Mike Crapo for Supreme Court

I don't get it. Why is Harry Reid pushing Sen. Crapo for an appointment to the Supreme Court? I've been thinking about this for a couple of days now and i still don't get it. All my thoughts are fairly well repersented here.

The only answer I can come up with is that Harry Reid is more pro-life than the average Democrat so he probably wants to move his part toward the centre on this issue.

Unless there is an angle I'm missing here, I think the President ought to seriously think about the Crapo choice. Afterall, easy confirmation of an actual conservative is not so crappy.

Internment Camps for all Muslims

I was talking to a friend last night about internment. Apparently some ShockJock named Savage is promoting the idea of locking up all Muslims in the United States and releasing them one at a time once their innocence has been proven.

My first though was: I don't like shock jocks, and I don't like the idea of internment. (My girlfriend is Japanese, so there is the history, and I am Muslim, so the idea of being jailed wasn't terribly appealing.)

Then I thought about it and realized I am opposed to the idea also on less selfish, more reasonable basis. Here they are, in order:

1. The whole freedom thingy. I am not opposed to racial profiling and I don't know where we ought to draw the line on profiling, but I do know that jailing an entire population for no reason other than their race/religion certainly falls well over the line.

2. We don't need to send all Muslims to jail because we don't need to track all Muslims. We only need to track a certain group of people from a certain background (probably way less than 10% of Muslim population in North America.) That comes out to what, 20, 30 thousand people most? Let's spend the money needed to identify them and let's track what they do for a while. My brother, who is 16 and is the least political person in my family, is on such a list. Every time he goes into the United States he has to check in with DHS and every time he leaves he has to tell them he is leaving. (I, on the other hand, who have been flying back and forth in the states at least once every other month for the past three years am not on the list. Go figure.) When CSIS started they used to track every single student council president in the country! If they have the resoruces to track how Brock University's student council voted on extending the budget for Brock's sexual health resource centre, I'm sure the NSA/CIA/FBI have the resources to track the "high risk" individuals.

3. Even if internment was the best way to deal with terrorists in the United States and even if it wasn't an afront to liberty, it would still be treating the symptom. The disease is Islamic Fundementalism. That's what we need to deal with and that's what we need to deal with quickly. We need to liberate these countries where these terrorists are brainwashing the next generation of terrorists.

In the Good Ol' Days

an attack on any part of the commonwealth was considered an attack on the whole of it.

That means if we still held true to the idea of commonwealth, we'd probably have to declare war today, alongside United Kingdom, and send troops to wherever they send troops.

In the good old days, this would be World War III and it would be called just that.

If that ever happens, I'd like to volunteer.

However many you kill, you will fail.

This from London's Mayor:

"I want to say one thing, specifically to the world today - this was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful, it was not aimed at presidents or prime ministers, it was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian ... young and old ... that isn't an ideology, it isn't even a perverted fate, it is an indiscriminate attempt at mass murder."

"They seek to divide London, they seek Londoners to turn against each other ... this city of London is the greatest in the world because everybody lives side by side in harmony. Londoners will not be divided by this cowardly attack."

Livingstone also had words specifically for the terrorists: "I know that you personally do not fear to give your own life in exchange to taking others [that is why you are so dangerous] ... but I know you do fear you may fail in your long-term objective to destroy our free society ... in the days that follow, look at our airports, look at our seaports and look at our railway stations ... you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world, will arrive in London to become Londoners, to fulfill their dream and achieve their potential ... whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail."

I feel a great deal of outrage this morning. I just want all these bastards dead. I don't care where they are, what they are doing, or how they are feeling. We should hunt them down across whatever borders, down whatever hole, into whatever cave. We should find each and every single one of them and kill them. A good way to start would to let Israel loose. They know how to kill these guys better than anyone, because they have been doing this longer than anyone.

One of my university friends is in London working for an Investment Bank. I hope he is safe.

What do you call a dipstick on wheels?

Minister of Democratic Renewal in Charge of Campaigning for the Liberal Leadership on Taxpayer's Dime.

Or at least that's what the title should be. The National Post is reporting that Belinda is going on a tour across Canada to listen to Canadians (read: Liberals), especially young Canadians (read: riding Presidents.)

So here is the question you have to ask yourself:

How long?

How long will she wait before she pulls the plug on poor Paul and goes for his job. Here is how, if her strategists are smart, it should pan out:

1. Hope that Martin wins a majority so the natural successors become to old (i.e. Manley)
2. After winning a majority, Martin would be too old to serve out the full term, so there would have to be a leadership race say by 2009, where a few people from Quebec (Chretien Loyalists), some from Ontario (certain Harvard professors), and Belinda would be the contenders. It'd be the most number of candidates for leadership since Ernst Zundel was a member of the Liberal Party.
3. In such a wide field, money talks. Just like she did during the Tory race, Belinda can go around buying support. Except this time around, she will no longer be new to politics and she will have had four years to crisscross the country on taxpayer's dime.

Winner of this strategy: Belinda
Losers: Scott Brison, and oh, every actual Liberal who has spent hours working to elect Liberals since he/she was 14.

The only flaw: Belinda Stronach is no Hillary Clinton. Clinton is smart, shrewd, and willing to wait to get the top prize. Belinda is an impatient idiot. She couldn’t finish her Fashion Degree at York, she couldn't finish the job as CEO, she couldn't finish the job as the Tory, and she won't be able to wait long enough and work hard enough to win the top job with the Grits.

