Step program

14 Steps That Will Evolve Your Views On Gay Marriage  Here's the one I liked the best:  imagine how stupid you'll look in 40 years

Stop, children, what's that sound

I think there's something happening here. What it is, not exactly clear.
But the Montreal Gazette has scored a major interview with one of the leaders of Anonymous who is hiding out in Montreal from the FBI.
He calls himself Commander X and he makes some powerful observations:

There’s a really good argument at this point that we might well be the most powerful organization on Earth. The entire world right now is run by information. Our entire world is being controlled and operated by tiny invisible 1s and 0s that are flashing through the air and flashing through the wires around us. So if that’s what controls our world, ask yourself who controls the 1s and the 0s? It’s the geeks and computer hackers of the world. . .
In Syria and Tunisia, Libya, Egypt in Nigeria in the Ivory Coast, we have saved so many lives I can’t even count – activists and journalists and bloggers and people who come to us to keep themselves safe in these extremely hostile environments – and I’m unwilling to lay that kind of work down. . . .
“Information terrorist” – what a funny concept. That you could terrorize someone with information. But who’s terrorized? Is it the common people reading the newspaper and learning what their government is doing in their name? They’re not terrorized – they’re perfectly satisfied with that situation. It’s the people trying to hide these secrets, who are trying to hide these crimes. The funny thing is every email database that I’ve ever been a part of stealing, from President. Assad to Stratfor security, every email database, every single one has had crimes in it. Not one time that I’ve broken into a corporation or a government, and found their emails and thought, “Oh my God, these people are perfectly innocent people, I made a mistake.”. . .
Wherever I go, whether Oakland, San Francisco, Montreal … I see the same stuff. I see people rising up demanding justice and these brutal, paramilitary police departments being used to crush them and sure, I get involved

Anonymous may be more effective than we realize -- for one thing, the online surveillance bill that Anonymous didn't like now seems to have disappeared.

Done.

Let's see more journalists shutting down political "spokespeople" like this who can't defend their candidate so they attack the press instead:
""

The right side of history

I've said before, we usually don't get to choose the battle, we only get to choose our side. I'm glad to see Obama chose the right side today.
In Canada, Paul Martin showed true leadership when he described how his own support for gay marriage had evolved following the Supreme Court ruling.  Now Obama is showing Americans how they also can change their thinking:

. . . over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don't Ask Don't Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I've just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.

Every Major's Terrible

Didn't take long:

One year

I missed posting on the one-year anniversary but Steve didn't:

This majority is Harper in his full glory. The bully with no regard for democracy, the authoritarian right wing ideologue in the pocket of narrow economic interests, prone to low rent tactics that forever undermine any level of civil discourse, this is Canada under this "regime". There is nothing to endorse here, an embarrassing episode in Canadian history which future generations will shake their heads at

Save this column -- it's going in my "I love the Internets" list.  It will take a few years, I think, but someday all of Canada will see the Harper Conservatives as clearly as Steve does now.

We are all Guy Fawkes now

Oh, those darn "civil libertarians" are at it again!

But civil libertarians are concerned that the legislation will give police the power to break up peaceful protests, which are frequently filled with people in costumes, masks or even face paint that could be construed as concealing identity under the new law.

Why are they being so mean to the police?  Of course our police would only use this new legislation to protect innocent businesses from those awful Black Bloc people.  They wouldn't ever use it against the rest of us, I'm sure.

I'll Have Another

I love watching horse races, especially when an unknown comes out of the pack and wins, like the Canadian-owned California horse I'll Have Another, ridden by a rookie jockey in the Kentucky Derby 2012:

And yes, I'd like to have another, at the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes.

Yes, bring them in

I couldn't agree more with this article if I had written it myself.

When immigrants arrive, they not only fill gaps in the work force but pay taxes and spend money on housing, transport and consumer goods. Productive capacity increases and there is a ripple effect across the economy. And studies show that their offspring tend to be among the country's best-educated and initiative-taking young people.

