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Day 17: Thank Heavens The Word “Illegal” Was Removed

Yesterday watching Twitter election 2011 flow by was one of the most bizarre things I have ever witnessed in politics.

Idle yapping about Iggy’s wife citizenship suddenly breaks for the announcement that a confidential draft of the Auditor General’s report on the G8 has been leaked and is out there and, apparently, Sheila Fraser says the Government “misled” Parliament and did “illegal” stuff. Journalists freak. After lunch, Tory pointy-shouty man John Baird comes out and says he has a later draft and misled and illegal aren’t in there so it’s all OK…. and the Liberals are evil [… even though the Grits have nothing to do with anything… OK, he never said the Liberals were evil.] Then, astoundingly, the super secret report draft is handed over by Baird to the press… and the Toronto Sun publishes it including this:

2.20 – For example, we looked for selection documentation for the Huntsville G8 Centre (Community Recreation Complex $16.7 million) and expansion (Facility for Waterloo University $9.75 million), which were constructed for the Summit but, ultimately, not used as announcedc The Centre was intended to be a facility to coordinate overall logistics for the event and serve as an’ accreditation hub to vet thousands of people attending the event. We found that when the announcement for this project was made in February 2009, DFAIT had determined the centre would not be suitable because it was not expected to be completed in time. …

2.22 – In our view, the manner in which the G8 Legacy Infrastructure Fund was presented did not make clear to Parliament the full nature of the request. By including the request under the item “Funding for the Border Infrastructure Fund relating to investments in infrastructure to reduce border congestion” government did not clearly or transparently identify the nature of the request for funding, that is, G8 infrastructure project spending.

So, the riding of a member of Cabinet gets a multi-million dollar G8 facility known at the time to not be needed for the purpose of the G8, Parliament is told its a project which is part of the reduction of border congestion and the fact that Fraser comes out and tells people not to draw conclusions based on a draft makes all the journalists shake their heads at each other and tell themselves they rushed to judgment? Then it turns out the Tories twisted her words in another report and the news flow moves on…

That has got to be the weirdest thing I have ever seen in Canadian politics. Tories still 8.5% up on Grits and the debates start tonight. Oh, and I got offered to blog for the rest of the election for a major national news outlet just like back in 2005/06. But I was supposed to do it without pay. I trust you are proud of me turning it down.

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Friday Bullets For The Weekend Of Opening Day!

Screw the election. It’s fine as far as those things get you but the affairs of man bow to the affairs of life, the cycle of the seasons. The Giants and Dodgers were on last evening and LA took it in a one nothing game. Sad is life that we needs five months without baseball so that the other seven months can frame all meaning. I am also off to NCPR today to answer phones and deliver fabulous prizes. Again, there may be snow. My favorite single day off of the year and not just because of the trip to the grocery afterwards to buy things we are denied in Canada.

  • Its session day and I am hosting. Not sure my topic is any good but the early responses are interesting.
  • Coalition fret? Bow-ring. Glad it died an early death. At least I hope it has died off.
  • By the way, the day the working man calls a hot dog “Liberal food” is a very good day for Iggy and a very bad day for the conservative movement generally.
  • Ships seldom find themselves in the wrong place as much as they used to. Captains must have been clumsier in the past.
  • Wish your April away, TV boy. You know you will. “ooh-WEEE-oooo. WEE-ooo-wooo.”
  • Is April Fool’s just a prank? I haven’t pranked for years. If I should take it back up again, let me know. Told the boy he was late for church this morning. Got a “Dad, it’s Friday” from underneath a pile of pillows. My prank skills are definitely gone.

That’s it. The road beckons. The Session beckons. The 2011 season does, too. It’s going to be alright.

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How Originalists Get Wobbly On Law

Hearing Justice Alito, at least a form of originalist, had dissented in the very difficult case of the foul mouthed wacko protesters at a military funeral had me running to read his words to see how he got it wrong. Because when folk who claim to a certain level of purity go out on a limb, well, that is when you find out what is really going on. And there is it in the second paragraph of his opinion [warning: .pdf]:

Mr Snyder wanted what is surely the right of any parent who experiences such incalculable loss: to bury his son in peace. But respondents, members of Westboro Baptist Church, deprived him of that elementary right.

