them and 12 per cent were kept in refrigerators and they still came out in the red zone.

Mom: When I was a schoolgirl I took a lunch every day in a little square metal box.  I had egg salad sandwiches, or Prem and mustard sandwiches—

Me: What in the hell is Prem?

Mom: It’s like Spam. Or we had salmon sandwiches—all perishable stuff. I never once got sick. Do you remember the time that the health nurse was asking kids dietary questions and you had just been home sick the day before with a cold and so I made you Lipton’s chicken noodle soup for lunch and then you insisted on having it for dinner and then you wanted what was left over for breakfast the next day? When the nurse asked you what you’d had for your last three meals, you answered chicken noodle soup for all three. I was devastated.

Me: I don’t remember that but—

Mom: Or the time you told your grade one class for show and tell that I’d eaten an entire box of vanilla half moons?

I don’t recall that one either. But I do know that I was the go-to kid for lunch box trades: along with my bologna sandwich and piece of fruit, I usually had a packaged sweet, like a half moon (if my mom didn’t devour them all), a Joe Louis, or those Vachon chocolate caramel cakes. I’d trade that straight up for one of those cheese and cracker packs—the ones that had the little red plastic stick for smearing the orange spread. Once I even scored some sort of yogurt thing in a tube.

Regardless, until a study is able to link the instances of food poisoning with lukewarm lunch box offerings, no child is safe.

A different take on Canada’s deficit-fighting story

By John Geddes - Monday, August 15, 2011 at 4:53 PM - 40 Comments

With the United States and European Union staggering under debt burdens, Canada’s success in sorting out its fiscal problems a decade and a half ago is often held up as an example to emulate. But it’s a model I often don’t recognize, even though I covered the turnaround story back in the 1990s.

For instance, there’s this recent Washington Post piece, which touts the “Maple Leaf Miracle.” “Facing an unprecedented fiscal crisis, Canada got down to work,” it says. “The country passed a landmark budget in 1995. The plan tilted heavily towards cutting expenditures but also included some new revenue (the ratio was about $7 in cuts for every $1 of revenue). Canada cut the civil service by about 25 percent and overhauled its pension program. The plan worked.”

An American or, say, German fiscal hawk might well perk up at that prescription—cut public spending ruthlessly, laying off one in four government workers, while boosting the tax haul only very modestly by comparison. Sounds like a plan. Except it’s not the one that actually transpired in Canada.

Continue…

Who do you mean by ‘we?’

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 15, 2011 at 4:15 PM - 2 Comments

In September 2009, when he was environment minister, Jim Prentice met with representatives from the Alberta government to discuss a national cap-and-trade program.

“I think you would agree with me that encouraging businesses and individuals to change behaviour requires appropriate price signals,” a briefing note, which outlines “points to register” with the Alberta government, reads. ”We believe that a carefully designed cap-and-trade system will send the appropriate price signals to encourage changes and ultimately help reduce emissions.”

That was, of course, the stated policy of the Harper Government at the time.

John Baird has since warned that cap-and-trade (or at least a Liberal proposal in that regard) is “dangerous” and “unCanadian” and “incredibly divisive,” while the Prime Minister has said cap-and-trade (or at least an NDP proposal in that regard) would “wreak enormous havoc on the Canadian economy.”

Mind you, Environment Minister Peter Kent allowed in May that a continental cap-and-trade program “can always be something to consider in the future.” And, indeed, the government’s website still describes it as an “option.”

Mandatory minimum sentences are “appropriate”: justice minister

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 15, 2011 at 3:12 PM - 8 Comments

Canada’s justice minister has rejected harsh criticism from Canada’s top legal organization regarding Ottawa’s “tough-on-crime” agenda. An annual conference of the Canadian Bar Association in Halifax issued a resolution Sunday laying out a calling for judges to have more discretion with mandatory minimum sentences, particularly with respect to mentally ill offenders. Justice Minister Rob Nicholson responded on Monday by saying the sentencing guidelines were “reasonable and appropriate.”

The Globe and Mail 

Shed a tear

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 15, 2011 at 2:30 PM - 4 Comments

Katrina Onstad considers the politics of emoting.