Yes, exactly.
I keep hearing wailing and gnashing of teeth about how our pensions and social services are unsustainable as us baby boomers retire.  What tripe!  Canada can easily import all the future taxpayers we will ever need, and they'll make our country better, too:

Evelyna Prochorow, 21, came from Kazakhstan by way of what her family found a crowded, unwelcoming Germany. She was 8, the sixth of 13 children, and barely spoke a word of English. A decade later, she graduated near the top of her high-school class. She is a broker at Harvest Insurance, her sister is a legal assistant nearby, and the evangelical church that is dear to them is here (with more under construction). Unlike many small-town Canadians her age, Ms. Prochorow has no desire to be anywhere else.

Star wars day

May the fourth be with you!

Gutless

Why would anyone think that a man as cowardly as Mitt Romney should be president of the United States?
Also, what John Cole says -- why any gay person would support the Republicans is beyond me, too.

Just a barrel of laughs

Oh, why not let Conrad Black come back to Canada? We could do worse and we need the comic relief -- think of how much fun we'll have skewering his pompous OpEds!

Shorter

Shorter Andrew Coyne:

I'm shocked SHOCKED that the Liberals and NDP are not sufficiently outraged at what the Harper Conservatives are doing now.

So what are they doing now? Well, here's Bill 38:

The bill runs to more than 420 pages. It amends some 60 different acts, repeals half a dozen, and adds three more, including a completely rewritten Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. It ranges far beyond the traditional budget concerns of taxing and spending, making changes in policy across a number of fields from immigration (among other changes, it erases at a stroke the entire backlog of applications under the skilled worker program), to telecommunications (opening the door, slightly, to foreign ownership), to land codes on native reservations.

But nowhere in Coyne's column is a statement that the Harper Conservatives are wrong to try to govern this way. Instead, somehow, this is all Parliament's fault.

. . . the increasing use of these omnibills extends Parliament’s powerlessness in all directions: it has become, if you will, omnimpotent — a ceremonial body, little more. What is worse, it cannot even seem to rouse itself to its own defence . . . today’s Parliament is so accustomed to these indignities that it barely registers.

Gee, isn't it just too bad that we don't have some people watching what goes on in Parliament who could maybe tell us what's going on there, or maybe even criticize it, or something. Oh, well....

Arrested for jogging while brown

The news story doesn't mention the racial angle at all.  So I guess Windsor police and prosecutors think its OK to arrest people for jogging while brown:

As he [plainclothes police officer Van Buskirk] was heading back to the station he saw a man, who turned out to be [Dr. Tyceer] Abouhassan, running along Dougall Avenue next to Jackson Park.
He pulled Abouhassan’s headphones off, then asked him why he was in the park and why he was talking to girls.
Abouhassan replied that he didn’t know what Van Buskirk was talking about, and asked who he was.
Van Buskirk grabbed Abouhassan by the neck. The doctor stepped back and tried to get away. Van Buskirk pursued and punched him in the face at least three times.
The detective then called the tennis club employee, who said it wasn’t the same guy. At the hospital Abouhassan learned he was under arrest for assaulting a police officer. The Crown later stayed that charge.

I'll just bet they did. Now the police officer involved has pleaded guilty to assault.
But what I found curious about the story is why this obviously innocent and blameless doctor was ever put under arrest for anything whatsoever.
(h/t)

Going Godwin

When the Harper Conservatives talked about a law and order agenda, I didn't think they meant Godwin's law about bizarre Nazi analogies too.
But nobody escapes the Spanish Inquisition, nobody can win a land war in Asia, and nobody can stop themselves from slinging Hitler at their enemies, however inaccurate the reference.
So now we have #HarperHistory trending on twitter as we consider all the other craven examples of NDP's historical perfidy over the years. Like these:

Noah's Ark was just another pet project by the NDP for its union buddies. #HarperHistory
The NDP killed Bambi's mother. #HarperHistory
The Titanic sunk after it collided with the NDP. #HarperHistory
The NDP shamefully stood by in the fight against plaque and gingivitis #HarperHistory
The NDP was on the grassy knoll. #harperhistory
The NDP's pro-serf policies and insistence on taxing feudal lords was an impediment to trade throughout the Middle Ages. #HarperHistory

When will those guys learn to get with the program and start sending Canadians to war like everyone else always wants to do.?