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Go here to sign a letter demanding a full public inquiry into vote suppression and other illegal tactics used by the Conservative Party in the 2011 federal election. Please sign and share.

Just in case you haven't watched this yet, please do. I have only one quibble. I doubt anything made Richard Nixon blush!

I've never liked the comparison of control freak Stephen Harper to figurehead Resident George W. Bush. I understand where it comes from, of course, but if Canada is becoming the United States, as progressive Canadians love to say, then it's the United States of 20, 25 years ago. My comrade John Bell goes even further back, and he has a point. The growing RoboCall scandal is being likened to Watergate, and Stephen Harper to our own Richard Nixon. I used to run home from school to watch the Watergate hearings. My pal Stu and I collected tapes of Nixon speeches: we would marvel at the evident gap between Nixon’s self-righteous sincerity and the weasel words issuing from his jowly mouth. I think the comparison is valid. Stephen Harper may lack the jowls, but I believe he shares Nixon’s honest belief that he has license to break any law because the cause he serves is right—in more ways than one. Read it here: The Robocall rogues gallery . On that theme, see also: Dr. Dawg, Harper: ...

On our DIY top-ten list , M@ made a top-ten list of top-ten lists . David Weinberger, author of Everything Is Miscellaneous , takes it up a level, with a top ten list of top ten lists of top ten lists ! I haven't read that book yet, but I probably will over the spring-summer. (That's the wonderful season from mid-April to mid-September when I get my life back.) Some chapter excerpts are on the reading list for my current "ROCM" class. (That's Representation, Organization, Classification and Meaning-Making, otherwise known as A Complete Waste of My Time.) I'm restraining myself from my semi-annual (November and March) Why I Hate Grad School whine-rant-list, to keep your eyes from completely glazing over. Time to bust out my Imp Strump . It's March. You're in university. Of course you're a mess. You're going to be a mess for a month and then emerge, blinking and befuddled, somehow having completed all your coursework, into a beautiful spring wh...

This editorial in the Toronto Star is based on the same misinformation and hysteria that led to the pit bull death sentence in the first place. If you care about this issue, please take a moment to write to the Star and inform of them of the facts. Write to publiced@thestar.ca and letters@thestar.ca. This is really too long for a really good letter to the editor. Perhaps you can use it as a model to write your own. * * * * To the editor: Your editorial "Pit bulls are dangerous and Ontario is right to ban them" (February 27, 2012) is misleading and incorrect. Under the current Dog Owners' Liability Act, any dog that is "alleged" - merely alleged - to be a pit bull or to be menacing can be confiscated from its owner. It falls to the owner to prove the dog is not a pit bull, something that cannot be done, since the term "pit bull" is vague and subjective. Until recently, a confiscated dog was automatically killed without any due process for its owner. No...

I'm posting this for Googleability. If you've received an excessive water bill, there may be an error in your reading, even if the water meter is working correctly . My partner and I recently filed a small claims lawsuit against the Region of Peel to recover excessive water charges we were forced to pay. The judge awarded us a full refund, plus court fees, plus money for our time and effort, plus interest. If you have received a water bill that is 10 times (or more) your normal rate, and there are no leaks or plumbing issues in your home, and your subsequent bills show normal usage, this may apply to you. To read details of our experience, go here: advice needed: we really did not use all this water water bill woes continue. help needed. really really needed. in which we kick peel's butt lesson: fight your excessive water bill (My partner's blog) I haven't written about our preparation for the case or our evidence at trial. If you would like more details, please em...

What will be done about RoboGate ? Has Stephen Harper's well-documented pattern of giving democracy the finger finally gone too far? Thanks to an excellent election post-mortem by Matt Peters and Ryan Boldt on rabble.ca last year, we know that the Conservative Party won by a very narrow margin in dozens of ridings, in some cases beating out NDP and Liberal candidates by only hundreds of votes (some within dozens). The scope and breadth of RoboGate has yet to be known, but every day more ridings are reporting robo-calls and deceiving messages from the 2011 election. Could the Conservatives have, in fact, stolen their majority victory? Even before what I call RoboGate (or, as other media have coined, 'RoboCon'), we had a litany of abuses --from the Conservatives pleading guilty to illegal election spending (the 'in-out' scandal), to being found in contempt of Parliament, pork-barrelling millions in G20 cash into cabinet minister Tony Clement's personal riding, a...