The sooner they give up, the fewer people get shot and the quicker it ends.
That's true, but that's just as true if the United States is the side that gives up, instead. And the US government and people were the aggressors in this war, so they are the ones that should give up and go home.
From Barron's Canadian Law Dictionary's entry on circumstantial evidence:
... in a criminal case based on circumstantial evidence the circumstances must be consistent with the conclusion that the act was committed by the acused and inconsistent with any other rational conclusion.
Having a powerless figurehead is an idiotic waste.
I disagree, for two reasons. One is that, as another poster pointed out, a head of state's job includes a lots of things other than exercising power: hosting state diners, doing good-will tours, giving out awards. Why not keep these roles with a specialized non-political head of state, and separate out the head of government roles (making foreign and domestic administrative policy decisions) into a political position with power.
Secondly, and more controversially, I think that there are great socio-political benefits to having a "figurehead" who represents the state and/or nation. Having spent a fair amount of time living in both the United States and Canada, it is my opinion that the US political culture is actually more suited to a constitutional monarchy than Canada is. There seems to be a sizable group of Americans who have an almost mystical respect for the presidency, treating it as a holy office that must be kept sacred. This can lead to horror and hatred that anyone would question George W. Bush "during time of war" and also to an overreaction to Bill Clinton's sexual affair sullying the presidency. In a constitutional monarchy, such people can worship the office of the head of state without interfering with or polarizing valid political criticism, since the person who gets criticized for making political decisions, the prime minister, does not occupy an office revered as representing the state/nation, in the way that some people view the presidency or monarchy as doing.
As an aside, a large majority of developed, democratic countries has figurehead heads of state, even though most of these countries are republics, not constitutional monarchies. They have a parliamentary system with a prime minister making most executive decisions, but instead of a monarch they have a president, sometimes directly elected by the people (Ireland), chosen by Parliament (Germany), or elected by an electoral college (India). In these systems the president is mostly a figurehead, with about the same power (or even less) than the Queen has in Canada.
One difference between the "enhanced" driver's licences in Canada and the US "Real ID" program is that "Real ID" is a standardization and centralization imposed by the US federal government on the US states, but the driver's licence changes in some places in Canada are independent initiatives of some provinces.
In British Columbia and Ontario, the provincial government wants to introduce licences that are more secure and that contain citizenship information, so they will be accepted by the US and Canadian border officials as acceptable ID. Interestingly, some border states in the US are talking about making similar changes, even ones that reject Real ID, like Washington State.
Because driver's licences are a provincial jurisdiction but citizenship information is a federal area, these provinces have had to go to the Government of Canada and get permission to have access to people's citizenship information, since such sharing cannot happen automatically under current privacy laws.
If this is the extent of the changes, then I don't see it as a problem. If, additionally, some of these provinces are making it possible to access other personal information using the cards, then I can understand the concern. And if they are also sharing some of these databases with the US, then that is very bad. I honestly don't know if the governments have said they'll do these additional, concerning things or not.
"Enhanced drivers licenses such as those to be issued in B.C. will lay the groundwork for a national identity card"... She characterized that program as a way of introducing a "type of national identity card" for Americans."
I'm sorry, but when did the US annex British Columbia?
In the summary, the privacy commissioner is not referring to the BC program as a type of national ID card for Americans. Here is part of the summary that you left out of your quote, that shows that she is saying that the US "Real ID" program is a type of national ID card for Americans.
Stoddart said the licenses, touted as an alternative to a passport for the purpose of crossing the U.S. border, closely resemble the Real ID program in the United States. She characterized that program as a way of introducing a "type of national identity card" for Americans."
The Ontario Bar Association, founded in 1907, is a voluntary organization of lawyers, judges, and law students. Its website says that it represents lawyers' interests to governments and other organizations and "provides lawyers with opportunities to become more efficient and effective, to further their professional education and to keep abreast of current developments within the profession, nationally and provincially". So, in spite of its name, the Ontario Bar Association is not the bar.
