Holy Crap, It's March!

How did that happen?

I only have eight more weeks of law school.

I don't know whether I should be panicking or rejoicing.

I'll let you know.

Help Stop Violence Against Women...

...and go see the Vagina Monologues, one of the more uplifting ways to fight violence against women. I went last night.

I got a ({VDAY OTTAWA}) tote bag, a chocolate vagina and these cool buttons:


Nothing beats buttons! Except sharing two hysterical, poignant, touching, honest hours with a theatre full of mostly women and a few good men. It was awesome!

Travelling

I'm reflecting today, because in lieu of class, I'm travelling, once again, the long road between home and home. It's a good day to reflect; fitting, I mean, because it feels like I've been travelling, on a journey (if you will pardon the cliche), over the course of this class. Fitting too, to say that I'm travelling between home and home, because I live geographically in two places the same way that maybe I live in the law as my profession and outside of that I have my own politics, morals and personal values and I'm always travelling between the two, trying to reconcile them, make them known to each other and living harmoniously. It's not always an easy task, in the literal or metaphorical sense.

A course like this seems like an act of reconciliation between them, because it's been about connections and connecting. Connecting theories of restorative justice to our own experience through practice; and connecting our own expecience to those of the people in our circle. From that, I think, has come some reconciliation for me.

We don't often get the chance in law school to reveal pieces of ourselves to our colleagues because we're concerned with learning very carefully selected facts, which support rules developed over time designed to result in very carefully constructed conclusions, that too often serve the interests of a select few but disguised as something called "justice", which is theoretically good for everyone.

We come in to law school, frequently, maybe even often, with a sense of idealism (even if we pretend we don't), and they try to make us forget that using a variety of strategies. Chief among those, I believe, is the tendency to dehumanize and to ignore the people who have made the law, all of the people who are subject to the law and all of the people who suffer the law.

But here, we got to take some risks. We got to be the people we are and tell our stories. On day four, I was really angry and upset. But the process gave me a space and some tools to understand why I was upset and also why I should move past that and stay engaged. The circle allowed me to make a choice to stay involved. In a lecture, we would have just moved on and I would have gone home and judged and never changed that judgment. But, day after day in the circle, I was really required to look at that judgment, unpack it, question it and, I think eventually, to let it go.

I think I need to carry that memory with me as I go into practice.

On Truth and Reconciliation

I have a hard time talking about the status of Aboriginal people in Canada, about the apology they received this past summer, or about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. See, the problem is, I'm white.

Actually, it's not so much that I have a hard time talking about it (this does not tend to be a problem for me), it's that I maybe I should be listening right now. I'm not sure that it's my place to have an opinion about these things, except to say: please, tell me what you need me to do to make this better for you. Tell me as a woman, as a mother, as a lawyer, as a voter and taxpayer what I can do to make restitution, to make amends, to take responsibility for this country's past. I do not want to speak for you on this matter, but I do want to stand near you and echo your voices, if you want me there at your shoulder and if you want my voice joined with yours. If not, I will listen because you need to be heard. I am prepared to hear you, and I am prepared to act with you.

I hope the time has come for this. I feel like Canada's Obama moment will come when we elect our first Aboriginal Prime Minister. But shit, we could start with appointing someone to the Supreme Court. FYI: They're all white.

Is Youth Wasted on the Young?

I presented a seminar on restorative justice and the Youth Criminal Justice Act today with a couple of my mates. One of the things that surprised me a little bit was the strong opinions about whether it was ageist the way that the YCJA embraces (on its face) many restorative elements in its approach to youth criminal justice when this approach is denied, more or less, to adults in the sentencing provisions of the Criminal Code. The YCJA is explicit in the need for the justice system to consider things like least restrictive measures, rehabilitation and reintegration into the community when considering how to deal with youth accused of crimes.

In a nutshell: one side says that the government and justice system has limited resources, they have to make choices about where their resources go, and youth are the best place to park the resources that will hopefully divert from crime because they are still young, have a long life ahead, and are perhaps more salvageable than someone older offenders.

