Worth Reading - February 5, 2015

Does the Prime Minister have to appoint Senators? A British Columbia man is going to try to ask the Supreme Court. 

This week I had a "discussion" with a person on Twitter who suggested that pedestrians who are struck and killed by cars is a Darwinian purge of "entitled" people. Heaven forbid pedestrians exercise their right to, you know, exist. The... conversation was triggered by Martin Regg Cohn's article about pedestrian deaths. 

The American Constitution is both a brilliant document and severely flawed (to my point of view) in the 21st century. Justice Stevens has written a book about six amendments he'd like to see included to address some weaknesses including gerrymandering and campaign finance. 

I shed a tear for my hometown of Brampton whose governance woes seem to have no end in sight. It was recently revealed that the city has $215 million in debt and that public salaries are outstripping revenues. 

Many New Democrats are probably not happy with the direction of the federal party but I think the economic proposals Tom Mulcair (NDP - Outremont, QC) laid outin a recent speech are right on. 

Another Podcast from Canadaland, Jesse Brown speaks with Christopher Parsons on the Snowden files and the changes to CSE's (Canada's spy agency) power. 

This week there was a big push to restore the Long Form Census which is critical in the field of research and for providing everyone with a better sense of what the state of Canada is. Since it was a ridiculous commitment to the Conservative's fringe I imagine it'll be dismissed.

Read the New York Times piece about anti-vaccination people being insane. Try not to get angry. Try. P.S. TVO did great work this week talking about vaccines, link here.

I had hoped that people were wrong and that Premier Kathleen Wynne (OLP - Don Valley West) would help end the scandals of the McGuinty era.  Instead, it looks like the provincial Liberals tried to buy off their former candidate.

Also from Vice and Justin Ling, the new Anti-Terror Bill is posed to make our security agencies less accountable and more powerful, things every Canadian should be uncomfortable with.