The Law Society of Upper Canada, founded in 1797, when Ontario was called Upper Canada, is "the governing body for lawyers and paralegals in Ontario" and "the Law Society regulates the legal professions in the public interest according to Ontario law and the Law Society's rules, regulations and guidelines." So, I believe that it isthe bar.
Aside: According to the Law Society's website: "The creation of this self-governing body by an Act of the Legislative Assembly was an innovation in the English-speaking world."
Why do EU regulators get any say over whether Microsoft can purchase Yahoo? Does, say, Canada also have the right to block Microsoft from purchasing Yahoo? Could the US block BMW from purchasing Daimler?
This is based on the assumption that Microsoft and Yahoo are both incorporated in the United States.
Note: I am not a U.S. person, nor do I have a US-rocks, EU-sucks attitude.
"all of those voting machines that voted for Bush"
Whether or not enough votes were faked/switched/stolen to steal the election, it seems indisputable that about five out of ten U.S voters voted for Bush in 2004. And turnout was sixty percent, so really seven out of ten* registered voters either didn't care if Bush got re-elected or they voted for him. Having known and worked with many Americans in the United States for several years centred around the 2004 election, I still don't know how to account for that widespread amount of mass wilful ignorance and/or active malice.
I think, having known many Americans, that I have much more trouble making sense of it than do people who have never lived among them.
* - 7/10 because 4/10 didn't vote and (50% * 6/10) voted for Bush.
Political and PolySci junkies might be interested to know that, according the Privacy Commissioner's website:
The Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Jennifer Stoddart, is an Officer of Parliament who reports directly to the House of Commons and the Senate. This means that the federal Privacy Commissioner is not an Officer of the Crown, like, say, the Attorney General of Canada is, and so the Privacy Commissioner is formally independent of the government (a.k.a. the executive branch in the U.S. and other presidential/congressional systems).
The CLA [Canadian Library Association] fears the Canadian government, now redrafting copyright legislation, will create a new act closely mirroring U.S. legislation that curtails consumer rights, such as the right to copy material for their own use, Don Butcher, executive director of the Canadian Libraries Association said in a news conference in Ottawa Friday. ...
"This is a battle between Hollywood lobbyists versus the average Canadian," Butcher said. ...
Any changes made to law should protect artists such as musicians and authors, but also allow copying for individual use, he said. ...
"Interest in the legislation isn't just coming from experts and specialists, lawyers and lobbyists. This time, interest is coming from ordinary Canadians," Butcher said.
I agree that it's not fair. Canada is a federation, so no matter what, each province should get at least one MP, and riding boundaries should not cross provincial borders. However, this right should not be guaranteed to the territories: they should share one (very) large riding (an electoral district larger than India).
I also think we need to do away with all of the "grandfather clauses" for representation for provinces - no province should get more MPs than they deserve by population. Right now, 7/10 provinces are over-represented by these rules, including very small (PEI) and very large (Quebec) provinces. In an effort to somewhat counteract this disproportionality, they have to increase the number of MPs after every census - it is now getting to the point where soon they won't all fit in the Commons. They are increasing the floorspace over the next several years as part of a general fix-up of the Centre Block of the Parliament Buildings, but according to projections by the time the renovations are complete, the number of MPs will have increased more than the bigger size will allow for.
Anyway, I think the rule should be simple: The smallest province gets some fixed number of MPs (whether 1 or 2 or 4, doesn't really matter to me) and then after each census every provinces gets a number of MPs based on its population relative to the smallest province.
What surprised me most was that his reasons for rejecting certain religions were the exact same arguments I would use, except in my case Christianity didn't get a free pass. Your position corresponds very well with this quote: "I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours", Stephen Roberts
So, because it is dead wrong for parents to teach their belief systems to their children, so that the children will believe the same when they grow up, you are going to teach your daughter your belief system so she will believe that when she grows up? What are you doing that is different than other parents who teach their religion to their kids?
One difference is that he is apparently casually comfortable with her attending church with her friends.
