Discussing Senate reform in the Ballast
I did another interview with Ballast magazine that you guys might find interesting. The topic is Canadian Senate reform; I debate with editor Paul Hiebert as to whether or not we’d be better of just...
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Translating the Latino Vote
Is there any political disadvantage to taking a hard left turn in the United States these days? As a conservative, I would hope so, but the evidence doesn’t seem to be there. In the aftermath of...
View ArticleOld “Mace” articles now archived
Back in 2011, me and a couple friends ran a little blog called The Mace that offered running commentary on the Canadian parliamentary election of that year. It got a fair bit of mainstream media...
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Playing with free speech
I’m not normally the sort of person to make a big fuss over philosophical differences between the United States and Canada, but man, if you want a good example of an area where the two countries sit...
View ArticleHere’s how we can stop the whole drone thing
Rand Paul’s 13-hour filibuster didn’t impress me much. He was protesting the Obama Justice Department’s recently-leaked legal opinion stating that drone strikes can be used to kill American citizens...
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A rebuttal to Anita Sarkeesian’s “Tropes Vs. Women” Episode 1: Damsels in...
During my unhappy year in Japan, a favorite method for passing the days was collecting CDs of Japanese clip-art. Like many foreigners, I had been overwhelmed by Japan’s dizzying array of holidays and...
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Adios Presidente
Listen to a reading There’s a popular quote by some famous right-winger — Margaret Thatcher, I think — where it’s smugly declared that the “problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of...
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The infallible ones
Listen to a reading With the possible exception of Argentina itself, the election of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the first Argentine pope of the Roman Catholic Church probably surprised no...
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A plugged-up economy
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty released Canada’s 2013-2014 budget yesterday, and my, what a conservative document it is. Just not in the ideological sense. With expenditures totalling over $250 billion,...
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Harper the role-model
Amid all the media hoopla surrounding this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, here’s a headline you probably missed: Stephen Harper was invited to speak but politely declined. Speaking to...
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Courting gay marriage
I remember a conversation with an older student in some university class a few years ago. I forget why exactly, but we’d just finished watching Stephen Frears’ My Beautiful Laundrette, a 1985 British...
View ArticleElizabeth May versus me
I don’t know how often you guys read my twice-a-week Canadian politics columns for the Huffington Post (you really should by the way—a link to the most recent one can always be found in the right...
View ArticleThatcher (1925-2013)
When I was in university, I had this one really awful sociology class taught by a terribly obnoxious left-wing demagogue. I was just beginning to formulate my own ideological identity in those days,...
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Noko Nuko
Of all the absurd, pointless political offices in existence today, few can match the sheer dark comedy of the South Korean Ministry of Unification. Every year, South Korean citizens shill out some...
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4/15/2013
There’s not much useful commentary to be offered when tragedy strikes, particularly a tragedy as appallingly nihilistic, senseless, and evil as Monday’s bombings at the Boston Marathon. Even by the...
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April Terror Part II
It seems terrorism is going to remain in the headlines for a little while longer — at least in Canada. On Monday, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police made a surprise announcement that they had...
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Syria goes too far
On August 20, 2012, President Obama interrupted a routine White House press briefing with a surprise cameo appearance. Well in the midst of his re-election campaign, the prez likely figured he could...
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Obummer
If he wasn’t such an obviously intelligent and educated man, you could be excused for thinking Barack Obama was a little, well, dumb. How else to explain his fast-accumulating pile of policy failures —...
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Fictional creatures of Canada
The Constitution of Canada is an obtuse and badly-written document, but at least one clause seems to be clear enough. When the prime minister goes around picking senators to represent Canada’s 10...
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Controversies piling up
It’s been a hell of a week for anyone following North American politics. The festering scandals on both sides of the border are too numerous and complex for me to summarize at the moment, so here’s a...
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