Mid-Week Post

Summer approaches…

For clarification’s sake:

Sitting members of parliament cannot accept gifts or money that give rise to conflicts of interest. For example, it might be seen as unethical for a leader of a federal party and its education critic to accept money to speak at schools and colleges. It is doubly unethical to take money from a charity, especially when the guilty party doesn’t really promise to pay it back.

What the Archives and Records Keeping Act of 2006 says:

15.  (1)  A public record shall not be,

(a) destroyed or damaged;

(b) altered so as to delete information from it;

(c) made illegible;

(d) removed from the custody or control of a public body or the Archives of Ontario; or

(e) concealed from a public body or the Archivist. 2006, c. 34, Sched. A, s. 15 (1).

What Chris Morley said:

Chris Morley says there are 99 different reasons listed in the Ontario Public Service rule book that instruct government staff to “destroy immediately” several types of records, including emails.

“There are people before this committee who have suggested that it is never appropriate for any member of the Ontario public service or any political staffer to delete a note, and that is simply false.”

“I could go on and on and on, but time prohibits me from reading all 99 reasons why the rules require the destruction and deletion of records.”

He said the privacy commissioner’s finding that senior liberals in the premier’s office broke the law does not apply to him.

“The information and privacy commissioner never spoke to me about her report and as far as I’m concerned that report has nothing to do with me,” Morley said.

Alright, Morley, who decided that these e-mails and the back-ups were so irrelevant that they could be deleted with impunity and why do you think none of this applies to you even though you were a staffer (SEE: Records and Archive Keeping Act, clause 15)?

Bob Rae resigns from the House of Commons:

Bob Rae is retiring from Parliament.

The MP from Toronto Centre, the former interim leader of the Liberal Party and the former premier of Ontario made the announcement on Parliament Hill on Wednesday morning.

A visibly emotional Rae said he's leaving to commit more time to First Nations issues. Last month, Rae became the chief negotiator for First Nations groups in talks with the Ontario government about the Ring of Fire development.

Well, bye, then. You won't make any inroads where you're going.

Raising the drinking age will only result in an excess of older drunks:

The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) released a report this week that suggested the province's legal drinking age be increased to 21 — two years older than its current mark and three years older than several other provinces.

If people cannot control their appetites at any point in their lives, age limits and other restrictions won't help. People don't magically gain wisdom if they've never been told "no" from the very beginning.

Decades of anti-clericalism just aren't cutting it in Spain anymore:

After years of moving in a more socially liberal direction along with the rest of western Europe, the Spanish government is now doing an about face, seeking to clamp down on abortion and return the Roman Catholic Church to a prominent role in the country's school system. 

Though the church is still losing ground among the faithful, it has powerful friends in the current conservative Popular Party government, which has traditionally had close ties to the Vatican. Now the PP is pushing a controversial bill in parliament that would dramatically restrict access to abortion.

How did that Spanish Civil War work out for you?

Why don't they just go to Brazil?

Hundreds of Brazilians took to the street in Vancouver in a show of solidarity with a wave of protests in Brazil against the shoddy state of public transit, schools and other public services in the booming South American giant.

“I wish I could go there and fight with them because we are so tired of everything,” said Vancouver protester Matheos Martins.

Sparked earlier this month by a 10-cent hike in bus and subway fares and organized via social media, the nationwide protests are giving voice to growing discontent over the gap between Brazil's high tax burden and the low quality of public infrastructure.

Oh, look, China has convinced North Korea to waste everyone's time again:

A top North Korean diplomat repeated an offer for international talks over his country's disputed nuclear program during a meeting in China on Wednesday, saying the denuclearization of the peninsula was the "dying wish" of North Korea's founder.

The Beijing trip by First Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan comes just days after North Korea offered talks with the United States to ease tension that spiked this year when the North threatened the United States and South Korea with nuclear war.

This has been done so many times before that one can set one's watch to North Korea's inevitable tantrums.

We don’t have to trade with these people:

The Chinese government has given notice to citizens of the city Huizhou that all women of childbearing age must be fitted with Intrauterine Devices (IUDs) or be permanently sterilized via tubal ligations.

Women who are currently in compliance with the one child policy must be fitted with IUDs. However, women who are in violation of the population control law with two children must present themselves for tubal ligations. 

China has the death penalty for any number of reasons and this will not make me believe it is serious about tackling pollution:

Chinese authorities have given courts the powers to hand down the death penalty in serious pollution cases, state media said, as the government tries to assuage growing public anger at environmental desecration.

It's called 'curbing a riot'.

No one loves Obama. Cases in point:

When Barack Obama gave a speech in Berlin in 2008, he drew a crowd of 200,000. Wednesday's speech at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate was a little less popular. White House pool reporter Elmar Jakobs estimated the crowd at only 4,500.

Obama's Berlin crowd may also have been smaller than the crowd of several thousand who turned out for the Tea Party Patriots' 'Audit the IRS' rally and for a rally against the immigration bill held at the Capitol on Wednesday. One unofficial estimate put the crowd size at 7,000 to 10,000 at its peak. Both rallies lasted several hours.

**

  

President Obama wasn't kidding in March of 2012 when he told then-Russian president Dmitry Medvedev that he would have "more flexibility" after the election. We got a chilling look at what Obama meant by that during a speech in Northern Ireland for the G8 Summit when he declared religious schools divisive:

If towns remain divided—if Catholics have their schools and buildings and Protestants have theirs, if we can’t see ourselves in one another and fear or resentment are allowed to harden—that too encourages division and discourages cooperation,” Obama said.

(Sidebar: what an anti-Catholic douchebag. So-called Catholics who voted for and support him, you've excommunicated yourselves from the Church and from common sense.)

The Americans and the Germans (and probably the Irish) have tired of his ceaseless campaigning, sloth, arrogance and complete inability to relate to an actual human being, especially without referring to himself and how important he thinks he is. He has declared martial law on the people he has been elected to lead and has shown his weakness and incompetence in dealing with things real leaders must face. He has no understanding of society or history (SEE: Northern Ireland, Catholics, Protestants, schools). I have no idea why this @$$hole isn't being impeached. He is an embarrassment.

The House of Representatives passed a bill that would restrict abortions after twenty weeks (four months):

The House of Representatives has passed a bill that would restrict all abortions nationwide to the first 20 weeks of pregnancy.

The “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act” (H.R. 1797), introduced by Arizona Republican Trent Franks, would end abortion after the point when scientists agree unborn children can feel pain.

In a nearly party-line vote, the measure passed 228-196.

Even though the majority of reported abortions are done prior to twenty weeks (according to this), this bill is considered “far reaching” by some wags and Obama- who voted against the Born Alive Act- has promised to veto it.

 Senator Ted Cruz proves his awesomery yet again:

Anyone know if President Obama intends to perform background checks on the Syrian rebels before providing them weapons?