The other side says that we shouldn't be making these judgments solely based on age and that everyone should have access to the types of restorative measures we find in the YCJA if it's appropriate.

I'm not totally sure where I fall in this debate. Adults are merely young people, all grown up. It's too cynical for me to just dismiss an adult offender's prospects for restoration (writ large) because he or she (go gender equality) has got a criminal record an arm long. But, maybe if there had been a restorative intervention early on the long record wouldn't have gotten so long. I agree with the position that every offender should have access to a restorative process where appropriate. BUT resources are limited. Would the resources be better spent on restorative processes? I mean, they're going to spend the money one way or another. Why not this way? Prisons are expensive!

I hate these resource questions. All of the answers suck. And there's never enough money, apparently.

Plus Ca Change...

Here's a newsflash: Restorative justice practiced in the context of the patriarchal justice system still screws women over!

Now I now that is hard to believe, since some of you think that restorative justice is The Answer. Well, that's where you'd be wrong. So cute and naive.

Angela Cameron, a guest speaker in our class, called her feminist concerns "a constellation of worries" about the way restorative justice is practiced, including concern for the vulnerabilities of the particular group (e.g. battered women) to the offender and whether there is someone who is familiar with those vulnerabilities who is part of the process.

Her work with Emma Cunliffe revealed that the circle sentencing process in cases of intimate violence is quite problematic from a feminist and anti-VAW perspective. Practiced in the context of our beloved (patriarchal) justice system, the supposedly restorative circle sentencing practice actually perpetuates some of the same ills of the conventional system, including eliminating the voice of the survivor and perpetuating mythologies about women's bodies. To top it all off, the judgments they analyzed kind of pat themselves on the back for being restorative, even though they demonstrably continue to fail to address the issues through a gender-sensitive lens. Well, that's not entirely true; they do in fact address issues of intimate violence through a gender-sensitive lens. It's just that the gender they're sensitive to is male.

Just when you think there's hope...

Siiiiigh.

What is a feminist to do?! When I reflect upon the abysmal status of women interacting with the justice system as victims/survivors and as offenders (and maybe even the lawyers and judges), the logical thing is to not have a lot of hope. This system seems broken broken broken for many people, most of them vulnerable for some reason. Even me. I'm vulnerable because I'm a feminist. Someday (soon, I imagine, since I am soon to make my escape from the most left-wing ivory tower law school in the country), I'm going to pay some price because someone's going to find out I'm a feminist. But I'm no where near as vulnerable as the women survivors and offenders, clearly.

I have always pretty firmly been on the side of change from within. I'm never going to be so radical that I become alienated from the establishment because I don't want to get locked out (and I don't dismiss the possibility that this has something to do with liking my own privilege). I'm just a lot more useful chipping away at the establishment from the inside. But, this establishment is so screwed up in places that I wonder if it can ever really act in an equality-seeking manner. It can't, I don't think, until it acknowledges, for example, that buying in to circle sentencing or other restorative measures does not a fair system make.

Just when you think there's hope...

(Sometimes there is. After all, I am The Closet Optimist, not The Closet Pessimist).

I'll See Your Apology and Raise You Some Forgiveness

In circle today one of the rounds asked us to share a time when someone had apologized to us. The only things that came into my head were times when I hadn't received an apology where I felt one was deserved on a few big bad things in my life. The question made me feel like giving an example of an apology that meant something to me would somehow diminish the importance of the apologies that I didn't get. This feeling leads me to think and question on two points:

1) Did not acknowledging the apologies I have received diminish their importance? and
2) Do those who have harmed me still have power over me because I have not received an apology?

On the first point, I guess there are lots of small hurts in life that I don't even remember, and probably meaningful apologies have come with a few of those, but I part of me doesn't even remember them. I've moved on. I don't really feel like too many bad things have happened to me that would require grand apologies. And the small ones happen in the course of life. I have no memory for those details in general, so I've probably forgotten many apologies that were important to me at the time.

