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Jack Layton, Sept. 1, 2006. “A comprehensive peace process has to bring all the combatants to the table.”

New York Times, today. Afghanistan’s president declared Thursday that reaching out to the Taliban’s leaders should be a centerpiece of efforts to end the eight-year-old war there, setting in motion a delicate diplomatic process that will carry great risks for both Afghanistan and the United States.

Ahem. Continue…

Christopher White, founder of that Facebook group, talks to the Tyee.

Q. How did this all begin?

“It was the day I got back to Edmonton from the Christmas holiday. I slept in a bit. I was still in my pajamas, reading the news online, when I learned that Stephen Harper had asked for another prorogation.

“My first reaction was outrage. Here it was, happening again. It was so irresponsible, so undemocratic. And the worst part was, I could already feel the apathy starting to creep in.

“I looked at a couple other articles, and found a blog post Andrew Coyne had written on Maclean’s. He brought up this idea of the Long Parliament of 1640 in England, when the Parliamentarians defied the King and kept the Parliament going when he was out of the country.

“And I started wondering, ‘What if our Parliamentarians sat anyway?’ It just seemed like a really great idea.”

Welcome to the Tuesday Mailbag on Wednesday, where humourless religious reactionaries are encouraged to react to the reference to God herein by ensuring their response is wildly out of proportion, that it misses the point entirely and that it wishes upon the author an eternity of hellfire and damnation. (A question of my own: Could I request a recurring loop of The Nanny in hell, or do I have to actually sit next to Fran Drescher?)

Remember – there are no stupid questions, except for the question of whether Barack Obama is boned.

•••

Dear Scott:

Pat Robertson’s been in the news for saying that stuff about Haiti and the devil and whatever. It reminded me: Don’t you usually tell us about Pat Robertson’s annual conversation with God. Did God stand him up this year? I NEED TO KNOW. – Darren V.

Darren –

I was a little disappointed by Robertson’s most recent chitchat with The Man Upstairs. Usually, Pat’s God can be relied upon for at least one high-impact, attention-grabbing, pants-wettingly terrifying prediction: a high-casualty terrorist attack on American soil, a devastating hurricane conjured as payback for letting some gays have spouses, a reboot of the Rambo franchise starring Andy Dick.

But not this year. This year, during His annual Christmastime chinwag with Pat, the Big Guy apparently said only that “there is a Continue…

Revealing moment in the new CoyneWellsCast: A.C. calls for an American-style “I’m Joe McGraft and I approve this message” rule for Canadian political campaigning. That’s certainly what he seems to be doing about ten minutes in, anyway. But isn’t “Stand By Your Ad” regulation already a canonical instance of failure in trying to meliorate political discourse by means of a procedural tweak?

Producer notes:
There’s a bit of a quality hit half way through, rather then cut it out I’ve left it for you so you don’t miss out on the points being made.

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Catching a point our Andrew Coyne missed, Stephen Harper explains the trouble with this democracy of ours.

“The games begin when Parliament returns,” he explained. “The government can take our time now to do the important work to prepare the economic agenda ahead. That said, as soon as Parliament comes back . . . the first thing that happens is a vote of confidence and there’ll be votes of confidence and election speculation for every single week after that for the rest of the year. That’s the kind of instability markets are actually worried about.”