Thursday May 08, 2008
COLUMNISTS 
Why Clinton's arguments to carry on just don't hold water any more
Former Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern joined four superdelegates who endorsed Barack Obama yesterday, in his case switching support from the flagging campaign of Hillary Clinton.If that weren't bad enough, senior advisers disclosed yesterday that Ms. Clinton has lent her own campaign $6.4-million (U.S.) during the past month, on top of the $5-million she had previously injected.
Tax cuts for business set to become the fiscal policy of city hall
The good news is that the city gained 22,000 jobs in 2007, a performance that brought total employment to a 10-year high and, for the first time, met the official goal of 17,000 new jobs a year.
Trailer Park Boy throws winning paunch at maverick MPP's fundraiser
The guy walking around without a shirt was a tipoff that this wasn't a normal political fundraiser. Another sign that something unusual was afoot was that the politician at the centre of things was wearing a T-shirt that said ''Let's do the big dirty'' and quoted from a book titled On Bullshit.
EDITORIALS
Time to put the party first
Over the course of her campaign for the Democratic nomination in this year's U.S. presidential election, Hillary Clinton has more than proven her tenacity. Now, it is time for the New York senator to prove her selflessness by putting her party's interests above her own ambitions.
A call to courage
The life of Yossi Harel, the captain of the illegal immigrant ship Exodus 1947, who died last month at the age of 90, symbolized as much as the life of any man could the hope, courage and resilience that is the story of Israel. As the Jewish state celebrates its hard-won 60th anniversary today, the example of people like Mr. Harel serves as a reminder that no matter how daunting the challenges and obstacles that remain for Israel, they could be no greater than those confronted and overcome by the country's founders.
Where's the urgency?
Infectious diseases may spread from one victim to another in a split second, but no one should expect a fast response from the Public Health Agency of Canada. As Auditor-General Sheila Fraser reports, there are significant gaps in the agency's ability to collect data. It lacks a firm strategic direction, a national standard for reporting diseases and a data-quality framework. The agency has not even hammered out a deal with the federal food inspection agency to divvy up responsibility for monitoring animal diseases.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
They paid freedom's price
Today is the 63rd anniversary of V-E Day (Victory in Europe) day. My father, now 88, spent 41/2 years overseas in the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals, leaving a wife and four-month-old son in Canada. Among the very few stories he can bring himself to tell about the war is one from May 8, 1945, a date that is, in its own way, as important to him as Remembrance Day: He and his sergeant were playing cards in a tent in a muddy field in Holland when they heard a BBC Radio announcer say: ''All organized resistance has ceased.'' When the significance of that statement sank in and they realized the war was over, dad's sergeant broke open a bottle of rum he'd been saving for the occasion.
A proud .ca(nadian) moment
Dot-com (.com) is a for-profit, commercial enterprise; its domain names are available to anybody in the world who can pay the registration fees. The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), which manages dot-ca (.ca) domain-name registrations, is a not-for-profit organization that reserves dot-ca domain names exclusively for use by Canadians.
Food security is a process
By untying food aid and no longer requiring much of it to be spent on Canadian foodstuffs, Ottawa has taken a significant step in the right direction. In the midst of food shortages and natural disasters, people starving halfway around the world will no longer have to wait for bags of Canadian grain to arrive.
Graffiti barbarians
On the day I returned from Rome, I was surprised to find the front-page article, Police Teach Suburban Punk Rockers A Lesson On How Graffiti Ruins Lives (May 5). If anyone is interested in seeing the appalling face of graffiti, a visit to the Eternal City is a great place to start.
Keeping on keeping-on
The Facts and Arguments essay by Jeannine O'Reilly on marriage and the Odyssey is one of the most beautiful I've read in the many years I've been reading the column (An Epic Journey Through Daily Life - May 6). It vividly describes her realization of the epic character of the daily commute, long bus rides and raising kids.
Sri Lanka and its Tamils
You report that ''tens of thousands of Sri Lankans living in Canada'' have been funding the Tamil Tigers (Tamil Tigers Using Electoral List, RCMP Say - May 6). If that is true, it must tell Canadians something about how out of touch the Stephen Harper government is with Tamil Canadians and what is going on in Sri Lanka. If Stephen Harper wants Canadian Tamils to stop sending money to the Tigers, Canada should take a leading role in stopping the Sri Lankan government from attacking its Tamil minority.
Nuance and politics
Jeffrey Simpson, in identifying the personality conflict between the two Democratic contenders, may do less than justice to Adlai Stevenson. Mr. Stevenson, a Princeton graduate, was certainly, by any standards, an intellectual or, in the quaint usage of the times, an ''egghead,'' but never, in today's terminology, an ''elitist.''
41,000, 41,001, 41,002 and so on
Who are these ''fugitives'' and what are they doing? Contributing vital labour to building projects, cleaning up after and feeding the masses, working jobs homegrown Canadians aren't much interested in.
Nuance and politics
Jeffrey Simpson considers Barack Obama's Philadelphia speech ''an outstanding address on race'' (Hillary Tries Turning Obama Into Today's Adlai Stevenson - May 6). Was this the same speech where Mr. Obama declared ''I can no more disown [Rev. Wright] than I can disown the black community,'' before subsequently - and very publicly - doing an about-face and disowning the reverend for pure political expediency?
A head-scratcher, this one
I can be a bit dense at times but, for the life of me, I cannot understand who benefits when the TTC is fined $250,000 (TTC Fined $250,000 For Failing To Prevent Worker's Death - May 7). The TTC is a public enterprise constantly short of the money needed to provide first-class service.
And this, scratch, one too ...
I have just received in my mailbox a flyer from Lui Temelkovski, MP, the sort of the thing one gets regularly from MPs or candidates. That name doesn't look familiar, I thought, and checked him out on the Internet. It turns out Mr. Temelkovski is the sitting Liberal MP for Oak Ridges-Markham just north of Toronto. Naturally, I am wondering what his constituents received - a flyer from Vivian Barbot, Bloc Quebecois MP for this constituency in Montreal?
And your misguided point is?
The article in Report on Business on the environmental impact of driving versus walking to the supermarket misses the point (Cut Your Carbon Footprint ... Take The Car - May 7). The walking is needed to stay in good health, so why not walk to the supermarket instead of driving, and then wasting resources (and calories) exercising in the gym, no doubt also reached by car?
41,000, 41,001, 41,002 and so on
Re Ottawa Can't Find 41,000 Fugitive Immigrants (May 7): If Ottawa can't find 41,000 fugitive immigrants that it knows about, imagine how many there are in Canada that Ottawa doesn't know about.
Nuance and politics
Re Obama Wins North Carolina Outright But Clinton Clings To Life In Indiana (May 7): I prefer the New York Post's Hillary headline: TOAST.