On the second point, this came as a bit of a shock to me, actually. I was surprised to find how the lack of an apology had left...[searching for the words]...an absence in my life, maybe like a blank space. Just when you think you've moved on from some of these big hurts, when you think someone can't hurt you anymore...I don't know.

There is debate, discussion, around the role of apology and forgiveness. I was caught by something Pumla Cobodo-Madikizela wrote about forgiveness:

the decision to forgive can paradoxically elevate a victim to a position of strength as the one who holds the key to the perpetrator's wish...In this sense, then, forgiveness is a kind of revenge, but revenge enacted at a rarefied level. Forgiving may appear to condone the offense, thus further disempowering the victim. But forgiveness does not overlook the deed: it rises above it. 'This is what it means to be human," it says. "I cannot and will not return the evil you inflicted on me." And that is the victim's triumph.

I like this view. I think it gives victims power. But will there always be a space when no apology is forthcoming?

I don't know, and I don't know if I like that.

Some Unanswered Question for People Who Criticize Alternatives

The bent of one of our readings reminded me of a paper I wrote last year on alternative medicine and its treatment within the legislative and judicial systems. Two things that reminded me of that research was 1) how we fail to enquire about the dominant system in our criticisms of the "alternative" and (relatedly) 2) how a double standard exists for the dominant system and the alternative system.

Here is a quote from my paper:

Sceptics frequently use this argument to discredit alternative therapies, and suggest that there are no such things as "alternative" treatments--there is only medicine that is supported by solid reserach and medicine that is not.

I think if you replaced "alternative treatments" with "circle sentencing" and the notion of Western medicine with the traditional justice system, you could see some parallels in the thinking that underlies the reading I just mentioned, "Sentencing Circles: Some Unanswered Questions."*

There is a focus throughout the article on the lack of empirical study surrounding circle sentencing--"It is curious, in light of all these claims of circle sentencing's benefits, that no scientific evaluation has been conducted." This starts from a fundamentally flawed position: that empirical study is the appropriate means of measuring "success" in this context. This attachement to empiricism is a significant feature of critiques of alternative health therapies as well. It assumes that some kind of "truth" exists and that it can be measured exclusively by empirical study, and fails to acknowledge that science and empiricism are, in fact, themselves social constructions. To paraphrase one writer, advocates of these therapies are not anti-science or against empirical study; the schoice is not between science or no science, but about which science. It is wrong, in my view, to assume that we can accurately or adequately measure the outcomes of any alternative process using tools designed to legitimize and recognize the outcomes of the dominant process. It's simply unfair, and destines the alternative to poor performance in many cases.

The other thing that really bothered me was the double standard issue. This kind of relates to the impiricism issue, in that frequently the alternative will be measured in some way and then will be criticized for its poor success. The thing that is too often not disclosed is that the mainstrain/dominant options also have low "success" rates, even though they are being measured by a tool that is designed within the same cultural/scientific context. The authors do cite a number of statistics, which I found somewhat suspect, but I don't feel fully qualified to evaluate them (because I have an entirely weak grasp of statistical analysis). But, for example, in talking about custody rates in provinces where circle sentencing is used, they cite that in Saskatchewan the number of aboriginal offenders had actually gone up in the period they studied and note that "it can hardly be argued that circle sentencing has had a positvie impact on the incarceration of native offenders." This may be entirely misleading because there is no information to suggest that a correlation exists between the incidence of aboriginals in custody in Saskatchewan and the use of circle sentencing. The authors draw a link where one does not necessarily exist and do it to cast doubt on the efficacity of the alternative sentencing process.

Also related to the double standard problem is the fact that the authors impose higher standards or expectations on the alternative process without demanding the same of the traditional process. This was typical of what I found in relation to alternative medicine as well. For example, the authors write that "clearly some national standards need to be developed if there is to be consistency of application across the country" (in relation to criteria for inclusion). The problem with that is that the typical sentencing process doesn't have any national standards, to my knowledge, to ensure consistency across the country beyond what exists in the Criminal Code and precedent decisions. The creation of some kind of national standards in addition to what is already imposed by statute and by precedent creates a higher burden on sentencing circles.

