Steve Benen, who writes for Rachel Maddow’s blog, has finally clued us in on what it is about hotelier Donald Trump’s sudden surge to prominence in the US Republican primary pre-season that is seriously interesting. Benen’s August 24, 2015 piece on “Are the rules of politics being rewritten?” declares : “Political science, based largely on […]

There was a time when we felt it was inappropriate to use the ancient English expletive “fuck” in published writing. (It does not appear, eg, in our office copy of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary in two volumes,  1972 printing.) But the Internet and various new political and broader cultural vibrations since the 1980s (?) […]

Now that Stephen Harper has “called” a “long federal election” –  for October 19, as already prescribed in his own 2007 fixed election date legislation –  here are three quick notes to celebrate the start of the official campaign (as opposed to the unofficial one underway for almost too long already) : (1) Fixing elections? […]

The truth seems so easy to forget. Maybe because it so often reminds us of unpleasant facts? Or at least facts we would just as soon not remember? So we counterweights editors here have been wondering. Why, in the middle of July 2015,  is the Citizen X posting for January 31, 2015 still dragging in […]

One thing we’ve done to celebrate Canada Day 2015 is post C.M.W. Marcel’s long awaited report on the 400th anniversary of Samuel de Champlain’s visit to what is now Ontario in the summer of 1615.  ( See “Huronia/Wendake 2015” above and/or CLICK HERE.) Meanwhile, Happy Canada Day 2015 – a year when there “has never […]

Questions have been raised about the Confederate flag still flying over the South Carolina state capitol, even after the appalling terrorist prayer-meeting murders in Charleston this past Wednesday night. They may remind some of us north of the Great Lakes that a few much milder questions were raised about the current Ontario provincial flag last […]

It seems only somewhat odd that the two big Canadian news events of yesterday – Tuesday, June 2, 2015 – should at least vaguely recall the earliest origins of the modern country of Canada, back in the 16th, 17th, and (first half of the) 18th centuries. In any case, in the old pays d’en haut […]

Freeman Dyson’s recent interesting note on Albert Einstein and the old  “dualistic philosophy” of quantum mechanics – masquerading as a New York review of Stephen Gimbel’s Einstein: His Space and Times – has also made some of us think about what ought to be another big issue in this year’s Canadian federal election. (Believe it […]

Not much more than a week from now, political junkies in Canada’s most populous province of Ontario will be able to wend their arrogant ways through a maze of conceivably instructive local, regional, and international democratic elections : (1) At least a local prelude to the wider excitement will start on Sunday, May 3, when […]

The ongoing trial of suspended Canadian Senator Mike Duffy has reminded some of us that back in the late spring of 2013 Randall White posted a note on this site about Harold Innis’s “more or less random observations on the Senate, and the related issue of Canadian regionalism” – which, taken together, “add up to […]