Dispel the Illusion

Canadians should re-evaluate whether or not we as a society want to continue to allow the courts to erode our individual rights through Section 1 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I suspect more Canadians are aware of the "notwithstanding clause" in our Charter, but many are in the dark about how another part of the Charter also erodes freedom.

There were many parents who took their small children to Gay Pride. Yet if, for example, a parent sat a five or six-year-old down in front of a television and showed a DVD of people pretending to have sex and taking their clothes off, would we regard them as loving and responsible moms and dads or would we call the Children's Aid Society? Taking vulnerable and powerless little children to Pride, however, has become a badge for those who boast how progressive they are.

The infamous late-term abortionist who revels in his notoriety for providing women easy abortions had 19 misdemeanor charges filed against him on Thursday. Kansas Attorney General Paul Morrison announced that he has dismissed 30 previous criminal charges against abortionist George Tiller, and in their place filed charges against Tiller for failing to obtain a second opinion for late-term abortions from a doctor financially separate from his practice.

Veteran Republicans say they have quietly raised millions of dollars for a pair of nonprofit organizations that will launch this fall with the ambitious aim of providing a conservative counterweight to the liberal MoveOn.org, Politico.com has learned. The issues and education group, which has a plan to enlist hundreds of thousands of small donors, aims to be active in the 2008 presidential election, according to Republicans involved in the effort.

A Gulf War veteran who was set to die in an Arizona hospital was found to have regained complete consciousness on Tuesday. A decision to pull Jesse Ramirez, 36, from his feeding tubes on June 8 had been reversed after a lawsuit filed by the rest of his family. The move has paid off now that the man is responding and is set to move to a rehabilitation center.

Canadians who are knowledgeable about their country are significantly more likely to vote and feel trusting of public institutions, according to a study of knowledge and empowerment by the Association of Canadian Studies. But knowing how the political system works doesn't translate into a strong belief among the country's best-informed citizens that they have a big influence on what the government does.

A new poll by the Dominion Institute shows that Canadians are faring dramatically worse today than they did in 1997 in a test of their knowledge of history, politics, culture and geography. About 60 per cent would fail today a test similar to the one that immigrants take to become Canadian citizens. A decade ago, when the institute began quizzing Canadians, just 45 per cent were unable to score a passing grade by answering 12 out of 21 questions correctly.

For ten years, he had systematically stripped MPs of their powers - shunting the business of law-making off to Brussels, the judiciary and countless unelected quangos. He had stuffed some of the highest offices of state with his cronies - ex-flatmates, his favourite spin-doctors, friends of his wife, etc. What's more, he had the dodgy distinction of being the first serving Prime Minister in history to be interviewed by the police - not once, not twice but (as we learnt yesterday) three times - over serious criminal allegations of selling seats in our legislature for cash.

One newspaper has dropped the syndicated column "The Ethicist" by New York Times writer Randy Cohen because of his donation to MoveOn.org, which he said he had thought of as "nonpartisan."These were three of the 143 journalists named in an article Thursday on MSNBC.com about journalists making campaign contributions.

Two incidents Wednesday at George R. Tiller's late-term abortion mill in Wichita, Kansas, serve to illustrate how abortions have gotten out of control in Kansas, violating state laws against late-term abortions ... "Authorities have lost control of the late abortion situation in Kansas," said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. "Once a woman crosses over onto Tiller's abortion clinic property, it seems that all state and federal laws - and even common sense - are suspended."

The area's lone abortion clinic was shut down late last week by state officials after inspectors discovered several violations within the facility, including infection control, according to a state health department spokesman. State inspectors returned to the Pacific Avenue clinic, Alternatives, Monday to do a full survey of the facility after uncovering the violations Friday while responding to a complaint.

The American way of life is hazardous to our kids' health. In a commentary published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Harvard researchers say the number of kids with chronic health conditions has “increased dramatically in the past four decades.”