I'm sure he is teaching his daughter a belief system (i.e. be caring and considerate, as he said), but not the kind of "belief system" that you imply. That is, failing to teach her about religions or that a religion is true is not the same thing as teaching a belief system that religions are false. If my (hypothetical) daughter asked me if the moon is made of cheese, I would tell her it isn't, but otherwise I wouldn't feel the need to spend much time telling her about the lack of cheesiness of the moon. That doesn't mean I'm teaching an anti-moon-cheese belief system.
I see two problems with this scheme. The first is what mechanism ensures the boundary comission does its job impartially? My impression is "independent" or "nonpartisan" positions and groups are a figment of poly-sci theory. Never seen one in the real world.
I agree that there is nothing in my proposal that will technically prevent gerrymandering, as I acknowledged in my original post, but I strongly disagree with your assertion that independent or non-partisan groups are "never seen in the real world". My own experience is that they are commonplace. I reason I included links to maps of current districts in parts of Canada was to provide some evidence of this.
I expected this particular criticism. In my experience, people often get the government they expect: if a country's people expect that a non-partisan civil service or board or commission is impossible, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy - politicians think they have to stuff the positions with their own people because they expect their opponents to do the same thing. I have noticed that the disbelief in the existence or possibility of independent positions is widespread among Americans (I don't know and don't speculate about your nationality.)
Anyway, there are places that had commonplace gerrymandering, and then implemented proposals like the one I outline, and now they don't have commonplace gerrymandering. The Wikipedia sub-entry on gerrymandering in Canada mentions that one small province did politicize redistricting in 2006, and it was widely attacked in the media and considered an unusual, controversial act.
This won't solve anything, because census data is not very accurate. The Constitution only authorizes Congress to require that numbers of people be collected. Other information, such as race, income, or any other measurement are voluntary. Many people either do not provide additional information, or deliberately mis-represent the data. I agree that census data can be incorrect in terms of population and especially in terms of other measures like race and income. However:
My proposal is not any more reliant on census population data than the current systems used in the U.S. In fact, inaccurate population data seem like a good argument against the current obsession of U.S. redistricting with getting district populations as close as possible, above all other considerations.
Any inaccuracies with other census data, like race and income, do not affect my proposal. I may have used the phrase "historic and geographic communities-of-interest" in an ambiguous way: I just meant keeping geographical communities/counties/cities/neighbourhoods together.
One potential drawback in your system is that substantial minority populations, which may be spread across multiple districts but not large enough to take a seat in any individual district, may fail to gain any seats in any district (i.e no representation whatsoever), even though there may be enough of them in the aggregate to warrant a minority number of seats. This would be particularly true in a "winner take all" system where all of the seats in a district or if the district only has one seat goes to the winner with the runners up getting nothing. Yes, many people consider that a problem, but it is a general problem in systems with single-member districts and no proportional representation, like the current system in the U.S. (and in Canada and the UK, my other examples), whether or not they have non-partisan redistricting or politicized gerrymandering. This problem is a common argument in favour of proportional representation.
I have also heard this problem used as an argument in favour of gerrymandering. The idea is that you could gerrymander some districts to give the thinly spread but substantial minority populations "their own" districts. But, I think, if there is a political system with geographical districts, then those districts should represent geographical communities. If you want better representation for racial, economic, religious, or political communities, then that is a good argument for adopting proportional representation.
To prevent gerrymandering, have independent boundary commissions to redistrict after every census. Make one of their priorities be to keep historic and geographic communities-of-interest together when drawing districts. As a part of this, allow for greater differences between districts' populations (say, up to 15%) in order to allow for nice, neat districts that follow county lines, city limits, or established neighbourhoods in big cities.
Yes, gerrymandering would be just as technically possible under my proposal as it is under current the U.S. systems, but, in practice, it should eliminate gerrymandering. Other countries that also use first-past-the-post single-member districts, such as Canada and the UK, as the U.S. does, use redistricting schemes very similar to the one I described, and they do not have gerrymandering.
