The curious thing is that I can’t recall finding anything specifically related to birth control in my readings of the New Testament. Exactly what theological justification do anti-abortion activists cite? Something in the New Testament? Something in the Old Testament? The Ten Commandments, particularly the one that says “thou shalt not kill?”

I’m not criticizing the anti-abortion movement, I’m just curious to know. The reason I want to know is because I would be extremely loath to see the government use its powers to legislate in something as sensitive as a woman’s maternal health without knowing exactly why the government should be intervening in the first place. If it’s for religious reasons, exactly which part of Christian theology are religious activists applying to the abortion debate?

Questions and comments are of course welcome.

Affordable education is something worth discussing. Too bad this debate has been lost after months of protests, bull-headedness and now violence.

From what I’ve read in the English media, and in some French media as well, most Canadians seem to think Quebec students are fighting a losing battle for a hopeless cause.

The arguments are familiar. Many pundits think that Quebec students have it much better than their counterparts outside La Belle Province. Tuition fees in Quebec are much lower, so quite yer whining. That is pretty much the sum of most arguments.

While this may be the case, I find it unfortunate that no one seems to want to at least engage in a debate over whether subsidized post-secondary education, in its present form in Quebec, is something worth exploring. Never mind that fees are much higher in the rest of Canada. I fail to see how one province needs to conform to the norms of the rest of the country, especially on matters that are solely a provincial responsibility.

Here’s the argument for subsidies that rarely gets its due. If post-secondary education is subsidized along the lines of the Quebec system, does that not mean students emerge into the workforce sooner and with more money in their pockets? Does that not mean they will buy cars, houses and other items that will stimulate the economy?

On the surface, this seems to be sound policy. Other countries around the world think so, and have implemented similar systems, with varying degrees of success.

There are drawbacks to this type of system, of course. If a student remains in undergraduate programs for eight years, for example, this is not a terribly useful subsidy from the taxpayer.

I can see the merits of both arguments. Taxpayers want students and their families to pay their fair share of their education (whatever that is deemed to be). Students argue that they cannot fully emerge from under a mountain of student debt for years. Also, lower tuition fees obviously afford better educational opportunities for students from lower income families.

What’s the answer? I really don’t know. But isn’t it worth at least debating rationally?

The essay, which is a bit of a political opus for me, reflects on my experiences volunteering for the respective NDP leadership campaigns of John Horgan and Nathan Cullen. It also looks at the role that hope stands to play in our political process based on those experiences.

Here’s a taste:

I volunteered and became heavily involved in the campaigns I did because the candidates moved me on a deep emotional level. Listening to John Horgan and Nathan Cullen speak, reading something they had written, or otherwise interacting with them left me with a feeling that these were the right people to support.

I’m not unique in that regard. The role that emotion plays in politics and political decisions has been covered in detail by Dr. Drew Westen in his influential book, The Political Brain. A description  of the book reveals Westen’s thesis:

In politics, when reason and emotion collide, emotion invariably wins. Elections are decided in the marketplace of emotions, a marketplace filled with values, images, analogies, moral sentiments, and moving oratory, in which logic plays only a supporting role. Westen shows, through a whistle-stop journey through the evolution of the passionate brain and a bravura tour through fifty years of American presidential and national elections, why campaigns succeed and fail. The evidence is overwhelming that three things determine how people vote, in this order: their feelings toward the parties and their principles, their feelings toward the candidates, and, if they haven’t decided by then, their feelings toward the candidates’ policy positions.

There is, perhaps, the inclination to look at this reality with a cynical eye. It could be easy to conclude that politics as a practice of the heart means we are forever destined to fuck it up, given how unreliable our emotions can be.

But while my experience on the campaign trail largely bears out Westen’s thesis, it also leads me to disagree with the above cynicism. Indeed, I found just the opposite to be true.

Messages of hope and optimism have the potential to substantially transform our politics and how we see each others’ political actions in the ways we so badly need.

If you’re so inclined, go take a look at the whole thing (warning: it’s long).

The Alberta provincial election seems like a recurring nightmare. In this case, a lot of people are talking but no one is really saying anything. And, no, I’m not talking about the party leaders. In this case, the media is just as guilty.

Has anyone noticed the coverage so far has been almost exclusively about the personalities leading the parties?

Granted, I am basing this argument on a small sampling of the stories I read online and the snippets I hear on the radio and television about the Wild Rose Alliance-Progressive Conservative right-wing battle royale.

Essentially, the only significant bit I have been able to glean from the media coverage is that the Wild Rose Alliance is a big, bad ultra right-wing band of wingnuts. They haven’t done themselves any favours with the recent “Caucasian advantage” comment and the ensuing reluctance to either discipline or remove this candidate.

However, this doesn’t bother me. The comment was idiotic and insulting. The coverage it garnered was, for the most part, warranted.

What bothers me is that, in the media’s race to cover the race through the prism of soundbytes and celebrity, they have forgotten about one key thing. An election is as much about policies and ideas as it is about the personalities behind them.

Can we please stop talking about Danielle Smith and start talking about her ideas? Didn’t she already say she was pro-gay marriage and pro-choice? For a big, bad right winger, that’s remarkably progressive by most measures. That must have really been a downer for the media early on. There goes that all-too-predictable storyline. But hey, maybe Dalton McGuinty’s government will fall and they can begin to target Tim Hudak again.

I digress.

