On November 21st the Macdonald-Laurier Institute will celebrate the 25th anniversary of Free Trade with a “gala” dinner that promises to be a “remarkable evening”. It’s being billed as a can’t-miss event, presumably attended by autocratic millionaires who will be outfitting themselves with new monocles and pocket watch fobs for the evening. I imagine most […] More »
GMO-giant Monsanto made headlines this week when genetically modified wheat was found in an Oregon crop. Genetically modified (GM) wheat is not approved for production or consumption, even in the U.S., though the company tested the strain in 10 states in the ’90s. Scientists speculate the plants found in Oregon may be the result of […] More »
The camera rolled as a three-drug cocktail was shot into Andrew Grant DeYoung’s arm, there in a prison in Jackson, Georgia. It captured De Young as the injection reached his veins and killed him, thus carrying out his sentence, and granting him a spot in the history books as the first man in America in […] More »
Tomorrow, let’s take a moment to reflect on the 42nd anniversary of the passing of Bill C-150, the omnibus bill that decriminalized abortion, contraception and homosexuality. The rights that Canadians have because of this historic bill are crucial to remember as those same rights come under attack elsewhere: on Wednesday, Indiana became the first state […] More »
The United States’ decision to invade Afghanistan soon after 9/11 was misguided for many reasons, but one was purely practical: Al Qaeda is a stateless, decentralized network scattered across the globe. The spectral, international scope of the problem was no secret—so why wage a conventional war on one country? It was as if an outmoded […] More »
You can vote a politician in, but wouldn’t it be fun to vote one out? Well you can — in the US, in Switzerland, in Venezuela, and even in BC. Voter recall—known in political science as a citizens’ initiative—is best known for taking place in the basketcase democracy that is California. In 2003 the “Dump Davis” campaign was launched a […] More »
That wild bolshevik magazine Time has had the gall to question the notion that America is the best country in the world. The March 14th cover story, by Fareed Zakaria displays a red foam finger the reads “We’re #1” pointing downwards. “Yes, America is in decline,” reads the caption. Some could argue that the U.S […] More »
Yesterday Canadian economics blogger Mike Moffatt posted his thoughts about the costs of reducing the murder rate by 30 percent through water treatment. The post was based on a Big Think article that studied correlations between higher lithium amounts in public drinking water and drops in suicides and violent crime rates. Lithium, a mood-booster, is […] More »
[Editor’s note: Back in May, we ran another postcard from Washington, D.C., sent to us by Travis Boisvenue, who went to interview Tea Party supporters. Eve Tobolka made the trek this time to witness the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear.] WASHINGTON, D.C. — Glenn Beck was at Saturday’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or […] More »
Last spring, Dockers launched its stupefying ad campaign based around the core message of “Wear The Pants.” (In a move that nicely reinforced the tone-deaf idiocy of the campaign, it premiered on International Women’s Day, March 8. Classy.) The whole series, which is still running in a slightly diluted form, rests on the premise that there […] More »
As I type this, I am complicit in the funding of rape and war. You probably are too–sitting on your laptop, listening to your mp3 player, texting on your smartphone–even if you don’t know it. But that could all change with the passing of Barack Obama’s sweeping financial reform legislation by Congress in July. While […] More »