For example, here are interactive maps of the electoral districts in southwestern Ontario and Toronto, created using a system very much like the one I described. They are typical.
Gravity slows down time, but so does travelling at high speed.
So, all other things being equal, a clock at ground level would tick slower than a clock at the top of a tall building. And, all other things being equal, a clock sitting still (relative to an observer) would tick faster than a clock moving at high speed relative to the observer.
In the real-world example from 1962, the effects of less gravity on the clock flown in the aircraft would have worked to "speed up" the clock, but the effects of the airplane's higher speed would have worked to "slow down" the clock in the airplane. In this case, the effect of the different relative speeds of the two clocks was much greater than the effect of the different gravity strengths that they were exposed to. So the net result was that the airplane clock "slowed down" because of its higher speed, meaning less time passed for it than for the clock left on the ground.
How about a ballot like this, marked with a pencil? And after you mark it behind a privacy screen, you fold it and present it to a poll worker, who looks at the folded ballot and verifies there is only one, valid ballot and initials it, then hands it back to you and you put it in a simple cardboard ballot box.
The votes are counted at each polling place by the poll workers, and representatives of each candidate can observe, and it is open to public observation.
Additionally, the UN hasn't created world peace, but it has surely helped to prevent another World War -- which was the primary purpose of its creation. (To be fair, the EU and its precursor organizations, and cold war policies of MAD had a lot to do with preventing another world war, too.)
Slashdot Mirror
That's true, but that's just as true if the United States is the side that gives up, instead. And the US government and people were the aggressors in this war, so they are the ones that should give up and go home.
Except why do they need to fingerprint international travellers leaving the country?
I disagree, for two reasons. One is that, as another poster pointed out, a head of state's job includes a lots of things other than exercising power: hosting state diners, doing good-will tours, giving out awards. Why not keep these roles with a specialized non-political head of state, and separate out the head of government roles (making foreign and domestic administrative policy decisions) into a political position with power.
Secondly, and more controversially, I think that there are great socio-political benefits to having a "figurehead" who represents the state and/or nation. Having spent a fair amount of time living in both the United States and Canada, it is my opinion that the US political culture is actually more suited to a constitutional monarchy than Canada is. There seems to be a sizable group of Americans who have an almost mystical respect for the presidency, treating it as a holy office that must be kept sacred. This can lead to horror and hatred that anyone would question George W. Bush "during time of war" and also to an overreaction to Bill Clinton's sexual affair sullying the presidency. In a constitutional monarchy, such people can worship the office of the head of state without interfering with or polarizing valid political criticism, since the person who gets criticized for making political decisions, the prime minister, does not occupy an office revered as representing the state/nation, in the way that some people view the presidency or monarchy as doing.
As an aside, a large majority of developed, democratic countries has figurehead heads of state, even though most of these countries are republics, not constitutional monarchies. They have a parliamentary system with a prime minister making most executive decisions, but instead of a monarch they have a president, sometimes directly elected by the people (Ireland), chosen by Parliament (Germany), or elected by an electoral college (India). In these systems the president is mostly a figurehead, with about the same power (or even less) than the Queen has in Canada.
One difference between the "enhanced" driver's licences in Canada and the US "Real ID" program is that "Real ID" is a standardization and centralization imposed by the US federal government on the US states, but the driver's licence changes in some places in Canada are independent initiatives of some provinces.
In British Columbia and Ontario, the provincial government wants to introduce licences that are more secure and that contain citizenship information, so they will be accepted by the US and Canadian border officials as acceptable ID. Interestingly, some border states in the US are talking about making similar changes, even ones that reject Real ID, like Washington State.
Because driver's licences are a provincial jurisdiction but citizenship information is a federal area, these provinces have had to go to the Government of Canada and get permission to have access to people's citizenship information, since such sharing cannot happen automatically under current privacy laws.
