From iPolitics on a new biography of John Turner. It sounds strange now, but Turner actually had collegial relationships with members of other parties. In fact, as Paul Litt notes, Turner once saved John Diefenbaker from drowning while on holiday in Barbados. With the current PM on the beach, and an opposition leader floundering in [...]
history
David Frum: Trudeau was a disaster for Canada
Frum goes to town on the legacy of Pierre Trudeau. Pierre Trudeau took office at a moment when commodity prices were rising worldwide. Good policymakers recognize that commodity prices fall as well as rise. Yet between 1969 and 1979 – through two majority governments and one minority – Trudeau tripled federal spending. In 1981-82, Canada [...]
W. and Me
Walt Harrington has known former President Bush for more than 25 years and wrote a reflection for The American Scholar about his conversations with W over the years. Twenty-five years later, George W. Bush looks great. Two years as a civilian have been good to him. His feet clad in golf shoes and up on [...]
WWII: The Campaign in North Africa
Take a look at these incredible photos from North Africa in World War II. They are part of The Atlantic’s InFocus blog’s retrospective on WWII. I really wish one of the media outlets in Saskatchewan (Leader-Post/The StarPhoenix or CBC) would so something similar with their photo archives of Saskatoon events. It would take more of [...]
A look back at the Stanford Prison Experiment
It’s been 40 years since the infamous psychological experiment The study began on Sunday, August 17, 1971. But no one knew what, exactly, they were getting into. Forty years later, the Stanford Prison Experiment remains among the most notable—and notorious—research projects ever carried out at the University. For six days, half the study’s participants endured [...]
The world’s first newspaper website?
Back at the turn of the century, the Boston Globe would hang large handwritten signs out front with headlines which looked like the world’s first newspaper website/blog. They eventually added a sports website, with streaming audio. RSS hadn’t caught on yet so the readers had to actually visit the site. This photo was taken during [...]
Ducking Responsibility
Bob Woodward takes over Thomas Rick’s blog and talks about Donald Rumsfeld’s memoir. Rumsfeld’s memoir is one big clean-up job, a brazen effort to shift blame to others — including President Bush — distort history, ignore the record or simply avoid discussing matters that cannot be airbrushed away. It is a travesty, and I think [...]
Rumsfeld’s memoir
Donald Rumsfeld has written a memoir. He places part of the problems in Iraq on Condoleezza Rice. What Mr. Rumsfeld offers is a far more believable account of events, one that holds individuals responsible for failures of execution. He describes a White House with internal problems, at the heart of which was a National Security [...]
John Hagee’s new homepage
End time’s experts all over the world should be salivating over this article on the rebuilding of Babylon in the New York Times. That is certainly years away given the realities of today’s Iraq. But for the first time since the American invasion in 2003, after years of neglect and violence, archaeologists and preservationists have [...]
The Lost Canadians
A border dispute with the United States means that there is a community of Manitobans that are now Minnesotans. The good news is that they now have a home province state NHL franchise. Dietzler, sixty-seven, is one of about a hundred year-round residents of the Northwest Angle and Islands, a 302-square-kilometre US exclave unwittingly created [...]
When conditions change
Warren Kinsella has a good post titled TEN POINTS: WHEN DEMOCRACY LOSES ALL MEANING that you should check out. I was going to reply in his comments but after drafting up a reply, I decided to post here instead. Looking back at the decision that was made to withdraw troops from Afghanistan in 2011, I [...]
