1 WELP Human Rights Watch has been tracking the RCMP’s treatment of the Aboriginal community in general and their women in particular. Now, they’re calling for an inquiry into the RCMP’s relationship with the Aboriginal community, alleging everything from a lack of care w/r/t disappearing Aboriginal women to mistreatment during arrests and everything in between. The Mounties want the complainants to come forward first. Because, you know, I’m sure these women are totally unafraid of reprisal or anything.
2 STATE OF THE FOUGE-ION Any excuse to say “the Fouge.” Mayor Fougere will be delivering a State of the City address tomorrow, and, in what I guess is an attempt to ape on a really rudimentary level the punditry furor that always surrounds an American State of the Union address, the Leader-Post got some serious punditing done to tell us that, yeah, housing will probably figure into the address.
Also, Leader-Post, we need to talk. Michael Fougere is a long-time counselor and now the mayor of this city, so he’s been in the news locally for a while and will be in the news for a long time hence. So, y’know, maybe this stock photo of him –
– all I’m saying is, maybe you could do better.
3 STATE OF THE OTHER THING I mean, State of the Union addresses are pageantry, but that’s a problem with them, not an excuse for not following through. And last night Obama proposed some significant stuff for the middle class and for minorities, so it’s worth remembering those and watching as political children like odious fucker Mitch McConnell and his weird turtle face fail to act like adults and instead obstruct any legislative attempts at fixing the economy, enshrining humanist values in legislation, and anything else that they would see as an “Obama win” as opposed to just sensible behaviour.
On the plus side, at least the official Republican response to the SotU gifted us with this wonderful animated GIF of Marco Rubio looking like a total herb –
– and, as Gawker writer “Mobute Sese Seko” (not his real name) puts it, probably does not bode well for Rubio’s 2016.
4 ATTACK OF THE DRONES Al Jazeera’s got a piece by UC Santa Barbara prof Lisa Hajjar on Obama’s failure to address drones in his SotU. Of course, you’re probably wondering why this isn’t in the above bit on the SotU itself, and that’s because I wanted to set aside some space to point out that, y’know, drones have particular relevance to Canadians crossing the border. And, though our own drone program has stalled a bit, Canada’s military is looking like an increasingly attractive customer for drone manufacturers. Drones!
5 PROBABLY IMPORTANT POLITICAL WONKERY The NDP is calling for an investigation into whether a section of the Department of Justice act calling for the Minister of Justice to review every piece of legislation and ensure that it doesn’t violate the Charter of Rights is, uh, actually being followed.
It’s mostly just Parliamentary housekeeping – the justice minister is supposed to submit to Parliament in the event that the legislation is kosher, as well – but nevertheless, if the Justice committee does decide to dig into this procedural stuff, it could lead to a change in the way the House does business. (Alternatively.)
6 AGE OF ADZ Maria Popova of Brain Pickings is sort of the worst – tepid middlebrow crap to make smug technocrats feel better about their meaningless lives, sort of like a one-woman TED Talks series in blog form – and personally I revel in anything that takes her down a peg. But this open letter published on Tumblr about her blog, affiliate advertising, and the relationship between ad dollars and content – and, more importantly, being honest about all of those things – is an interesting read, especially if you’re a smug techocrat dumbass who spends all his time on the Internet thinking about stuff like this (hi it’s me).
