Writing on the matter of Obama’s 3,000 page health care bill, Charles Kesler notes that the founding fathers’ view on the law was similar to John Locke’s, who saw the law as a community’s “settled standing rules, indifferent, and the same to all parties.” To be legitimate, “a statute must be ‘received and allowed by common consent to be the standard of right and wrong, and the common measure to decide all controversies’ between citizens.”
Kesler:

This phonebook-sized law that would control a sixth of the U.S. economy cannot be a law by that definition. If you rummage through the text of, say, the House of Representatives’ version of the bill, you find scores of places where power is delegated to administrative agencies and special boards, which are charged to fill the gaps in the written legislation by promulgating thousands, if not tens of thousands, of new pages of regulations that will then be applied to individual cases.

(….)

The whole point is to empower government officials, usually unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats, to bless or curse your petitions as they see fit, guided, of course, by their expertness in a law so vast, so intricate, and so capricious that it could justify a hundred different outcomes in the same case. Faster than one might think, a government of equal laws turns into a regime of arbitrary privileges.

(….)

It was against the threat of such a despotism that proper and not so proper Bostonians threw the original Tea Party….Today’s Tea Party movement sees a similar threat of despotism-of monopoly control of health care, corrupting bailouts, massive indebtedness, and the eclipse of constitutional rights-in the Obama Administration’s policies.

The whole thing here.

… or a rock?

The central thesis of George’s Grand Remonstrance, however, is that the battle to persuade the world of the reality of global warming is lost. “No level of evidence can shake the growing belief that climate science is a giant conspiracy codded up by boffins and governments to tax and control us.” By George, he’s got it! Reality has dawned. The penny has dropped. The world knows AGW is a crock and nothing is going to change that reality. And the problem all along, George, was the very “evidence” to which you refer. The wider distrust of scientists was provoked by the thousands of white-coated whores who trousered the IPCC’s cash, chased the grants and plaudits, and clamped their gobs firmly around the UN and EU teats.

… read about Poor George.
By the way George, it is garbage like THIS that makes us tend toward rocks.

… in Australia

$38 for a doctor’s visit.
Of course though, that’s nothing compared to Canada’s “free” health care system. I mean, you guys pay nothing, right?

Oh I don’t know, maybe because they’re willing to drill the oil and mine the freaking coal out of their soil? That and you have Harper and we have…oh never mind.

The Harper government has been subtly urging Canadian businesses to seek markets outside the USA. This is particularily true for businesses in Ontario and Quebec where the balance of trade flows south.
Dr. Doom suggests why that may be:

At best, the US economy is headed for a U-shaped recovery this year, Roubini said. That has been his prediction in recent months.
The US faces challenges in the second half, especially as fiscal stimulus measures fade, and “appears far too close to the tipping point of a double-dip recession,” he said.
The euro zone is also facing an increased risk of a double-dip fall, because of its ongoing debt crisis, he wrote.
Even if the euro zone does not suffer a double dip, growth in demand will be even more limited and this will hurt the United States’ potential for export growth …

… it’s a good thing Ontario and Quebec voted for Obama.

… we’re all “family”:

Those who support the president can expect favors. No sooner had Rep Jim Matheson (D-Utah) suggested that he might be willing to switch his vote and support the latest version of ObamaCare than his brother was nominated for a federal judgeship.
Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.) is also on the undecided list. And, purely by coincidence no doubt, the Justice Department just announced that it is dropping an FBI investigation that has been swirling about the congressman. Gosh, if only Charlie Rangel were one of the undecideds.
Those who oppose the president can expect the political equivalent of a horse head between their sheets.

The Toronto Star reports:

By 2031, the Toronto region’s white population will be the new “visible minority,” according to a Statistics Canada study.

The city and its suburbs are expected to surpass the 50 per cent visible minority mark in 2017. By 2031, almost 63 per cent of the region’s population will be from a visible minority community, says the study released Tuesday.

What it doesn’t report:

By 2031, nearly one-half (46%) of Canadians aged 15 and over would be foreign-born, or would have at least one foreign-born parent, up from 39% in 2006.

Of course, 71% of that near-half will be residing in the country’s, erm, 3 biggest cities. (The bulk of that, obviously, in the biggest.) So maybe the Toronto-centric focus here is, actually, you know, pretty much kinda sorta correct.
Which is weird.
… And kinda suggests this story deserves a lot (a lot) of attention.
(Consider this too.)

… for a greater carbon footprint:

Plant growth shuts down at 150 ppm, so the Earth was within 30 ppm of disaster. Terrestrial life came close to being wiped out by a lack of CO2 in the atmosphere. If plants were doing climate science instead of us humans, they would have a different opinion about what is a dangerous carbon dioxide level.

Update: The Geraniums bring in a heavy-hitter.

Ian Hunter on the problem that, unbelievably, persists:

“The evicted property owners of Kahnawake are without a remedy because Canadian law is not applied on Indian reserves. Ms. Nolet is without a remedy because human rights law is applied to private parking places — but in a manner that any reasonable person would consider to be totally arbitrary.”