Scientists and industrialists in the controversial new field of synthetic biology (building life-forms from scratch) are meeting in Zurich, Switzerland this week amidst claims that the world’s first entirely human-made organism may be only weeks away from creation. Swiss and international civil society groups are calling for swift action to control this technology but the scientists themselves are advancing pre-emptive proposals to evade regulation.

CBS and ABC fell to their lowest ratings among the coveted adults 18-49 demographic in two decades last week, as reruns and summer alternatives drove viewers from their couches ... CBS and ABC are the second and third networks to reach their lowest levels since Nielsen's introduction of "people meters" set-top devices during the 1987-88 season. NBC already had its worst week this month thanks to low-rated Stanley Cup hockey finals.

The Bank for International Settlements, the world's most prestigious financial body, has warned that years of loose monetary policy has fuelled a dangerous credit bubble, leaving the global economy more vulnerable to another 1930s-style slump than generally understood ... The BIS, the ultimate bank of central bankers, pointed to a confluence a worrying signs, citing mass issuance of new-fangled credit instruments, soaring levels of household debt, extreme appetite for risk shown by investors, and entrenched imbalances in the world currency system.

Legislation that won nearly unanimous approval in the Louisiana House of Representatives on Monday would make the state the first to pass its own ban on a controversial late-term abortion procedure since a recent U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of such laws. The 99-1 vote sends Senate Bill 161, sponsored by Sen. Ben Nevers, D-Bogalusa, to a compromise committee of representatives and senators to settle minor differences over House language and the version the Senate adopted unanimously earlier this session.

ALMOST three quarters of people believe global warming is a 'natural occurrence' and not a result of carbon emissions, a survey claimed today. This goes against the views of the vast majority of scientists who believe the rise in the earth's temperatures is due to pollution. The online study which polled nearly 4000 votes found that a staggering 71 percent of people think that the rise in air temperature happens naturally.

Raunchy comedian Margaret Cho - wearing pigtails, a minidress and fishnet stockings - took the stage between acts with sexually explicit jokes that took no prisoners. The skewered the U.S. government, the Pope and the Christian right as she hammered home the theme of the evening, equal rights. One of the wilder moments involved Cho donning a wig, assuming a Chinese accent and the lesbian persona "Maureen" for a rap duet that bragged about the magnificence of her nether regions. "My peach, my clam, my cookie/ Everybody wanna get their hands on my tookie," she rapped.

Hardwick said sexually diverse youth who tend to be more prone to substance abuse and suicide take advantage of the services. She explained young people in the gay community often turn to alcohol or drugs to ease the stress of coming out. "Suicide is the leading cause of death for youths, and it's 30 to 40 per cent higher for our rainbow youth," Hardwick said. "It's quite an epidemic."

Many young people in the Church have personally witnessed the destructive aspects of a culture that preaches everything is OK. Young people want answers and the "anything goes" attitude they witness around them or the touchy-feely approach of some 1970s-style youth ministers aren't cutting it. Therefore, young people embraced the leadership of Pope John Paul II as they now embrace Pope Benedict XVI.

SO the UK Government has decided it is time to do a U-turn over research using human-animal embryos. If this comes into effect it will mark the beginning of a very slippery slope that will end the human race as we know it. Creating chimera human-animal organisms will mean the creation of new species of intelligent life.

In the city that was home to Canada's first legalized gay wedding - and the host of the country's biggest and brashest Pride Week celebrations - so far this year only one marriage license has been issued to a Canadian same-sex couple. That compares with 319 that have been issued to same-sex couples from the United States and other countries, and it's well below the hundreds of Canadian homosexual couples who tied the knot in previous years.

For years, W.B. Kranendonk was a lone ranger in Dutch politics – the editor of an orthodox Christian newspaper in a nation that has legalized prostitution, euthanasia, abortion and same-sex marriage and allows the personal use of marijuana. Today, with an orthodox Christian political party in the government for the first time, and with immigration anxieties fuelling a national search for identity, the country that has been the world's most socially liberal political laboratory is rethinking its anything-goes policies. And suddenly, Kranendonk no longer seems so alone.