If this is the extent of the changes, then I don't see it as a problem. If, additionally, some of these provinces are making it possible to access other personal information using the cards, then I can understand the concern. And if they are also sharing some of these databases with the US, then that is very bad. I honestly don't know if the governments have said they'll do these additional, concerning things or not.
In the summary, the privacy commissioner is not referring to the BC program as a type of national ID card for Americans. Here is part of the summary that you left out of your quote, that shows that she is saying that the US "Real ID" program is a type of national ID card for Americans.
... file a complaint with the Ontario Bar [link to Ontario Bar Association] for Eisen's breech of professional ethicsIANAL, but I think such a complaint should be filed with the Law Society of Upper Canada.
The Ontario Bar Association, founded in 1907, is a voluntary organization of lawyers, judges, and law students. Its website says that it represents lawyers' interests to governments and other organizations and "provides lawyers with opportunities to become more efficient and effective, to further their professional education and to keep abreast of current developments within the profession, nationally and provincially". So, in spite of its name, the Ontario Bar Association is not the bar.
The Law Society of Upper Canada, founded in 1797, when Ontario was called Upper Canada, is "the governing body for lawyers and paralegals in Ontario" and "the Law Society regulates the legal professions in the public interest according to Ontario law and the Law Society's rules, regulations and guidelines." So, I believe that it is the bar.
Aside: According to the Law Society's website: "The creation of this self-governing body by an Act of the Legislative Assembly was an innovation in the English-speaking world."
"Begs the question"?
Why do EU regulators get any say over whether Microsoft can purchase Yahoo? Does, say, Canada also have the right to block Microsoft from purchasing Yahoo? Could the US block BMW from purchasing Daimler?
This is based on the assumption that Microsoft and Yahoo are both incorporated in the United States.
Note: I am not a U.S. person, nor do I have a US-rocks, EU-sucks attitude.
Whether or not enough votes were faked/switched/stolen to steal the election, it seems indisputable that about five out of ten U.S voters voted for Bush in 2004. And turnout was sixty percent, so really seven out of ten * registered voters either didn't care if Bush got re-elected or they voted for him. Having known and worked with many Americans in the United States for several years centred around the 2004 election, I still don't know how to account for that widespread amount of mass wilful ignorance and/or active malice.
I think, having known many Americans, that I have much more trouble making sense of it than do people who have never lived among them.
* - 7/10 because 4/10 didn't vote and (50% * 6/10) voted for Bush.
In related news, from a December 21st, 2007 CBC News article: Libraries urge Ottawa to consider consumers in drafting copyright law
The CLA [Canadian Library Association] fears the Canadian government, now redrafting copyright legislation, will create a new act closely mirroring U.S. legislation that curtails consumer rights, such as the right to copy material for their own use, Don Butcher, executive director of the Canadian Libraries Association said in a news conference in Ottawa Friday. ... "This is a battle between Hollywood lobbyists versus the average Canadian," Butcher said. ... Any changes made to law should protect artists such as musicians and authors, but also allow copying for individual use, he said. ... "Interest in the legislation isn't just coming from experts and specialists, lawyers and lobbyists. This time, interest is coming from ordinary Canadians," Butcher said.Shouldn't that be centre. :)
I agree that it's not fair. Canada is a federation, so no matter what, each province should get at least one MP, and riding boundaries should not cross provincial borders. However, this right should not be guaranteed to the territories: they should share one (very) large riding (an electoral district larger than India).
I also think we need to do away with all of the "grandfather clauses" for representation for provinces - no province should get more MPs than they deserve by population. Right now, 7/10 provinces are over-represented by these rules, including very small (PEI) and very large (Quebec) provinces. In an effort to somewhat counteract this disproportionality, they have to increase the number of MPs after every census - it is now getting to the point where soon they won't all fit in the Commons. They are increasing the floorspace over the next several years as part of a general fix-up of the Centre Block of the Parliament Buildings, but according to projections by the time the renovations are complete, the number of MPs will have increased more than the bigger size will allow for.
