Dispel the Illusion

We must assume a chief justice sets an example to all the judges below him, and that McMurtry's innovations in family law are now paralleled by his innovations in judicial partiality. He will soon retire, "rich in years and honours" — but the carnage he has wreaked on a society that entrusted him to defend its laws spreads in his wake.

A priest of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Iraq laments that the faithful are "losing hope" in the war-torn nation. Father Philip Najim, procurator to the Holy See for the patriarch of Babylon ... said that the "only armament we have to create peace is our prayer."

The United Nations drug control agency is expected to warn Health Minister Tony Clement at a conference later this month that Canada is flouting international drug control treaties by enabling illicit drug use at a supervised injection site in Vancouver.

The coalition of the drilling can finally pop the champagne corks in Iraq. Iraq's cabinet has just approved a draft oil law that hands the country's petro-riches to Big Oil on a bureaucratic platter. No oil or gas contract will be signed in Iraq without the approval of a so-called Federal Oil and Gas Council. The unelected council will have oil experts from both within and outside the country calling the shots.

Over the past 29 years of my life I have been an aggressive, creative and strategic supporter of gay and lesbian issues. I’ve organized and participated in countless marches and various lobbying efforts in the fight for equal treatment of gay men and lesbians. I have kept current on the issues and made financial contributions to those organizations doing work about which I was most passionate.

A Bergen County clinic that performs more than 10,000 abortions a year has been ordered closed by state health officials because of health code violations. Officials ordered Metropolitan Medical Associates in Englewood to close until it corrects the "immediate and serious" risks, The Record of Hackensack reported yesterday ... The order cites problems involving infection control, instruments and equipment used for sterilization, according to The Record.

Parents Of The World Call For A Boycott Of All German Goods Until Melissa Busekros Is Returned Without Threat Or Condition To Her Family From The German Authorities That Removed Her From Her Home.

We always suspected that those at the top were soaking up the rewards from this booming economy while everyone else treaded water – working longer and harder just to stay alive. Now, it's official. The figures are in, the numbers have been crunched and the verdict is inescapable: when it comes to work, all Canadians, except the rich, are putting in longer hours. Yet when it comes to pay, all Canadians, again with the exception of the most well-to-do, are being left behind. Or, to put it another way: There's a party going on but most of us aren't invited.

Steve Stanton loved this city he ran for 14 years. This week, he asked the city to love him back - to accept his plans to pursue sex-change operation and let him keep his $140,000 job as city manager. It didn't. Almost 500 people packed into City Hall Tuesday night for a special meeting to decide if they would accept Susan instead of Steve as their top official. And while many spoke eloquently in his defense, more called for his ouster.

In Turin, Italy, a left-leaning newspaper has published the testimony of a former homosexual who says that through prayer he was able to overcome same-sex attractions ... He says that his sexual impulses were healed as a result of reading the Bible and the works of St. Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei, as well as praying the Rosary three times a day.

Kevin Childrey of Tempe received an exorcism at Larson's church. Childrey called the experience ``amazing.'' He said he began sweating from head to toe as ministers prayed over him. ``It's the best thing that ever happened to me,'' Childrey said. ``The demon spirits started coming out. It was a spirit of hatred and anger. I found I had demons and curses for generations. I wasn't sleeping well but I am now.''

The winds of change have shifted to a whiff of persecution. If there has been a growing resistance to Christianity, and particularly Catholicism, since the 1960s, that resistance is now taking the form of coercion in a troubling and growing number of situations.

Poverty and "negative behaviours" arise from a common cause: the disproportionate absence of fathers. Socio-economic profiles of Toronto's ethnic communities, for instance, show that widely disparate variations in a host of social indicators were correlated with absent fathers. Indeed, fatherlessness in general (is) now recognized by sociologists and front-line workers with at-risk youth to be a major predictor of exactly the aggression in boys and promiscuity in girls that lead to Ambert's "severe" behaviours.

If the Canada Revenue Agency is not politically biased, their chance to prove it is now. Last Friday, David Suzuki launched a partisan political attack against the federal Conservatives in front of a group of Calgary elementary school kids, no less ... Suzuki was essentially urging those listening not to vote Conservative. That makes his message partisan and should exempt the David Suzuki Foundation from receiving tax deductible status.

The Washington punditocracy has proclaimed far and wide that Republicans, disenchanted with the war in Iraq, are abandoning President Bush in droves, leaving him the lamest of lame ducks. However, the latest USA TODAY/Gallup Poll suggests Bush might not be as wounded as he appears — at least not among his party faithful. The Feb. 9-11 poll puts Bush's job approval at 37%, but among people who identify themselves as Republican or leaning Republican, his approval rating is 76%.

Gore’s mansion, [20-room, eight-bathroom] located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES). In his documentary, the former Vice President calls on Americans to conserve energy by reducing electricity consumption at home.