Crying men have a little more leeway. Bill Clinton knew how to work his tear ducts – or at least a quivering lip – to his advantage. Republican House Speaker John Boehner is a prodigious weeper. Perhaps because it’s still rare, a man displaying emotion can deepen his public image, gesturing toward reservoirs of feeling. But for Bill’s wife, one teary appearance in 2008 revealed a mass of confusing attitudes around women crying. While some female voters responded to a humanized Hillary Clinton, TV pundits jeered at the bawling chick who couldn’t take it in the big leagues. Her crying didn’t expand the public’s impression of her; it reduced it. In other words: “What is she – on her period?”

Michaelle Jean’s tearful statement after the earthquake Haiti was one of the defining moments of her term as Governor General and the residential schools apology in the House was an altogether emotional day—consider, for instance, Jack Layton’s speech—but otherwise there aren’t many (any?) recent displays of emotion in the Canadian context that come to mind.

During the 2008 campaign, the Prime Minister was accused of lacking empathy at the outset of that year’s financial crisis. In an interview at the time, he soundly dismissed the criticism. Continue…

Welcome to the End of the Computer Age

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, August 15, 2011 at 12:43 PM - 7 Comments

This has been around long enough that you’ve probably seen or heard of it already, but for some reason – despite my attempt to keep up with every bad educational and/or training video that’s old enough for the clothes to be different from current clothes – I only found “Don’t Copy That Floppy” quite recently. It deserves its high reputation as a classic of a) Bad early ’90s style and b) Piracy hysteria. It’s a bit of a nostalgic wallow in a time when the worst fear of many industries was that people would make physical copies of their products.

The Republican race heats up

By John Parisella - Monday, August 15, 2011 at 12:21 PM - 8 Comments

Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann wins the Iowa straw poll on Saturday, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty withdraws after his third-place showing, and Texas Governor Rick Perry announces his highly expected candidacy. Not bad for a weekend in U.S. presidential politics. The GOP nomination battle is as hard to predict as next week’s stock prices.

Bachmann’s victory may not be all it is played up to be in the media. The poll results are not binding and her victory was more a product of organizational prowess than a recognition of presidential acumen. Voters were bussed in at great expense, to be pampered and cajoled by organizers in the field. In 2008, Romney won the straw poll, but lost the Iowa caucuses to Mike Huckabee. This time around the liberitarian dark horse candidate Ron Paul finished a close second (29 percent for Bachmann to 28 per cent for Paul). With Rick Perry collecting over 700 write-in votes, the Bachmann victory in the straw poll looks far less certain come caucus time in early 2012.

The arrival of Perry is not good news for Romney because Perry is a fresh new national face with a record he intends to run on. Romney, on the other hand, seems to be running away from his, including his signature accomplishment—universal healthcare in Massachusetts. We should expect fireworks from the two well-financed candidates as the race heats up. The challenge for Bachmann, meanwhile, will be to keep her momentum against these two high-profile governors. Continue…

Bob Rae wants to win over Quebec

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 15, 2011 at 11:51 AM - 0 Comments

Renamed “Bob the Re-builder” by party members hoping for an imminent comeback, Interim Liberal leader Bob Rae has expressed his party’s need to re-evaluate its methods, particularly in Quebec. During a visit to Montreal on Sunday, Rae—who is currently engaged in a cross-Canada summer tour aimed at getting feedback on how the Liberals can “better express our values and ideas”—cited poor organization and bad communication as factors in the Liberal’s near obliteration in this year’s federal election (the party plummeted from 77 seats to only 34). Rae says that “blockage” in Quebec has ended, and the Liberals must work to make themselves as much a realistic option for Quebecers as the NDP proved to be.

The Vancouver Sun

Judge bans TV cameras from Mubarak trial

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 15, 2011 at 11:45 AM - 0 Comments

An Egyptian judge has ordered television cameras out of the courtroom during the trial of deposed president Hosni Mubarak. A spokesman said the decision is in the best interest of the case after two days of chaos inside the courthouse. Media and lawyers will still be allowed inside the courtroom, he said. The move is expected to bring some order to the proceedings: some say lawyers looking for their 15 minutes of fame have been crowding the courtroom. Mubarak and his sons, who are all charged with ordering the killing of protesters during an uprising earlier this year that led to his ouster, have pleaded not guilty.

Haaretz

Wave of attacks hits Iraqi cities

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 15, 2011 at 11:43 AM - 0 Comments

A fresh wave of violence in several Iraqi cities has left at least 59 people dead. In the southeastern city of Kut, police said two bombs that went off at approximately the same time killed at least 37 people and injured dozens of others. No one has taken responsibility yet for the attacks, but the car bombs, roadside bombs and suicide bombs all went off in the morning. U.S. army forces are scheduled to leave the country before the end of the year under a deal worked out in 2008. Violence in the country hit a peak in 2006 and 2007 and cooled off until this recent spell. Iraq’s speaker of parliament, Osama al-Nujaifi, has condemned the attacks.

