Idealistic Pragmatist

It's been years since I posted to this blog, but this needs to be said, and it's going to take more than 140 characters to do so. T...

From day one, the tagline of this blog was "resisting the pull of cynicism since 1969." Well, in case it isn't obvious from t...

In Dutch, there is a pair of similar expressions: "to make someone happy with a dead sparrow" and "to be happy with a dead sp...

I am extremely thankful to Paul Wells for his insightful commentary on yesterday's German federal election : The cheap talking point of ...

Was the Governor-General wrong to prorogue? Hell if I know. It seemed like a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" sort of...

Consider this: When people in the same party get together to talk about plans for laws or governance or strategy, we call it a caucus meetin...

Angus Reid has released polling data about the proposed coalition. Here are their answers to the main three questions: Which of these stat...

As you've probably heard by now, there are rallies being planned across Canada, both for and against the proposed coalition. Well, in...

Can you retroactively flunk high school social studies in Canada? Because I'm hereby nominating everybody who refers to a potential coal...

The golden rule of leading a minority government: You have to come up with compromises that people outside of your own party will vote for. ...

From the Canadian Press : Prime Minister Stephen Harper has guaranteed the survival of his minority Conservative government for at least ano...

Okay, is it me, or do the most interesting events in Canadian politics always seem to happen riiiiight at the beginning or the end of the C...

There are some terrific conversations going on out there right now about what's next for the NDP after the 2008 election. First, we hav...

During the last election, my partner got a call from the Liberals. The caller gave the traditional spiel about how great the Liberals were ...

I'm pretty sure that everyone who reads this blog knows that: a) I'm a Canadian first and an American only by past association, and ...

I'm with Mr. Sinister .

My father is a political scientist, specializing in U.S. politics, at a major U.S. university. As you might imagine, between the postmortem...

When über-Liberal blogger Jason Cherniak decided to hang up his blogging hat after the last election, there was no shortage of reaction fro...

Late in this last election, after it had become overwhelmingly clear to everyone in Edmonton-Strathcona that this riding was a two-horse rac...

I could tell you all stories about this election that would make your hair stand on end. But because today is a day for celebrating here in...