Blog about politics (mideast and pro-Israel, Canadian and local Montreal), world events, and random thoughts.

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The World I Know is updated on a semi-regular basis by segacs.

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12:03 AM
And on a lighter note...



Damn, I thought I was much eviler than that.

In related news, I'm also apparently 13% idiot (which somehow translates to "friggin' genius", though I don't seem to be genius enough to understand how that works), and only 18% hippie.

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11:21 PM
Reshaping the Supreme Court

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist's death on Saturday left another key opening on the court and Bush wasted no time announcing his nominee, appeals court judge John Roberts.

Rehnquist was a conservative, so it's not as though Bush is replacing a liberal with a conservative. Still, by some accounts, Roberts is much less moderate than Rehnquist was, and his confirmation could spell the end of an era in U.S. judicial policies:

Everything known about Roberts suggests he would join with the most conservative justices to change the law in a conservative direction. As deputy U.S. solicitor general, Roberts coauthored briefs expressly urging the court to overrule Roe vs. Wade. As an attorney in the Justice Department, Roberts drafted an article arguing that there is no constitutional protection for privacy.

Other opinions are less doomsday-ish:

Roberts is not Scalia or Thomas. He is not a right-wing judicial activist eager to chisel away the liberal expansion of the Constitution in recent decades in order to restore some halcyon original intent on the part of the Constitution's authors.

That's a bit too chaotic for Roberts, who seems to revere the law's ability to provide society with a sense of order and predictability. The most-parsed statement by Roberts came in his 2003 confirmation hearing to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, when he said that the 1973 Roe vs. Wade ruling establishing a constitutional right to an abortion based on the right to privacy is "the settled law of the land." Critics say he will think it's less settled when he is in a position to overturn it, but that seems implausible. In fact, send me a self-addressed envelope within a week and I will mail you $1 (and pay for postage) if Justice Roberts votes to overturn Roe.

All of that is speculation at this point. All we really know is that Bush is stacking the court with two more staunch conservatives, and that certain hard-won rights and liberties may - may be in jeopardy. Depending on what side of the aisle you're on, I guess this is either a golden opportunity or the greatest catastrophe imaginable.

Even the so-called safeguard of confirmation hearings that exists in the U.S. and not here in Canada (and is often advocated in Canada to avoid political appointees here) can't curb the power of a President to pick political appointees when his party also has a Senate majority. Here's hoping that Roberts is a lot more moderate than he seems, because a Chief Justice will continue to influence a country long after any given president is long out of office and busily engaged in book tours.

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11:00 PM
A bad month for plane crashes

An epidemic of plane crashes seems to have hit the globe.

In this past month alone, a plane crash-landed in Toronto - an episode in which, miraculously nobody was hurt. But not everyone was so lucky. A terrible crash in Greece killed 121, and a devastating crash in Venezuela killed 160.

There were also smaller crashes, such as the plane that went down in Switzerland, killing 4, a crash in Acupulco, Mexico that killed two people, and a crash in Durban, South Africa that was survived by all six people aboard. And that's not even all of them.

Then last week, a crash in Peru killed dozens of people.

Now there's been another plane crash in Indonesia that has claimed 149 lives. There doesn't seem to be any sign of terrorism.

And a plane crashed in the Congo, killing 7. It seems that the pilot tried to land in poor visibility and crashed into a tree.

I'm seriously starting to question the statistics that tell us that flying is so much safer than driving. Don't get me wrong, I'm not out to spread conspiracy theories or anything. By all accounts, these crashes happened due to bad weather or pilot error, and their timing is just a coincidence. But what on earth is going on here?

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10:57 PM
Hurricane Katrina: millions of stories

For every person who was in the area, who knew someone in the area, or who is stranded, there's a story. Most of these are just starting to emerge. Here's just one.

And then of course, there are the stories that will never be told. Far too many of them.

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