sunday papers

• At last a lazy morning to peruse the news and what to my wondering eyes does appear but Stephen Harper's scofflaw government getting its arse handed to it yet again for it unmitigated bullshittery in the case of  Abousfian Abdelrazik.  The spooks at CSIS are looking worse and worse in this and other cases too, with the judge ruling that CSIS had Abdelrazik picked up by the Sudanese, knowing he would be tortured. Thomas Walkom has a good column on the pattern of the Harper government flouting the law when it comes to sucking up to the U.S. over their war on the human rights of people they don't like, and the Mop & Pail has an editorial to the same effect.
• A nicely done, but depressing piece in the Toronto Star on how Ontario schools are shafting problem kids. It's the start of a series, so stay tuned.
• Canadians may not want an election this summer, but the pollsters say two-thirds of us want someone other than the Conservatives in charge. 
• The conservatives are proposing mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes and idiot Liberals having swallowed the "we must not look soft on crime" bait, are going to back them. This didn't work when Ronald Reagan introduced it in the '80s - it led to the current situation in which the United States jails five times as many people as that paragon of anarchic freedom, The People Republic of China.  Being wrong is apparently no reason to change your approach so the Conservatives will keep blowing holes in the bottom of the boat, hoping this one will finally let the the water out.
• Because being in Stephen Harper's Cabinet means never being able to say you made a mistake. Maybe there's a 26-year-old aide somewhere that Harper can pin the economy on.
• The last time this happened, I ended up moving to Japan to find a job. Guess what? They aren't hiring over here either this time.
• Virgina now hip-deep in crazy, with levels not yet at peak: Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee address a crowd of the faithful at Rock Church in Virgina Beach, causing even the Iranian Ayatollahs and Israeli ultra-orthodox Zionists to agree on something at last - Many Americans are clearly as mentally impaired as rodents found in lavatories. Some highlights of the speeches:

  "The notion that we are just one of many among equals is nonsense," Huckabee said. The United States is a "blessed" nation, he said, calling American revolutionaries' defeat of the British empire "a miracle from God's hand."

  "I am not a citizen of the world," said Gingrich, who was first elected to the U.S. House from Georgia in 1978 and served as speaker from 1995 to 1999. "I am a citizen of the United States because only in the United States does citizenship start with our creator."