What Have We Got To Catch Up On This Week?

Ah, yes: Item One.
It appears that ranchers are having too much fun to allow anyone to actually compete in the US beef market. Of course, they hate Oprah too.

This is the strength of local lobby groups, and possibly the weakness of elected judges--While I don't know if Richard Cebull is elected or appointed, but either way, he seems to know which side his beef is gravied on.

Item Two.
I owe Judi Sgro an apology. I truly suspected her of wrongdoing and saw her resignation as an evasion. Clearly I was wrong on that. Her accuser has been fighting deportation for fifteen years and his family has been accused of fraud in excess of $100,000.

Which links into this:

Kemal's a nasty sort all right, it appears, and this has prompted calls to strip him of his Canadian citizenship.

In my heart, I believe Canadian citizenship is always and forever. And ordinarily I believe it shouldn't be removed from anyone who has it--unless they obtained it under false pretences. But if there's one case where the sanction of stripping someone of their citizenship should be used . . .

And that's what makes me suspicious of my own judgement. Because when you hear someone saying " . . .but in this particular case . . .", what they mean is "we must suspend the rules of a civilised society to address this one instance." And they're most often wrong.

We hear it all the time. Is it worth keeping Olsen or Bernardo around? Of course not, not considered as a pure cost-benefit equation. But preserving their lives while they serve their multiple life sentences makes one vitally important thing possible:

1) It lets us know we're better than them. That we believe firmly in the rules we have created for a civilization--rules that they have broken. Allowing them to live says very clearly: "We do not condone nor permit the type of behaviour you indulged in, but we will not corrupt our own rules to punish you, nor to avenge ourselves."

For my own part, I believe that an immigrant to this country (such as myself and my parents) should be held to the same standard as any other citizen--not some imaginary construct of law which applies only to them.

Today's motivational material