Garrison promises marriage fix

NDP queer issues critic Randall Garrison
writes in the Times Colonist that his
party will be introducing a bill to fix what they perceive to be the gaps in
marriage legislation when it comes to foreign recognition, if the Conservatives
or the courts don’t do it first. (A reminder that several law professors and
even the author of the bill have said that there isn’t a problem with the law if you actually read the legal language, and to leave well enough alone.)

Brian Topp says the party can win the next
election without using Conservative voter-suppression tactics. He also picked
up the endorsement of gay former MP Bill Siksay.

As the spy drama continues to unfold, we
learn that the Royal Canadian Navy has been in the process of overhauling its
intelligence strategy, while said accused spy was in its midst. As the RCN’s
intelligence-gathering methods would have been the really valuable information
for him to leak, no one is saying whether he had access to that kind of
information.

Any plans that Gilles Duceppe may have had
to return to politics for the PQ are now off, while he faces accusations that
he spent the money allotted to him by Parliament for his Ottawa office on
paying the salary for the party’s director instead.

Here’s an interesting piece on how
monarchies are more stable – and more liberal – in the Middle East and North Africa, and how
restoring the monarchy in Afghanistan might have avoided a lot of the problems
in that country – if only the Americans hadn’t bullied their way into seeing that
didn’t happen as “we don’t do kings.” I’ve heard this from some people who did
human rights development work there – that restoring the former king would have
had a much more positive effect on the population than the installation of
Hamid Karzai did.

And here’s a clever little ad from one of
the candidates running for the Liberal nomination in Toronto-Danforth.