Overall, it kind of seems these critics are expecting some level of perfection from circle sentencing that they clearly do not expect from the usual process ("this article should not be taken as an apologia for the status quo"). This was also typical of what I found in relation to alternative health therapies. In spite of the fact that we can show clear failures in the current systems, there seems to be an unusually high degree of hesitation (to put it mildly) in examining alternatives. In spite of their complaint that no empirical evidence exists to support the claims of sentencing circle supporters, the authors feel confident in proclaiming in the conclusion of their article "their ability to effect refor has been exaggerated, to say the least." I would ask them to consider why they can make this claim confidently without empirical evidence but deny supporters the same right to make positive claims?

I think it's an area ripe for reflection--comparative studies on how we deal with "alternatives" to the mainstream in our justice system. These two examples--medicine and circle sentencing--tell me there's a pattern here that we should investigate.

*Julian V. Roberts and carol LaPrairie (1996) 39 Criminal Law Quarterly.

He or She Said

Types of words I felt like saying today in class as we talked about gender neutrality in certain language contexts:



Oh well, you know, it irritated me. It made me frustrated. It made Sisyphean tears spring to my eyes. I don't want to rehash the whole thing here, but it was this thing about how our readings were primarily referring to "offenders" in the masculine and "victims" in the feminine. There's no clear cut answer on this, so every generalization can always be proved false, but I get a little tetchy when we try to gender neutralize things that are very gendered.

When we did the second circle round, the question was about what we learned from the previous round (which was how talking about the topic made us feel). When it came to me, I passed. I passed the talking stick on because I just didn't have anything nice to say (isn't there some lesson about that?). ("I learned that I'm tired of men feeling sorry for themselves. Boo-farking-hoo." Which would have vastly underserved the whole discussion. Sometimes, sometimes, I know when to shut up.) Mostly I just wanted to GTF out of that circle and out of that room.

It did not feel like a place of safety for me right at that time.

There was part of me that felt incredibly arrogant in my unwillingness to "learn" anything. Maybe it was incapacity? Maybe I'm too entrenched in my position? Too defensive? Maybe. I wasn't exactly being radical. So maybe I'm going to hang on a little bit to my unwillingness in that situation. I can co-operate on lots of things but I can't compromise on some.

Maybe the most meaningful thing I heard was something a colleague said: blame comes on strong when there's a lot of pain.

So yeah. The inequality women face--and I'm not talking about poor me, white, privileged, educated, upper-middle-class (in spite of my vast student debt), heterosexual, mainstream (mostly) me, I'm talking about the vast class of women who face way worse than me, but with whom I stand in solidarity because harm to them harms us all--is really painful for me. It's not debilitating pain, usually, though I feel despair at times. It's angry pain. It's I'm-so-damned-tired-of-this pain. It's I-keep-taking-responsibility-for-myself-now-it's-your-turn pain. It's real pain.

It's real.

Consumed!

FCLF and I decided to play recycling jenga leading up to exams. Curiously, while we both went to our respective homes for the holidays, the recycling didn't magically disappear. Who can imagine why not? This what it looked like when I got back to Ottawa:


Also, I have mentioned in previous posts about my cola consumption during exams. It kind of reached epic proportions this year, but also included Gatorade, in addition to Coke and Coke Zero (I don't really care, it was just what was available). This is what it looked like at the end of exams:


There's also a couple of bottles of POM, Bolthouse Farms C-Boost Fruit Smoothie and the bottle of wine that I mostly drank after my last exam. I was on Skype with a couple of my Italian friends, who came looking for me because they knew I was finished exams. Since they're six hours ahead, I kind of got my celebrating in early and was almost totally sobered up by 11 pm. Not bad.