See, no matter how awful and stupid the protests were, not matter how hurtful their effect… they did not trigger a “right” of the parent. A right is a relationship set out in law. Do we have a right to be left alone in grief and respected? No, because we should have respect at that moment as a matter of cultural norm. Decency. The members of Westboro Baptist Church were unbelievably indecent and, frankly, clearly have a higher authority to answer to in the Christian construct for their act of judgment. But there is no right. Free speech, however, is a right in the US constitution for which there are legal protections. To balance that, Alito needs to make something up which he does at page 11 when he states that funerals are unique events at which special protection against emotional assault is in order. Where does that come from? His sense of decency. Which is great and admirable and what we all wish for. But it is not of the constitutional order of things.

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Friday Bullets For Truck Week

It was “Truck Day” this week and so by extension this is Truck Week. Is February Truck Month? It’s not a bad idea. The beginning of the end of winter. You can see it in how the sun melts the road cover even if you can’t feel it in a skip in your step. A few short weeks are left. Lawns shall be mown. Pork shall be smoked. Did you realized it’s two weeks tomorrow that the first game of spring training is played? Life has meaning again.

  • We Do What We Want Update: if it weren’t so sad it would be a great Kids in the Hall script – ““It’s like we’re on CSI or an investigative forensic thing – who’s put the ‘not’ in. I’d like to know what your issue is,” she said then. “What is your issue?” Resign.
  • Deferring a political and cultural question to the Canadian Standards Association, safe keeper of hockey helmets and other consumer products is both startling innovative and wildly dumb.
  • See. Tail. Wag. Dog… See. Crisis. In. Right. Begin.
  • Make your own joke here: “Bay Street lawyers fear job losses.”
  • I really dislike suits but mainly because they look like really dull pajamas made of far too heavy a cloth.
  • Really? “This government has a hostility toward people who think for a living or people who write for a living…”?

Did you know a Bieber movie opens today? Spot man with pre-teen.

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What Is Canadian Exceptionalism? [“Rimshot”!]

I watched a biography of Ronald Reagan on PBS last night and was reminded of a lot of things. He was my high school to my getting into law school. He did come across as an old stuffy bumpkin know it all as well as your favorite uncle. All anyone had to do back then was to say “wehhlll” and toggle his head to get a laugh. But he told a good story. And he used the phrase “self-government” in a way Canadians don’t understand. For us it is just about autonomy – whether a euphemism for Quebec separation or greater First Nations autonomy. But in the states, it means running your own affairs. It may also mean less government, more local government or a bunch of other things. I don’t really know. See, I am Canadian.

Over on Facebook, a beer blogging acquaintance supposed that there must be something called “Canadian exceptionalism” which immediately struck me as an oxymoron – like curling action. All I could think of was “Canada would be a greater nation except…” Don’t get me wrong, I think this is a great country except we don’t talk about it. The very idea is a dirty phrase politically. We have other things to do. Ronnie Raygun would have talked about it. He had no issue with the idea of unity, purpose and a greater collective good. In that sense he is mirrored by Obama. He just didn’t see it as a function of government action. He did see it, however, as a proper government policy but one placing the function over into the private sector, aligning it with the responsibility of each citizen. Responsibility. He was no Randian.

Is there something or someone to blame for the drift from a paradigm that Reagan would even recognize let alone support? Did he create a backlash such that conservatism had to become what it is today, the neighbour of disloyalty, the ideological puritan happy to bring the house down, the disassembler? In taking apart the story of the other side did it also throw out the idea of having any story at all? Or have we just drifted of our own accord without anyone to give a better road map, tell a better story.

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Speaking Of Collapses, What Did You Think Of That?

The funniest thing? At the beginning of the game, TSN had a camera in the living room of the Prime Minister’s house, the whole family gathered as it on a stage dressed in various reddish sweaters. Yet, during the five goal third period collapse, the camera never when back to their grim response to once and future evil empire slicing the hopes and dreams out of our lads. Only a neutered press statement generically praising all medal winners as if this were pre-school t-ball. Too bad. One might have hoped for a touch of classic conservative give up at a moment like that, complaining on the one hand, whining of the other but never getting it right. Or do they have to go off and figure out how to blame the Liberals for this, too?

