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Lost in the drift
Feb. 4th, 2006 11:59 pm
High today, here: 3. Dewpoint then: 2. High dewpoint: 2.
High today in TO: 4. Dewpoint then: 2. High dewpoint: 2.
Low today on the balcony: 0.2. High: 2.9. Currently: 0.6.
Heavy wet snow mixed with ice pellets for most of the last ten hours or so. Stopped now, though. Probably about 5 cm of slush on the ground now. I highly doubt we're getting anywhere near 30 cm.
Brian Leiter linked yesterday to some guy on lewrockwell.com saying that bin Laden must be about to hit Us hard, because he offered Us a truce, and the Koran says you have to offer your enemies a truce before you smite them. Which is an Interesting Theory.
Something else courtesy aldaily.com: a pretty interesting piece from Commentary arguing that Americans are, in fact, highly politically polarized. Lately, Americans seem to be becoming polarized on the question whether Americans are polarized or not. However, this polarization, unlike all the others, doesn't seem to have its poles on either end of the two parties. And that is, in fact, what's most interesting about the article: that whatever polarizations there are, now, are partisan in a way they've never been before, or at least not since around the Civil War. The Southern Democrats and New England Republicans have all but died out (so the story goes), votes in Congress increasingly split right down party lines, the parties line up behind their presidents, and so forth.
(I was thinking there, what's really worrisome, of course, is the votes on the Supreme Court that split right down party lines--which reminds me of the story in today's Globe about Canada's Chief Justice saying that we shouldn't Americanize our process of appointing SC judges (which the incoming government might like to do). What's interesting about this, now, is that the SC's last high profile case rather tendentiously found that the public health care system in Quebec was violating Quebeckers' right (under the Quebec Charter, not the Canadian one, sneakily enough) to security of the person. The current court may be about as Conservative-friendly as any court Harper might appoint, given--and I think it is a given--that you'd probably be very hard pressed to find a suitably distinguished judge in Canada, at this point, who wouldn't, e.g., find a right to marry whoever you like in the Charter.)
Personally, you know, I like the idea of "republicanism" vs. "democracy"--I would, quite naturally, be a republican, if that were all there was to it. It's too bad the party names have just become labels for garbage cans full of polarized positions on this, that, and the other. (And one of these days I'm going to read The Federalist Papers.)
High today in TO: 4. Dewpoint then: 2. High dewpoint: 2.
Low today on the balcony: 0.2. High: 2.9. Currently: 0.6.
Heavy wet snow mixed with ice pellets for most of the last ten hours or so. Stopped now, though. Probably about 5 cm of slush on the ground now. I highly doubt we're getting anywhere near 30 cm.
Brian Leiter linked yesterday to some guy on lewrockwell.com saying that bin Laden must be about to hit Us hard, because he offered Us a truce, and the Koran says you have to offer your enemies a truce before you smite them. Which is an Interesting Theory.
Something else courtesy aldaily.com: a pretty interesting piece from Commentary arguing that Americans are, in fact, highly politically polarized. Lately, Americans seem to be becoming polarized on the question whether Americans are polarized or not. However, this polarization, unlike all the others, doesn't seem to have its poles on either end of the two parties. And that is, in fact, what's most interesting about the article: that whatever polarizations there are, now, are partisan in a way they've never been before, or at least not since around the Civil War. The Southern Democrats and New England Republicans have all but died out (so the story goes), votes in Congress increasingly split right down party lines, the parties line up behind their presidents, and so forth.
(I was thinking there, what's really worrisome, of course, is the votes on the Supreme Court that split right down party lines--which reminds me of the story in today's Globe about Canada's Chief Justice saying that we shouldn't Americanize our process of appointing SC judges (which the incoming government might like to do). What's interesting about this, now, is that the SC's last high profile case rather tendentiously found that the public health care system in Quebec was violating Quebeckers' right (under the Quebec Charter, not the Canadian one, sneakily enough) to security of the person. The current court may be about as Conservative-friendly as any court Harper might appoint, given--and I think it is a given--that you'd probably be very hard pressed to find a suitably distinguished judge in Canada, at this point, who wouldn't, e.g., find a right to marry whoever you like in the Charter.)
Personally, you know, I like the idea of "republicanism" vs. "democracy"--I would, quite naturally, be a republican, if that were all there was to it. It's too bad the party names have just become labels for garbage cans full of polarized positions on this, that, and the other. (And one of these days I'm going to read The Federalist Papers.)
