Time to decriminalize marijuana

If there is one good thing about the Liberal proposal to legalize and regulate marijuana, it is this:

“We were expanding the debate,” Lavoie told CTV’s Power Play in Ottawa on Monday.

I would like to see the debate expand towards decriminalization and end there. We do not need the regulation. Regulation is just a different way of making the same thing illegal.

Privatize marriage industry in Canada

Clearly, it is time to get government out of the marriage registration and recognition business. This latest debacle of two lesbians who want to divorce raising a stink is hilarious! Here we have them wanting a divorce but the government is telling them they are not married. You would think they would shrug their shoulders and take it as a win. “Yay! We do not have to bother paying for a divorce!” It saves them a hell of a lot of trouble but no, they are raising a stink about it. How ridiculous. I want to draw attention to a brilliant summation of the real problem:

What the anti-Harper yahoos forget is there good reasons for the residency requirements since a divorce involves dividing assets and the jurisdiction matters. If you remove the residency requirements then one spouse could file for divorce in the jurisdiction that maximizes their financial advantage at the expense of their ex-partner. The most fair way to resolve this is to use the jurisdiction where the couple resides at the time of divorce.

There may be some good that comes out of this absurd media stunt. People may realize that marriage recognition should not be a one-size-fits-all rule. There should be variation in marriage contracts. The government should not be monopolizing this industry. People want variety!

I have touched on this before:

Credit bureaus, better business bureaus and safety standards are business models to emulate. Just like your credit rating can be recorded, reported, amended and researched, your marital status can be registered in the same manner without the need for government. It does not even have to be very complicated. Private formal marriage registries can be as simple as a copyright office.

If governments do not abandon their control of marriage law,
then I will expect prenuptial agreements to become more common.

In 25 years from now, Facebook will corner the private marriage contract market.

Rick Santorum: The Harvey Milk of the Republican Primary

Maclean’s Jaime Weinman draws our attention to a most interesting piece of non-satire. It would appear that National Review Online‘s Terence P. Jeffrey is worried that Rick Santorum is a sleeper agent for teh gays:

A profoundly instructive moment on this point occurred in Saturday night’s debate when Josh McElveen of WMUR-TV asked whether it ought to be legal for same-sex couples to adopt children.

The correct answer to this is: No. It was, is, and always will be wrong for any government to hand over in an adoption the custody of a child to a homosexual couple. A government that does so violates the God-given right of the child to be raised by a mother and father…

Yet when McElveen put his question to Rick Santorum, Santorum failed to give a coherent answer. Santorum seemed to say — although his exact meaning was unclear — that although he wanted a constitutional amendment to define “marriage” as the union of one man and one woman, the question of same-sex adoptions was up to state governments to decide…

If a homophobe can’t count on Rick Santorum to Protect The Children from show tunes and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy re-runs, then who can he count on?

Ever the model of level-headedness, NRO‘s Andy McCarthy counters:

… and Terence Jeffrey is wrong. Adoption, like marriage, is not a matter the Constitution commits to federal government control. It is, like the vast run of day-to-day issues, a matter to be determined by the states. There is nothing conservative about imposing federal government mandates on matters the Constitution gives the federal government no say over.

…

If Mr. Jeffrey wants a federal adoption standard imposed, then he should be arguing for a constitutional amendment banning adoptions by gay couples…

I guess a refuation based on constitutional technicalities is better than no refutation at all. ‘Twould have been nice, though, had someone at NRO objected to the substance (such as it was) of Mr. Jeffrey’s (vapid) blog post.

Perhaps, just perhaps, offering orphans a loving and stable home is a better option than shuffling them through the system, one’s prejudices aside.

Let her cover her face

I am 100% against the offensive and oppressive edict from the Conservative government that muslim women who, as an act of faith, choose to cover their faces must remove their niqab to take the oath of citizenship.

I have heard no good argument in favour of this measure. There are other ways of confirming identity, and their are other ways to accommodate the very few new Canadians with this particular religious conviction. This move is based neither in principle nor in necessity. The Tories have an axe to grind, and they don’t care if they chip away at our freedom of religion.

A Victim of the PATRIOT Act Speaks

Nicholas Merrill’s recent article at the Washington Post demonstrates just how corrosive laws like the PATRIOT Act are:

Sometime in 2012, I will begin the ninth year of my life under an FBI gag order, which began when I received what is known as a national security letter at the small Internet service provider I owned. On that day in 2004 (the exact date is redacted from court papers, so I can’t reveal it), an FBI agent came to my office and handed me a letter. It demanded that I turn over information about one of my clients and forbade me from telling “any person” that the government had approached me.

…

In 2004, it wasn’t at all clear whether the FBI would charge me with a crime for telling the ACLU about the letter, or for telling the court clerk about it when I filed my lawsuit as “John Doe.” I was unable to tell my family, friends, colleagues or my company’s clients, and I had to lie about where I was going when I visited my attorneys. During that time my father was battling cancer and, in 2008, he succumbed to his illness. I was never able to tell him what I was going through.