I'll Restore Mine, If You Restore Yours

My January term course is Restorative Justice and part of our evaluation is a daily reflective journal. I see this as a fine excuse (erm...opportunity) to blog every day. Since there's a grade involved, I'm likely to do it. If only the course were 27 days long, wouldn't it be habit-forming? Anyway, dear Readers, you might actually get bored of me if I posted anything substantive 27 days in a row! I'm already two days behind, so I need to catch up now.

Restorative justice (RJ) is kind of a perfect topic for this alter ego, The Closet Optimist. Because I want to believe in it, but I can hardly live in this world and not be a little bit cynical. Okay, a lot cynical. But, since I actually have to live in this world, I have to be kind of an optimist, or life would be too depressing. Same goes for this justice system that I've signed up for. It's kind of a f*cked up place, but it's what we've got. I've got to find hope within it somewhere. I take solace in the fact that there are good people working in a flawed (and that's putting it gently) system.

Things I'm thinking about in our non-traditional, traditional* circle format of learning and sharing together:

Sharing (ha ha, see title). It's kind of weird to be in a place where part of the process is to open up and share our own experiences. In situations of semi-familiarity, like class, I'm of two minds (at least) on the issue of personal disclosure. Some people learn and achieve understanding by relating their own stories to whatever topic is being discussed. I sort of occasionally find this annoying in (other) classes because it seems like every time some people raise their hand, it's to relate a story that may or may not actually add anything. I can't help but thinking snidely, "This one time, at band camp..." (OMG, I'm so mean.) I mean, sometimes it's totally relevant, and I do it too, but I feel like there's limits. Also, while genuine disclosures and sharing can be super meaningful, relevant and powerful, I hesitate about it at some points because I feel like it can be exploitive, in the vein of "Look at me, I'm legitimate!"

See, this is a perfect example about why context is important. Because to date, in the stuff that we've done in the circles (and ok, this is a day one journal, but I'm writing it on day three), none of that other (mean) stuff applies. In this context, that sense of opening up your own experiences makes perfect sense and without it the exercise would actually be kind of meaningless.

Feeling jaded, not wanting to be too open with my feelings, not wanting to be too personal, too enthusiastic about it. Though, I think I probably hide this well. And I know it's not just me. I find those chirpy enthusiastic idealists false and cloying, unless they can admit there's a limit to their idealism. (Which, by definition, precludes them from being chirpy, false and cloying.) There does not appear to be any of those in this class, which is kind of a relief. But still, I think we're mostly expected to be kind of hardened, so when we're required to be kind of humane, it feels like we're being suckers, and maybe suckered. This can be linked directly, I think, to that belief that some hold that a restorative process is a soft process, easier, lenient and insufficient to really mete out "justice". Anyone who thinks that has never had to face their demons, I think, because it's fecking hard to take responsibility for your actions and make peace with all those involved, including yourself and those you've harmed.

So, I feel like so far (because I don't want to make these posts too long and I'm going to wrap it up), this course is going to be a lot about my own relationship with the justice system, with my clients and my opponents. It's not about black letter law, in particular, because there's not too much of it, saving some case law on circle sentencing, some of the Criminal Code sentencing provisions (from which you can extrapolate the use of restorative processes), and the Youth Criminal Justice Act, which is explicitly restorative.

I don't know if I'll ever have the opportunity to participate in restorative processes early in my career (because someone will be bossing me around for a while), but at least I think I must try to incorporate some of the humanity of this process.

Humanity is good.

In music:




*Non-traditional in the sense of what we usually see in our justice system, but traditional in that the circle is borrowed, with respect, from traditional Aboriginal practices.

Listening To Mixed Tapes

The other day, a big chunk of ice fell off our neighbour's roof and landed in our driveway. On our car. Sigh. It could have been worse, of course. As it were, all that happened is a new dent on the passenger-side door and a nearly decapitated side mirror. We weren't able to get it into the garage to get it fixed, what with the New Year's holiday, so I had to borrow a car from my parents so I could drive back to Ottawa today.

