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Canada’s magazine

Software for your Alberta politics B.S. detector

Ignore those who say the province is governed by a pattern of stagnation punctuated by revolution

Hookers, hacks, and Himel

The Citizen‘s Dan Gardner is impatient with the columnists cawing against Justice Susan Himel’s prostitution ruling. This morning he exasperatedly tweeted at them that “You don’t have to agree. You do have to read”—that is, read what Himel wrote. I’m on Dan’s side in this debate, but, hey, isn’t he being a little unfair and obnoxious? Surely respectable writers like Daphne Bramham wouldn’t denounce the Himel decision in such strong terms without examining the evidence:

The libertarian cavalry

The economists, statisticians, city planners, social groups and religious leaders have had (and continue to have) their say and so now the folks at the Western Standard have helpfully compiled census opinions from their libertarian orbit, including takes from PM Jaworski, Walter Block, JJ McCullough, Terrence Watson, Martin Masse, Hugh MacIntyre and Paul McKeever.

The Weigel affair: shooting the watchdog

Friday’s big American media story was the resignation of Washington Post weblogger and conservative-movement specialist Dave Weigel, who came under pressure when gossips obtained some of his tart-tongued and borderline nutty private e-mails to Journolist (a controversial private online club for young liberal media personnel which itself collapsed amidst all the chaos and poo-flinging). By a weird happenstance, Canada’s most remote, reclusive correspondent actually knows Weigel slightly. In February 2008, at the peak of the presidential primary campaigns, I spent a week slouching around the Washington offices of Reason, the libertarian magazine where he then worked.

Insite, foresight, hindsight

The B.C. Court of Appeal’s ruling on Vancouver’s Insite shooting gallery for heroin addicts makes for interesting reading. We are all so busy arguing over the merits of harm reduction, and the wisdom of the Harper government’s attempt to shut down the clinic, that it is easy to forget the big constitutional issue that was the chief concern of the court here. You would think that Canadian jurisprudence had developed a clear objective rule for settling even the trickiest “double aspect” issues, wherein both federal and provincial governments can claim that some crumb falls within their respective spheres of constitutional power.