Doing my part for one party democracy …

Its election time in Alberta again … the King is dead, long live the King. For those completely unfamiliar with Alberta provincial politics, I wrote a primer on the subject here on View from the Edge last year, whose title I stole for my opening line above. My previous article on the subject was in response to the election of Ed Stelmach as Conservative party leader, replacing the former Premiere Ralph Klein, and in it I spent some time talking about the history of democracy in Alberta.

Meditations on betrayal

This past Wednesday (Sept 26, 2007), the US House of Representatives voted to condemn Moveon.org because of an ad they ran in the New York Times. The Senate had also voted to condemn move on the previous week, so its now clear that all three branches of the US government (the White House has expressed its displeasure from the start) now “condemn MoveOn and the ad.” For the most part, the rationale used by senators and congresspeople to justify the decision to support the condemnation was fairly understandable. I can sympathize with notions that we need to be careful how we treat active soldiers in a time of war, especially ones in leadership roles whom we address by name. Senator Mitch McConnell (R, Kentucky) expresses the concerns fairly concisely with the following quote …