All that to say, their car is old enough to have a tape deck. It also has a really crappy radio which hardly works, so this time I remembered to grab a handful of tapes to while away the hours between home and school.

Oh, the memories! Many of them were given to me by friends from my past, some of them still kicking around, some of them lost to time. It was a lot of fun listening to them again, and bringing back high school, leaving home, living, growing up and loving in Europe--and remembering a time when we still had tapes. (I recently had to explain to my nine-year-old niece what a cassette tape was. She has an iPod.)

There was "Punk As F*ck" (aka "[TCO]'s Happy Fun Tape") from Laura, my first friend from The City. Actually, it was Richmond Hill, which I would not now consider the city (I can be such a Toronto snob at times). Her hippie parents bought a farm outside of Midland and we met through a mutual friend, but soon decided we liked each other better. She introduced me to army pants, Lollapalloza, dandylion wine made my her hippie uncle Darce (I think), and music such as Dino Jr, NoFX, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Violent Femmes, Jane's Addiction and Propagandhi, and my boyfriend Sean. I lost track of her after Europe. Last I knew of her, she was on her third member of a punk (I guess that's what they were) band made up of guys she knew and working at the convenience store in Balm Beach. We grew apart.

Kary and Scott made me "[TCO]'s Frustration" for my trip to Europe, after I graduated from high school. Kary and I worked together in a photo store. She and Scott both graduated from Ryerson's photography program. That was back in the day when I wanted to be a photographer, so I thought they were pretty cool. It was called that because I was theoretically going to be frustrated in the love department. This did not really prove to be true, but it was a good tape. It has Sid Vicious's version of "My Way".

I have about three tapes from Andrea of music he wrote. He wasn't my first boyfriend, but he's the first one I regretted hurting (or behaving badly toward, whether he was actually hurt I guess I don't really know). Which is, I suppose, as close to my first love as any of my pre-AHC boyfriends can get. He wrote a really nice dedication to me in one of the covers, which ends with "PS Why are you LEAVING??" He gave it to me right before I left for France (pre-bad behaviour). There's another one he gave me the year that AHC came to Italy and proposed to me, and the dedication mentions him as well (back when AHC was still thinking about making films). We're still vaguely in touch and he's still a musician.

There are a couple of mixes made when I was in France, one of which is entitled "Hit Express. French Torture Experience". In case that title didn't give it away, France was a difficult and crazy time. But, some of the music was fun.

There's one called "Wonderful Spot", which I either "borrowed" (i.e. failed to give back) or was given by my Italian sister, Claudia. It's all music from European t.v. commercials. I think I could actually visualize some of those commercials when I heard the music. But it really reminded me of Italy.

And who can forget "Un'ora sola" from Giovanni, a tape he made for not one, not two, but three girls at the same time (but that's another story). We were all friends at the time, and we all remained friends in spite of his cheekiness. He did marry one of the three of us. We lost track of each other for a while but those friendships have recently been rekindled, a thing that pleases me greatly.

Anyway, these tapes remind me so much of my late teens! If anyone asks, generally I'd say that I hated being a teenager, but these reminded me that there was some pretty good stuff too, mixed in with all that angst (of which there was no shortage).

I closed out the last few New Year's parties of my adolescence in Italy. It's hard to believe that 10 years ago, AHC (long before he was AHC) visited me in Italy and proposed to me at a house party in Florence as we feted in 1999. I guess those were the good old days that lead to these good old days, as they will someday be.

Happy New Year everyone.

Pre-paper, Post-paper

Before:

And after:

Unfortunately, I don't think these pictures do justice to the level of tidy serenity that existed before I started writing, and then, the level of chaos that existed once the paper was done. It was difficult to navigate the floor, the bed, the desk...

It was, however, incredibly satisfying to put every piece of research I had printed in a neat pile and haul it out of my room, into a temporary resting place on the bookshelf in the living room. I'll have to face it again though, because the topic is interesting enough that it should be paid attention to and polished up. It can, decidedly, wait until exams are done.