Anyway, I think the rule should be simple: The smallest province gets some fixed number of MPs (whether 1 or 2 or 4, doesn't really matter to me) and then after each census every provinces gets a number of MPs based on its population relative to the smallest province.
The least populous federal riding comprises the entirety of the Yukon Territory, with a population of about 31,000.
One difference is that he is apparently casually comfortable with her attending church with her friends.
I'm sure he is teaching his daughter a belief system (i.e. be caring and considerate, as he said), but not the kind of "belief system" that you imply. That is, failing to teach her about religions or that a religion is true is not the same thing as teaching a belief system that religions are false. If my (hypothetical) daughter asked me if the moon is made of cheese, I would tell her it isn't, but otherwise I wouldn't feel the need to spend much time telling her about the lack of cheesiness of the moon. That doesn't mean I'm teaching an anti-moon-cheese belief system.
I think, for once, my sig is relevant
I've heard that the U.S. Congress has a higher incumbency rate than the British House of Lords. A fun "fact".
I agree that there is nothing in my proposal that will technically prevent gerrymandering, as I acknowledged in my original post, but I strongly disagree with your assertion that independent or non-partisan groups are "never seen in the real world". My own experience is that they are commonplace. I reason I included links to maps of current districts in parts of Canada was to provide some evidence of this.
I expected this particular criticism. In my experience, people often get the government they expect: if a country's people expect that a non-partisan civil service or board or commission is impossible, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy - politicians think they have to stuff the positions with their own people because they expect their opponents to do the same thing. I have noticed that the disbelief in the existence or possibility of independent positions is widespread among Americans (I don't know and don't speculate about your nationality.)
Anyway, there are places that had commonplace gerrymandering, and then implemented proposals like the one I outline, and now they don't have commonplace gerrymandering. The Wikipedia sub-entry on gerrymandering in Canada mentions that one small province did politicize redistricting in 2006, and it was widely attacked in the media and considered an unusual, controversial act.
p.s. Thanks for the tip.I have also heard this problem used as an argument in favour of gerrymandering. The idea is that you could gerrymander some districts to give the thinly spread but substantial minority populations "their own" districts. But, I think, if there is a political system with geographical districts, then those districts should represent geographical communities. If you want better representation for racial, economic, religious, or political communities, then that is a good argument for adopting proportional representation.
Yes, gerrymandering would be just as technically possible under my proposal as it is under current the U.S. systems, but, in practice, it should eliminate gerrymandering. Other countries that also use first-past-the-post single-member districts, such as Canada and the UK, as the U.S. does, use redistricting schemes very similar to the one I described, and they do not have gerrymandering.
For example, here are interactive maps of the electoral districts in southwestern Ontario and Toronto, created using a system very much like the one I described. They are typical.
Gravity slows down time, but so does travelling at high speed.
So, all other things being equal, a clock at ground level would tick slower than a clock at the top of a tall building. And, all other things being equal, a clock sitting still (relative to an observer) would tick faster than a clock moving at high speed relative to the observer.
In the real-world example from 1962, the effects of less gravity on the clock flown in the aircraft would have worked to "speed up" the clock, but the effects of the airplane's higher speed would have worked to "slow down" the clock in the airplane. In this case, the effect of the different relative speeds of the two clocks was much greater than the effect of the different gravity strengths that they were exposed to. So the net result was that the airplane clock "slowed down" because of its higher speed, meaning less time passed for it than for the clock left on the ground.
How about a ballot like this, marked with a pencil? And after you mark it behind a privacy screen, you fold it and present it to a poll worker, who looks at the folded ballot and verifies there is only one, valid ballot and initials it, then hands it back to you and you put it in a simple cardboard ballot box.
The votes are counted at each polling place by the poll workers, and representatives of each candidate can observe, and it is open to public observation.
Is this just too simple?
Additionally, the UN hasn't created world peace, but it has surely helped to prevent another World War -- which was the primary purpose of its creation. (To be fair, the EU and its precursor organizations, and cold war policies of MAD had a lot to do with preventing another world war, too.)