Disgusting Stuff

If you have not read the Fraiser report on Gomery you must.

Most shocking statement so far:

First, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Privy Council Office (PCO)
were charged $112,000 and $44,000, respectively, for seats accompanying the prime
minister during the 2000 election campaign. These revenues were not recorded for the
1997 campaign, a notable omission.

Can you imagine that? The RCMP, the freaking national, historic police department of this country, may have been paying to defray the costs of the Liberal tour.

Stephen Harper and Paul Martin got almost the exact same level of protection during the last election from the O Division of the RCMP. I wonder if they paid the CPC for doing their job.

This is disgusting.

16 Conservatives Encourage you to go bankrupt

The fact that 17 Conservatives voted for the NDP's proposal to lighten bankruptcy rules for students is shocking.

I thought we were supposed to be the party of responsibility. What is so responsible about telling students that you can rack up over $80,000 worth of debt (like I will by the time I'm through), declare bankruptcy, and be home free after two years of interest payments. (Incidently, 9 months of which can be easily avoided on the front end, and 3 months easily avoided on the back end.)

So 16 Conservatives are telling students to do the following:

1. Borrow $80,000
2. Pay back less than $6,000
3. Walk away with $74,000

Here are the people who voted for this bad idea:

Rona Ambrose
Gord Brown
Bill Casey
Norman Doyle
Diane Finley
Loyola Hearn
Betty Hinton
Rahim Jaffer
Gerald Keddy
Gary Lunn
Peter MacKay
James Moore
Rob Nicholson
Jim Prentice
John Reynolds
Darrel Stinson

[edit: 17th was Belinda.. ]

Queen has enough jewls already

So apparently a newly elected politician in Nova Scotia wants to start her term by handing out $7 million worth of pork. At this rate she may outdo Ralph Klein at spending money. ($7 million spent, zero days on the job, that's $7 million divided by zero, equalling eleventy billion dollars a day.. which is about what King Ralph spends.)


Seriously, what use would the crown have for an island that is clearly not a tourist attraction? Even if it was a tourist attraction, why couldn't a private company own it?

This has bad idea written all over it, which means that NS's PC government will jump at the opportunity to do it.

Brilliant, isn't it?

Here is my favourite quote:

And, while one might query whether Sir Paul (with his own fortune of £500 million) or young Stella really need an extra 15 million or so apiece, in the end Linda McCartney made a wise decision in concluding that her estate would do more good kept out of Mr Brown's hands, or even re-routed to Africa, where it might just about have defrayed the costs of the deflowering ceremony for the King of Swaziland's latest wife.

Here is the whole thing.

On Harper and Babies

Can I tell you how much I hate this?

Well, I'm not really asking for permission. I'm just going to tell you.

I hate the CP report on Harper's BBQ event in Nova Scotia for the following reasons:

1) Peter Mackay seems to be playing a larger role in the party. I can't think of a week that goes by where this guy does not effectively stiff one of our caucus critics on an issue. (The only exception so far has been Rona Ambrose, who seems to be good at gaurding her turf.) It's not that I dislike Peter Mackay.. no actually that is exactly it: I dislike Peter Mackay. He has made two or three huge mistakes. 1) Orchard deal 2) mistreating his pre-belinda girlfriends in a very public, and humiliating way, and 3) the huge faux-outrage at the convention. (Those are only the top three that come to my mind.) So it's annoying that this guy has more power than any deputy leader since John Reynolds in the Stockwell Day shadow cabinet.

2) I hate Harper's shirt. He is wearing his trademark Harry Rosen to a BBQ. This guy clearly doesn't like this stuff. So if you are going to send him out to a BBQ in Nova Scotia, could someone please tell Carolyn Stewart to whisper to Harper that he should not be wearing shirts that cost well over $200. If they are going to give this guy an image makeover, which I don't think he needs, they should hire a freaking image consultant.

If these two points seem petty, well tough, I was working till 11PM last night (on a holiday!) so I'm a bit cranky.

Rove vs. Evade

Over the next few days, quite a bit will be written about this.

In fact, Time has already given strong hints that Karl Rove was a source. I don't know anything more than I've read through MSM about this, but I do want to write a bit about laws and politics.

Almost every hack I have ever known has broken a law at some point or another. In fact, breaking laws and bylaws, and figuring out how to get away with it, has become a major part of any campaign. In the last campaign I managed, we lost over $5000 worth of property in one day! So I wasn't surprised when the opponent lost a similar amount the next day. I didn't instruct anyone to do it and to this day I have no idea who did it, but I didn't spend lots of time trying to figure out who it was either. These things are small change compared to what happens in big campaigns.

In the states, tires are slashed, voters are bribed with booze, fake registrations are sent, and entire ballot boxes are lost. Even here in Canada, there are ridings where no conservative dare send a scrutineer. I have heard of one instance when a Conservative scrutineer was greeted with a gun in his face when he showed up to observe the count. (the poll went 95% Liberal)

I say this to say that the culture of criminality in politics is abundant. So why are people surprised when the biggest hacks in the world are accused of committing such serious crimes? If they start by slashing signs when they are 14, should we really be shocked when they give away state secrets when they are 40?