Family Day

Fresh off his election day win Dalton says that he will provide a holiday for Ontarians in February so families can spend a day together. Although his idea seems heartwarming, economists predict the day will cost between 500 million to 2 billion dollars in lost money. I seem to remember that Tory's faith based funding plan would only cost 400 million. I guess though that spending one day with your family in February is more important to Dalton McGuinty than providing 53000 students with funding.

The Nobel Peace Prize- A Joke

With the news that Al Gore has just won the nobel peace prize one should take a look back at some of the past winners and Al Gore himself.
2007-Al Gore- how does an inconvenient truth have anything to do with promoting peace?
2005-Mohamed El Baradei- the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency for trying to stop all nucler development for non peaceful reasons. He sure is doing a great job with Iran.
2002- Jimmy Carter- I didn't know promoting anti-semitic sentiment helps peace?
2001-U.N+Kofi Annan- see Jimmy Carter
1993-Yasser Arafat-see Jimmy Carter+U.N
Shimon Peres- trading away Israel apparently is a peaceful endeavor for him

It seems to me that today the Nobel Peace Prize means absolutely jack and has become a political prize(mainly for extreme left wing ideologues), and doesn't actually find the person who best promotes peace in the world.

Free Speech

In the aftermath of Ahmadinejad speaking at Columbia University it is interesting to see Stanford University's response to Donald Rumsfeld being invited to become part of a campus think tank. Thousands of protesters have decried this appointment and have started a petition to rescind this offer. The petitioners state that Rumsfeld should not be allowed on the the think tank because,"We view the appointment as fundamentally incompatible with the ethical values of truthfulness, tolerance, disinterested inquiry, respect for national and international laws, and care for the opinions, property and lives of others to which Stanford is inalienably committed." Others have stated that Rumsfeld is a war criminal and should not get this appointment. These people are of course talking about the former U.S secretary of defence who patriotically served his country, although his policies might be controversial. I'm sure that many of these same protesters were fighting for Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia, but then show disdain for a former secretary of defence. I personally am speechless at the hypocrisy of these people and wonder what freedom of speech and academic freedom even mean any more.

Thanks to CNN