For someone who doesn't want to re-open the death penalty debate, Stephen Harper is doing a pretty good job of re-opening it. First we have the Harper government reversing a decades old policy of asking for clemency for Canadian citizens under the death penalty abroad. Now we have the Harper government withdrawing Canadian co-sponsorship from a UN resolution on the abolition of capital punishment. I hate to break it to you Stephen, you've reopened the debate, one that even your own polling a vast majority of Canadians, including those in Alberta, don't want.

There's a bright comet in our nighttime sky at the moment. Comet 17P/Holmes is quite bright and easily visible without a telescope as a fuzzy object in the night time sky. So if you can get out of the city and take a look, there's a finder chart below for the next couple of nights (comet slowly move from night to night.) For those of you who can't get out of town, I've also thrown in the picture I took of the comet last night through my trusty telescope.

There's been a lot of electrons expended in the latest hit into far right field by the Harper Tories on the Canadian government no longer working for clemency for Canadian citizens abroad. The way I see it it speaks to two things: 1 - why the Harper Tories are stalled in the polls; and 2 - them revealing some of their so-called hidden neo-con and so-con agenda.

The Conservative Party of Canada really doesn't like the grass roots. In their time in office, they've done nothing but over-ride their local constituency associations, either protecting odious candidates, parachuting in others in snap nomination meetings and now two more candidates nominated by local constituency associations have been rejected by party central. This fresh on the heels of another override of a constituency association. It makes one wonder why the party even bothers having local riding associations.

Ok, Ok, it's been a while since I've blogged, but it's been busy here at Castle Evil. Between work, military and party commitments, there just hasn't been much time to do any blogging. So now that I have a few minutes here we go.

I've watched with some interest the banter back and forth over the financial update of the Harper government. It seems that with the throne speech not gaining the Tories any traction in the polls, a mass of tax cuts is in order. So we have the Tories re-instating the low income tax cuts the Liberals put in place that the Tories subsequently canceled as well as further tax cuts for non-poor Candians. It's a shame that the Tories couldn't have cut the taxes for the people who need it the most, the poor, from the start. I suspect they've discovered that a "screw the poor" platform wasn't getting them votes in truckloads.

With the upcoming referendum on a form of PR (specifically MMP) happening in Ontario, there's been much in the blogosphere about the various merits and flaws with PR and the MPP system specifically. This has me thinking about how hard it will be to change the current first past the post (FPTP) system we use. In fact it will likely be neigh impossible to make such a change, baring a party in power doing the change by legislative fiat.

With all the bluster going around on both sides of the political spectrum about the upcoming Throne Speech, it is important that we stop for a moment and look at what would actually be a good tactic for the opposition at this time. To recap the situation, we have Harper threatening the opposition over the Throne Speech basically demanding that they let him govern as a majority or force an election. The opposition parties are likely to humour him and force an election over the Throne Speech. This would be a tactical mistake.

Two incidents in the past couple of weeks have me thinking as to what the role of troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan are. Is the role that of reconstruction or of occupation. This would then lead to further debate as to if our troops should be over there in the role that they are actually fulfilling, as opposed to the role that the government claims they are doing, or at least it should.

...that Canada is beginning to be reviled as much as the United States in the world. It's only taken 18 months of ham-fisted diplomacy and sucking up to the Bush Republicans to destroy an international reputation that took 60 years to develop. Till this past year, nations would generally welcome Canadian troops in to help stabilize a region. Now, it's becoming clear that that's a thing of the past. Canada's New Government (TM, Pat. Pend.) has seen to that. It's becoming clearer and clearer that the only thing that Harper and his merry band of Tories care about internationally is how the Bush Republicans think of them and the country.

It's becoming clearer and clearer why Harper prorogued parliament. It was so his government could start slashing budgets without anyone asking questions. First it was over at Environment Canada now its at the Department of National Defence. The Harper Conservatives, in an effort to show that their support for our troops extends only to yellow ribbon stickers on cars and wearing red on Fridays, is canceling an upgrade program to our long range maritime patrol aircraft. This after the program is half way through to completion. This is not the way to show support for the Canadian Forces.