Post-Exam, Pre-Paper

Rest the night before an exam is never really satisfying, in spite of the fact that I actually went to bed at 11 p.m. last night. This is me, yawning uncontrollably, after my admin law exam:


Now, I sleep for a 1.5 hours. And then, I write.

Favourite Things, Part IV

It's exam time! How does one survive?

Coffee in the Bodem
(I love it. It's so low tech)

Consuming coffee and tea from my law school mugs

(I found these the first week of law school and I love them)

Strawberry Twizzlers. Yum!

Insight Into Political Events in Canada

My stunningly brilliant and beautiful colleague has repeatedly proven that she has an "amazing ability to see (and explain)" (as another brilliant and beautiful colleague put it) a wide variety of phenomena in this world. Here, her observations on current politics and our political leaders (reprinted with permission):

I like to view the current actions on Parliament Hill as a historical moment wherein Parliament altruistically sacrificed its dignity so that Canadians could work on their own personal issues and family relations problems.

Harper has taught us the age old lessons of natural consequences: "one must sleep in the "confidence vote" bed one makes" and "mean people suck". No one likes them and the friends they have are acquired through fear. Furthermore, all they can do is bad (ie. sending us into a constitutional and unity crisis).

Dion and Layton's actions reinforced the maxim that "one must act like an adult in order to be given adult responsibility". No amount of fist pounding, name calling, and yelling will ever get you what you want.

Bob Rae will soon teach us that the lesson of "never publicly set a limit that you are not willing to follow through on". This lesson will come when he burns down every bridge still open to the Liberal party by insisting on voting down what I think with be a drippingly generous stimulus package because he thinks Harper's an asshole.

Ignatiaf will teach us the well-known lesson of the "quiet child": the kid that makes the least amount of fuss for their parents get the biggest inheritance. His relative silence during this whole debacle will win him the Liberal leadership.

I have to say, I think she's pretty on point on all fronts. I think Harper's an asshole for proroguing. But the time for the coalition has passed, unless Harper is stupid enough to present a vindictive budget, a la economic update of last week, a second time around. Which he won't be. He's a stunningly calculating political tactician (I will give him that) and the only explanation for these events is hubris. And the fact that he's an asshole.

I hope the reason that the meeting between Harper and GG Jean took nearly three hours yesterday is because she was baking him a humble pie and spoonfeeding him every goddamned crumb of it.

TCO Supports a Coalition

You can have your political views. Be Liberal, be Conservative, be NDP, be Green, be BQ.

But don't lie. Harper lied about our Constitution. Not interpreted according to his politics (which are clearly divisive and oppressive, but that's my interpretation). He lied, flat out and bald-, bold-, and bare-faced (depending on which usage you prefer).

I get that pols spin. It's politics. I lie. It's life. But this is too much. Don't f*ck with my Constitution!!

Get thee out, spot!

And by "spot", I mean Harper.

Postcards from the Edge, Sixth in a Series

For a friend:

Handy Advice

"Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain."

Kahlil Gibran, "Joy and Sorrow", The Prophet.

I had bad and sad news this weekend, which has well and truly taken me off guard. I received instructions from a friend this morning to put on my palm to-do list today:


I'm trying, in only moderately successful ways, but I am grateful for those who are checking in. It makes it easier to laugh knowing that I am not alone.

You Know It's the End of the Semester When...

...FCLF knocks on my door at 11:45 p.m. and says, "I'm going to the 7-11...you wanna come?" and I reply, "YEAH!" enthusiastically, resulting in a trip that scores Doritos, Fruit & Nut, two bottles of Coke and $2 worth of penny candy (which is now actually worth five pennies).

It's Brain Junk, Autumn 2008 edition. It's interesting to note that my first post about brain junk occurred on December 17, 2006, which was almost entirely through the first set of 1L exams. It's not even December yet, and already I've resorted to the junk.

The situation is clearly serious.