Vlad will be pleased his “instructions to immediately redress the intolerable situation” were heeded.

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Friday Bullets For The End Of 2010 And 2000’s

Remember all the fuss 11 years ago about whether the millennium ended with the first minute of the first day of 2000 or 2001? Prigs aplenty had their view and most people sensibly had not a care for what they said. But today is different. There is no argument after midnight tonight that somehow the first decade of this century continues. It is done and, frankly, aren’t we well rid of it? Global recession after bubble after terror attacks after Y2K. Good bye.

We are digging out now from a decade of crap. Tonight is the beginning of that, the beginning of something defined by that digging out. Yes sirree. But what? It is another decade without a name. The teens? But 2011 is only a tween by that logic. If the last ten years seemed like we were being ruled, by turns, by the rage and joys of a pre-schooler with a wet diaper and no bottle will the next ten be awkward, gangly, gloomy and pimpled? Will that be an improvement?

  • What did I like this year? It was a big year for my internet writing as it turned out. While I seem to have moved heartily over to the beer blog and lost the daily habit here, I finally got more active on Facebook and Twitter, too.
  • Conversely, I read a huge amount for the first time in years. Histories, aboriginal social and legal theory as well as a bit of the languages, US constitutional writing, some baseball, everything I could find about Albany ale but a lot less about current politics.
  • I got out and about a bit but a bit less than in years past. No great push into the mid-west or the US south. Maybe in 2011. There are just too many humans to move these days. We have gone from a room in a motel to a junior suite in a hotel to two basic rooms in hotels with dreams of two junior suites. I should take up camping. I will never take up camping.
  • Politics depressed me. In Canada, we are led by the dull. In the US, the national campaign was bungled. Only in the UK was there a new thing. But that thing is posed to crush before it shows whether there is any benefit to come from the crushing.
  • I can’t think of an album of the year. Listened to a lot of music but not sure what record stood out. I like “Empire State Of Mind” a lot but only because the title implies that it includes the whole state which means somehow that Watertown is included in its embrace. I could have played more banjo but I played a fair bit.
  • Sports? Sox did well with what they had. Story of my life as a fan – except for the Leafs. They just suck.

I didn’t know that this would be my year in review when I started it but, really, what news occurs between Christmas and New Year’s Eve? Nothing. Well, weather news, North Korea still postures and someone got ripped off in an unimportant bowl game. Maybe that.

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What Is Multiculturalism A Euphemism For Today?

Three friends of mine from undergrad ended up respectively marrying a Brit, a Slovak and a practicing Hindu. The weddings were all marked by their twin cultures and no one, as far as I can tell, lost an eye. A sister-in-law is a Swede. My folks are immigrants. So, I always wonder about these sorts of statements:

…that he considers Muslim fundamentalists an unwelcome element in liberal society is the kind of thing that gets Mr. Steyn so readily branded as a bigot, particularly in Canada where a worship of his most hated term “multiculturalism” has, he says, utterly shrivelled the limits on public discussion. That may, however, only prove his point. “It’s a sick fetish,” he says. “The idea that multiculturalism simply on its own terms is a virtue in itself is completely preposterous.”

What I don’t understand is how “multiculturalism” in this use differs from immigrants who practice Islam? Does Steyn have an issue with Filipinos or Hungarians or Peruvians? If there was no Islam and everything is the same, does he think we have the same issue? I am not sure. Because of that, I really have no idea what he is talking about. Which makes it hard to take him seriously. He may have a good point, one worth considering, if he ever got down to finer strokes. Instead we wallow in silly statements like “… diversity-obsessed Canadians have become generally sympathetic to the plight of Omar Khadr.” I’d say most Canadians have no idea who Omar Khadr is – just natterers. Just those who need it for an illustration of something else, the pre-established conclusion. How hasn’t that approach to thought “utterly shrivelled the limits on public discussion?”

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