Here’s the point. Someone needs to initiate some coverage about what these big, bad, scary right-wing parties actually propose. There’s too much at stake for Canada to forget about the issues in its richest province.

This response put me in mind of a recent Ottawa Sun column by Anthony Furey that objected to the idea. Mr. Furey offered several silly objections* against an inection site (‘people like free stuff’, ‘this report tells us what we already know’), but one of the silliest is this:

It also amusingly implies that we should cater to addict’s preferences: “In Ottawa, about 40% of people who inject drugs said that they would walk 10 minutes or less to use a supervised injection facility.”

It’s not enough that taxpayers finance an addict’s consumption of illegal substances but we should do it on their own terms for ease of access.

I don’t Peter in real life, but I’m willing to bet that he does not live in a neighbourhood with junkies shooting up on street corners. Assuming this is the case, of course we won’t put the site in his back yard. And, contra Mr. Furey, of course we will put it near areas where the users actually are.

A neighbourhood sick with needle drug users will benefit from a safe injection site. We need only look at the Insite program in Vancouver to see that. Drug use through the rest of the area is down, more users are going into rehab, the spread of disease is reduced and crime is down. If I was tripping on syringes every time I left my home, I might beg for a supervised injection site in my back yard.

It’s still open for debate whether Ottawa would benefit sufficiently to warrant the expense of a safe injection site (I would be happy if we would just resurrect our needle exchange program), but if we do open one, location will be eminently important.

1. The Penny: Good riddance. It’s a waste of money and a waste of time. I’m surprised that the Tories actually brought in such a sound and reasonable policy. And if we’re worried that it will just result in stores rounding every price up, what is stopping them from raising all their prices by 4₵ right now?

2. Kony 2012: Remember that day we all cared? Yeah, me neither. We’ve got a pretty bad track record of caring about child soldiers. Just ask Omar Khadr.

3. Omar Khadr: He may be coming home soon - a decade too late to help him, I imagine, but at least we may be finally doing the right thing.

4. Fighter jets: So the Tories may not have been honest about the costs, and they may have been more concerned with looking tough than being responsible stewards of the economy. So they’re, uh, politicians. We’ve got a few years until an election and little evidence of a strong opposition party. I’m not expecting this to cost them, politically.

5. Robocalls: This is bad. It seems like there’s a real chance that someone associated with (or supporting) the Conservatives committed a crime. That being said, I don’t believe all the claims of electoral fraud; it seemed pretty out of control. Currently, there’s a legal challenge in seven ridings – which jibes with my research as to the number of ridings that were likely affected and where the fraud could have changed the outcome (sorry, David Bertschi). The Tories won 166 ridings in May. Losing seven would bring them to 159 – they’d still have a majority, so, no, this doesn’t bring their mandate into question… just their ethics. Hopefully, this will come to hurt them in the next election (and I think it might still have some traction a few years from now).

6. Rick Santorum: I hope to hear nothing more from him. I know I’ll be disappointed.

7. Mitt Romney: So the coronation is complete. Could the GOP be more underwhelmed?

8. Public Service cuts: It had to be done, but it sucks; it’s going to hurt a lot of people. Nonetheless, I don’t buy the claim that each job cut will result in two job losses in the private sector. And if it’s true, would the reverse hold? Could the government just hire a third of the population in order to reach full employment?

9. Axl Rose: Didn’t that self-fellating letter just prove that he is as much of a poseur as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? It seems they’re meant for each other.

10. Safe injection sites: The resistance to safe injection sites – like the opposition to needle-exchange programs and our neo-puritanical prohibition laws, in general – shows that governments are more interested in passing judgement on users (or securing votes of those who wish to pass judgement on users) than helping to form a society that is as safe for as many of our fellow citizens as possible. You don’t like drugs, fine, but your tastes shouldn’t imperil others.

All Canadian prime ministers who served at least four years in office are given a $100,000/year allowance beginning at the age of 65.  That’s $100,000 in addition to their already gold-plated pensions.

On Tuesday, the Liberals  tried to introduce a sub-amendment to the federal budget which would have raised the eligibility age of the prime minister’s allowance to 67.

It was defeated by the Conservative majority.

So, just so I understand, will the Liberals miss Stephen Harper so much that they actually want him to keep working until 67? I would have thought they’d want to change the PM’s retirement age to 53.

Garry Breitkreuz, the Tory MP best known for his campaign to repeal the long-gun registry, denies an Ottawa woman’s claim that he was “promoting gun violence” during a recent speech to her daughter’s high school class.

“This is completely unfounded,” the veteran Saskatchewan politician said Thursday after the matter was raised in the House of Commons.

…

Here, according to Sakisheway, are a few snippets of what, according to her daughter, Breitkreuz told the class: “He said he wanted to get rid of the registry because he thinks everyone should have the right to own a gun. If everyone here in Canada carried a gun, it would be safer for people. (The government) should make it easier to access guns so people can protect themselves.’”

Breitkreuz also supposedly illustrated his arguments with “what if” stories. For instance, he presented the students with a scenario in which a group of eight people confronts a robber with a gun. He suggested it would be better if one of the eight possessed a gun and shot the robber before he had a chance to harm anyone.

The MP also told the students about a study in a community in the United States where there was a high incidence of rape. In an effort to deal with the situation, local authorities offered guns and training to local women. The program was widely publicized — at least 200 women had been trained and armed — and incidents of rape then dropped sharply.