A New York judge is ordering city taxpayers to pay for a 21-year-old man's sex-change operation, the New York Post reports. "I don't think it's hit me yet. The consequences are so far reaching," Mariah Lopez told newspaper after her victory in Manhattan Family Court. Judge Sheldon Rand said the city's Administration for Children's Services must pay for all "necessary" care for children in its care. Lopez was in ACS care when her legal battle began.

This idea, known as transhumanism, is steadily spreading from a handful of cranks and Star Trek fans into the mainstream and across the Atlantic. But it is an idea that Francis Fukuyama, famed for proclaiming the end of history when US-style liberal democracy triumphed in the cold war, has described as the most dangerous in the world. In a world at war with terrorism, divided by religious fundamentalism and haunted by racism, sexism and countless other prejudices, how is it that transhumanism has earned the hotly contested title of the most dangerous idea on earth?

Britain could become the first country to sanction the genetic alteration of human embryos, a step that a pressure group claims could pave the way to designer babies. A decade after the cloning of Dolly the sheep, the Government is opening the door to GM human embryos for research, according to Human Genetics Alert.

A 107-year-old Hong Kong villager, who still enjoys an occasional smoke, has attributed his longevity in part to decades of sexual abstinence, a newspaper said on Sunday ... "Maybe it has to do with the fact that I have lived a sex-less life for many years - since I was 30," said Chan, a widower whose youthful bride perished during the Japanese invasion in World War Two.

Most of the cameras widely used today are used as forensic tools to identify crooks after-the-fact. (Think grainy video on local TV news of convenience store robberies gone wrong.) But the latest breed, known as "intelligent video," could transform cameras from passive observers to eyes with brains, able to detect suspicious behavior and potentially prevent crime before it occurs.

The solution becomes obvious if not easy. We need to restrict access to the expressways in order to keep the total volume at some carefully calculated optimal level. Make no mistake: We have people and cameras and in-road sensors and computers that can very quickly work out the math and fine-tune it to respond to every conceivable variable and condition. What we need, very simply, are gates - like the ones at parking garages - on key on-ramps to manage the volume entering the expressway system during peak flow hours.

Claims by a Canadian documentary filmmaker to have found not only the burial place of Jesus, but his DNA and evidence he had a son, are being dismissed as "fanciful and absurd" by both church leaders and archeologists. "I think this is more fanciful and absurd theorizing. Every Christian knows that Jesus, the son of God and man, died and rose again on Easter Sunday," said Joseph Zwilling, a spokesperson for the Catholic church in New York, where details of the discovery will be unveiled this morning.

Ontario's provincial gambling operator has pulled 87 video slot machines out of service or physically removed them from its casinos after a CBC investigation found what appear to be subliminal messages flashing at players ... The games flash winning jackpot symbols at players for a fifth of a second, long enough for the brain to detect even if the players are not aware of the message, some psychologists told CBC News.

Some people will read that and say, “ Big deal, all journalists are liberals anyway." They’d be mostly right. Most of us are indeed urban, middle- class liberals with that point of view embedded in our collective consciousness. That doesn’t make it right, but it’s true.

"Physical life is ephemeral, it passes inexorably ... This truth should be taught to every human being - that the immortal values of the spirit are above physical life. What sense does life have without these values? What then is it to live? Those who understand this and generously sacrifice their physical life for the sake of good and justice - how can they die? God is the supreme idea of goodness and justice."

Two of Sweden's most influential church leaders have threatened to encourage Christians to vote against the government at the next election, following a proposal that foreign women should be allowed to come to Sweden for abortions. Sweden's Catholic bishop Anders Arborelius and leader of the evangelical Philadephia Church in Stockholm, Sten-Gunnar Hedin hinted that the Christian Democrats, traditionally supported by religious voters, could be hit hardest.

Is that a prophylactic in your pants … or are you just pleased to see me? ... Her Swanky or Spanky brand underwear, which made its debut at the Mr Gay UK contest this year, offers a sewn-in pocket designed to hold a condom.

In a startlingly blunt speech at a Munich security conference, Russia's president accused Washington of seeking world domination, undermining the UN and other international institutions, monopolizing world energy resources, destabilizing the Mideast by its bungled occupation of Iraq, and unleashing a new nuclear arms race by planning to deploy anti-missile systems in Eastern Europe.

Brace yourself. James Cameron, the man who brought you 'The Titanic' is back with another blockbuster. This time, the ship he's sinking is Christianity. In a new documentary, Producer Cameron and his director, Simcha Jacobovici, make the starting claim that Jesus wasn't resurrected - the cornerstone of Christian faith - and that his burial cave was discovered near Jerusalem. And, get this, Jesus sired a son with Mary Magdelene.

Journalist and writer Vittorio Messori recently denounced the World Health Organization (WHO), certain Masonic groups, gay rights organizations, pharmaceutical corporations, and powerful ecological organizations as anti-Catholic “lobbies” that “hate Christianity out of nostalgia for paganism.” Messori told the Italian newspaper, “The actions of these influential pressure groups are not only directed against marriage and the family from the perspective of the faith, but also at any ethical and moral concern of the Church.”