Government agencies will always be able to dig up excuses as to why they don’t have to behave as if they function in a liberal democracy and why they don’t actually have to serve the very public they were created to serve. Instead, we will continue to see traces of these organizations doing everything they can to evade scrutiny as they insinuate themselves into our lives.

Online Poker Fraud

Tough luck to the people who lost their money, I say.

The fact remains:

“This is gambling,” said ex-federal prosecutor James Montana, now a partner in Chicago’s Vedder Price LLC.

The people who got scammed took a ridiculous chance. They trusted people they did not know and got ripped off. I see no reason why the tax-payer should fund the mediation of a dispute between the loser customers of these online poker games and the owners of these games. The government should stay out of it just like the government should stay out of doping nonsense in professional sports.

I certainly have sympathy for people who got ripped off but they ought to be more prudent with their recreational wasting of money before they are entitled to tax-payer funded justice — assuming such an entitlement could possibly exist. In the grand scheme of things, theses poker losers are low on the totem-pole of people whose money warrants righteous protection.

Justice can be cheap, swift, non-violent and natural. The only weapon that is necessary is information. Once people find out that a particular online game is a scam, the customers will drop it and the scammer will sink rapidly. The poker company knows that and has every interest to make right of any possible or perceived wrongdoing.

Rapists Should Go To Jail

By now, I assume we’ve all heard Liberal candidate John Reilly’s argument (and quick reversal) that not all sexual assaults are the same, and not all of them warrant jail time. It’s easy to just publish a visceral reaction to what were, at best, clumsy words or, at worst, a really contemptible policy stance. However, I think there are a number of layers to this story that warrant investigation.

After the outcry emerged, Andrew Coyne tweeted (in two separate tweets):

But it’s a good issue for Tories, cynically/strategically. ie a lot of the same people denouncing Tories for their jail-em policies also… lined up to denounce the judge in Manitoba for being too lenient with a sexual offender.

Another pundit (sorry, I can’t find the tweet) noted that the apparent Liberal policy (I think it’s changed a couple of time during this campaign) of attacking the Tories’ prison-building plan, but not proposing to repeal any of the tough-on-crime laws was silly.

As someone who denoucned the Manitoba judge and opposes the tough-on-crime stance, I’m prefectly willing to admit that if you’re not going to build prisons, you can’t plan on jailing more and more people… unless you want to re-create The Devil’s Butcher Shop. Still, it’s a bit of stolen base to criticize people for wanting to jail rapists, but not wanting to expand our prison population. [Read more]

Citizen’s Arrest and Self-Defence Act — individual freedom reigns

We must praise the Dippers and the Libs for nudging the Cons to table the Citizen’s Arrest and Self-Defence Act championing the cause of individual freedom:

Harper has been accused of engaging in political manoeuvring in introducing the Citizen’s Arrest and Self-Defence Act, as NDP MP Olivia Chow and Liberal MP Joe Volpe had already introduced their own private member’s bills on the issue.

Both are taking credit for the impetus behind Harper’s move.

Personally, I do not give a damn who should get credit for this legislation.

What I find most peculiar is the reaction of Robert Holmes, the president of the BC Civil Liberties Association:

“The idea that you could call ‘Bob’s 911 Service’ and have someone forcibly arrest and detain another person is an invitation to vigilantism. We call for this bill to be amended to close that gap immediately,” said Holmes.

Mr. Holmes needs to give his head a shake and keep shaking it until it falls off. Being free to defend ourselves in the manner in which we choose champions liberty and freedom. The BCCLA should stop being hypocrites and take “The Voice Of Liberty In Canada” banner off of their website because their opposition to citizen’s arrest is an opposition to liberty in Canada. They may want Soviet-style government monopolized delivery of protection and security services. Honest and intelligent champions of liberty want consumer choice.

Private policing and security firms may not be regulated nor overseen in the manner that police are. They may lack the training, education, discipline and professionalism that police officers are believed to possess. I do not see any of that as a problem for two reasons. First, the track record of the police is not very stellar. Second and most importantly, private agents can actually lose their jobs and they do not suck from the tax-payers’ wallet.

For all who cower in fear and paranoia of vigilanteism, I will tell you what will result from the passage of this bill: property insurance companies will compete for customers by offering better packages and more choice. Policing and security services will progress to the twenty-first century.

In the twenty-second century, judges and lawyers will no longer be able to sit on their laurels.

Dear Royal Gendarmerie of Canada

Full disclosure to the defence is essential to justice. Complete the paper work or turn in your badge and S&W 9 mm. End of story.

Let her cover her face!

I think the three judges at the Ontario Court of Appeal made the right decision.

[I know, I know, the socialist law and order control freak types (along with other confused socialists) will probably get their knickers tied in a knot over this one but they deserve a bit of discomfort.]

Regardless, this case just highlights the absurdity and waste of money which is inherent in monopolized government services. It is bad enough that this poor gal was allegedly sexually assaulted. It is bad enough that this trial has dragged on for two years. Now, the judges want “a more thorough inquiry” to deal with this nonsense.

The whole thing is stupid if a trial decision hinges on assuming a person is telling the truth.

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