BBC News

‘This stinks of a coverup’

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 15, 2011 at 11:26 AM - 11 Comments

The NDP digs up new evidence in the G8 Legacy Fund affair.

The NDP says Clement, who was industry minister at the time and is the MP for the Muskoka region where the G8 meeting was held in June 2010, went to “elaborate lengths” to set up a system where the funding proposals were shuffled through his constituency office first before being processed…

However, Angus said the documents in his possession show that bureaucrats from several different departments did attend various meetings with Clement and other local officials. ”Why didn’t the bureaucrats say they were involved?” Angus said. “When we find out that the senior bureaucrats were involved in the process then that raises serious questions.”

Clement presided over G8 legacy funding in local riding

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 15, 2011 at 11:11 AM - 0 Comments

Tony Clement’s local office presided over the funneling of millions of dollars in public money to G8 legacy projects in his riding of Huntsville, Ont., according to new documents obtained by the NDP using the freedom of information act. NDP MP Charlie Angus told The Toronto Star that he views the operation as a “cover-up” that was “very carefully constructed to remove all the checks and balances and basically put $50 million in the hands of a politician who dispensed money out of his constituency office.” The documents reveal that Clement’s office handled applications for legacy projects directly, but also that officials from federal regional development agency FedNor, which remains under Clement’s supervision, were involved in the process. Clement’s communications director Gemma Collins told the Star the Conservative government is committed to improving transparency in the way it reports financial details and that, in the case of the G8 legacy projects, “every tax dollar was spent on priorities identified by municipalities and that each and every penny was accounted for.”

The Toronto Star 

Goodbye Moto

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 15, 2011 at 11:08 AM - 0 Comments

In a move that could shake up the hyper-competitive smart-phone market, Google Inc. acquired Motorola Mobility for US$12.5 billion on Monday. The purchase price represents a 63 per cent premium on the Friday closing price of Motorola’s shares. The move gives Google a hardware partner for its free Android mobile phone operating system. It also adds more than 17,000 patents, with 7,000 pending, to the Google library.

Globe and Mail

Student presumed dead after Niagara fall

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 15, 2011 at 11:01 AM - 0 Comments

A young woman is believed to be dead after falling into Niagara Falls on Sunday. Police say two female students were taking photos near the Canadian side of the falls when one climbed onto a concrete ledge to pose for a shot. The woman, from the Toronto area, slipped while trying to stand and toppled into the Niagara River. Moments later, she was swept over the falls. Authorities believe she drowned.

CTV News 

When does hacking = journalism?

By Jesse Brown - Monday, August 15, 2011 at 10:59 AM - 11 Comments

Brenno de Winter is a Dutch investigative journalist. He was skeptical of his government’s €2 billion project to implement digital payment cards for public transit. De Winter suspected that the cards were technologically insecure and easily hackable using basic computer skills. So he hacked them using basic computer skills. He found that a 30 Euro card could be repeatedly loaded up with 150 Euros of credit, and the transit system would never catch on.

He documented these hacks in print, on television and on the radio, and the story became headline news in the Netherlands. His work led to the Dutch parliament postponing the release of the cards, and widespread fraud was thus averted.

De Winter now faces a possible sentence of six years in prison. Continue…

Conservatives threaten to sue asbestos widow

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 15, 2011 at 10:53 AM - 12 Comments

The Conservative Party is threatening legal action against Michaela Keyserlingk, a Quebecois widow and anti-asbestos activist, whose husband died in 2009 after contracting lung cancer from asbestos-laden pipes. Keyserlingk received a cease and desist letter from Conservative Party Executive Director Dan Hilton, requesting that she remove an ad banner used to promote her website, canadianasbestosexports.ca. “Canada is the only Western Country that still exports deadly asbestos,” reads the banner’s text, which is placed between a “Danger” symbol, and the Conservative Party logo. Keyserlingk says her husband was a “true blue” Conservative, serving as the president of the Ottawa Centre Progressive Conservative riding association before being diagnosed with cancer. “What killed him”, she told the National Post, “is what they are now advertising.”

The National Post