New Brunswick today became the second province to see what its proposed new federal riding boundaries might look like. (Newfoundland and Labrador was first off the mark last month).
The proposed changes in New Brunswick do not look, to my eyes, as radical a re-drawing as they do in Newfoundland though there’s a fascinating Twitter discussion happening as I write this around the #nbpoli hashtag.
Continue reading New Brunswick proposes new federal riding boundaries
The NDP’s Megan Leslie reviews the spring sitting in Parliament while the National Citizens Coalition’s Stephen Taylor gets asked: Is it time the Conservatives took the New Democrats — ahead or tied with the Tories in several recent polls — more seriously? Continue reading Is it personal between Joe Oliver and Megan Leslie? Leslie says: "Yeah."
U.S. Army Lt. Col Jon Jackson is the court-appointed defender for convicted Canadian terrorist Omar Khadr. Jackson was in Ottawa Thursday and we asked him about Khadr, his state of mind, and Jackson’s assessment of how Canadians should think about him.
Continue reading Khadr's no threat, his U.S. army lawyer says
Here’s some tidbits picked up from around the Web and put together using Storify. [Depending on your browser and connection speed, the story pad could take a few seconds to load. Patience!]
I am so cheering for voices like Mahmoud Salem, a popular Egyptian blogger who has this to say at his blog Rantings of a Sandmonkey:
If you are a revolutionary, show us your capabilities. Start something. Join a party. Build an institution. Solve a real problem. Do something except running around from demonstration to marsh to sit-in. This is not street work: real street work means moving the street, not moving in the street. Real street work means that the street you live in knows you and trusts you, and will move with you , because you help them and care for them, not because you want to achieve some lofty notions you read about in a book without any real understanding on how to apply it on Egyptian soil. You have done nothing of the kind so far, and it’s the only way you will get ahead.
Continue reading From Egypt: "If you are a revolutionary, show us your capabilities."
In the wake of a leaked report that seemed to damn Supt. Bruno Saccomani – the commander of the Prime Minister’s Personal Detail (PMPD) charged with protecting the PM, his wife Laureen and their kids Ben and Rachel — has provoked a huge pushback from his supporters. Now, we’re learning that, until he took over and stared kicking butt, one officer was too drunk to do her job guarding Mrs. Harper and another wouldn’t put down his pizza to protect the PM. Read on …
Here at the G20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, European leaders are making the claim that the credibility of the G20 is at stake if G20 members don’t step and kick in to a US$430 billion International Monetary Fund to help Europe sort out its fiscal crisis. So far, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said Canada will not contribute to such a fund. He believes that Europe has enough financial firepower of its own to deal with the euro crisis.
This morning, European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy held a press conference to make that claim — that they expect the G20, including Canada, to do its part to help Europe out of its mess.
During the question period, I put this question to those two gentlemen:
Why should North Americans risk their assets to help the largest and one of the wealthiest economic areas in the world? Shouldn’t IMF resources be used to help out developing countries and not the richest economic area in the world? What do you make of Prime Minister Harper’s contention that Europe has enough financial firepower on its own to deal with this crisis?
And, to Mr.Van Rompuy, you mentioned the credibility of the G20 is at stake as it considers whether to pledge billions to the IMF fund for Europe. Wouldn’t he say that the credibility of European leaders is at stake given you’ve had four years to fix this crisis and you still don’t have clear long-term plans?
Apparently I struck a chord. Here’s their responses:
Continue reading Barroso: Euro leaders won't take no guff from no one
I can’t think of a time in the party’s 50-year history when it’s likely been more fun to be a New Democrat. And by “fun”, I mean holding the levers of power or being close to holding the levers of power. I realize there are some New Democrats who believe the federal party are becoming a bunch of vendus, that under Thomas Mulcair the party is ready to sacrifice its founding socialist principles just to form a government.
But I’ll leave that debate for the next NDP convention.
Continue reading Has it ever been so good to be a New Democrat?
Ray Heard was John Turner’s communications director. He’s been around for a while, watching lots of internal Liberal Party of Canada fights — and participating in almost all of them. He says that the big issue in the nascent Liberal leadership race will be whether or not to merge with the New Democrats and that that issue will be more divisive than the Martin/Chretien or Chretien/Turner fights. I talked to Ray about that tonight on my program with Zach Churchill, a Liberal MLA in Nova Scotia. (Zach, incidentally, was born in the same year – 1984 — that Turner was, briefly, prime minister):
Continue reading Ray Heard argues: NDP merger issue may be most divisive for Liberals
Bill James, as Huffington Post writer Sam Stein correctly describes him, is the high priest of baseball number-crunching. His statistics-based analyses of Major League Baseball were at the foundation of Oakland A’s manager Billy Beane’s approach to building a championship team on the cheap. Beane’s experience, of course, was chronicled in the Hollywood hit Moneyball. Stein writes that James is now turning his attention to U.S. politics, which last year entered an entirely new and, if you ask me, weird era in which money is literally no object. Continue reading 'Moneyball' politics: Bill James vs SuperPACs