Month: December 2008
Waldo Jaquith notes that Virginia’s House of Delegates has imposed a limit on the number of bills each of its members may file in the upcoming session. That’s 15 bills each for its 100 members, resulting in no more than 1500 legislative issues to be dealt with. While it first strikes me as yet more evidence of what a bunch of children they are – that they can’t be trusted to simply act out of necessity and moderation – it’s probably a good thing.
Boing Boing highlights this story concerning children’s groups pushing back against the Australian government’s plan to filter the country’s access to content on the Internet:
Holly Doel-Mackaway, adviser with Save the Children, the largest independent children’s rights agency in the world, said educating kids and parents was the way to empower young people to be safe internet users.
She said the filter scheme was “fundamentally flawed” because it failed to tackle the problem at the source and would inadvertently block legitimate resources.
Furthermore there was no evidence to suggest that children were stumbling across child pornography when browsing the web. Doel-Mackaway believes the millions of dollars earmarked to implement the filters would be far better spent on teaching children how to use the internet safely and on law enforcement.
Blake Hounshell, at the Foreign Policy magazine’s blog, captures the political forces in play right now in India and Pakistan:
It’s amazing how quickly India appears to be falling into the terrorists’ trap.
It seems obvious that Pakistan’s civilian government, led by President Asif Ali Zardari, has no interest in stirring up trouble between the two nuclear-armed neighbors. And it seems equally obvious that any elements of the ISI, Pakistan’s notorious intelligence service, who might have been in some way involved in the attacks in Mumbai would have done so in order to undermine rapprochement between Islamabad and New Delhi.
[ . . . ]
Yet one can already see public anger in India leading political developments in a direction the terrorists wanted. Some Indian politicians have been less than careful in saying the terrorists were sent by Pakistan, the state, rather than that they came from Pakistan, the country (which hasn’t even been confirmed yet, anyway). India is considering halting talks over Kashmir and ending the five-year cease-fire along the Line of Control. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has vowed to “go after” those responsible for the attacks, which could box him into the dangerous step of taking action against Lashkar-e-Taiba within Pakistan-held territory.
The whole thing is worth a read (as is his earlier penned piece on the contradictory accounts of the attacks themselves).
Update: Juan Cole offers a good companion piece to the article above, focusing on what Pakistan needs to do (and putting it in useful historical context).
Recall that Canada recently held an election, and ended up with the same situation that gave rise to the election in the first place – a minority government in the Conservative Party’s hands. Looks like the opposition may actually be getting its act together:
A Liberal-NDP coalition agreement that would replace the minority Conservative government was being fleshed out Sunday night, the CBC has learned.
Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion has shown the outline of an agreement between his party and the New Democratic Party to Liberal leadership candidates Michael Ignatieff, Dominic LeBlanc and Bob Rae, the CBC’s Keith Boag reported, citing sources.
“They’re discussing this tonight in Toronto,” he said from Ottawa.
The NDP would hold 25 per cent of cabinet positions, Boag said, adding that the finance minister and the deputy prime minister would be Liberals.
It’ll be interesting to see if they can pull it off. And even more interesting if they do. Why?
The Bloc Québécois would not officially be a part of the coalition, but the new government’s survival would depend on their support, he said.
Good luck.