(no subject)

[magedragonfire]

Harper's Conservative back-benchers are clamouring again to erode the rights of women.

Said backbencher is, clearly, an ignorant prick. Of course children should have - and do, if I recall correctly - human rights. Embryos are not children.

For once, the comments on the article there - or at least, the highest-rated ones - are not completely stupid. The very top-rated one even addresses how these male MPs should be keeping thier noses firmly out of it. I was kind of tickled to see that, even if the subject matter makes my blood boil.

Fuck this government, seriously.

Comments

[bastets-place.livejournal.com]

I have to wonder, though, how much real control Harper has over "back bench" people. The article suggests that he could easily prevent any such press conference/release from happening, if he wanted to. I know that Canada has a lot of pretty different laws from the US, but you still have SOMETHING like freedom of speech and press, right?

[magedragonfire.livejournal.com]

There is something kind of like it, yes - freedom of expression is covered in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It's not precisely the same, though. There are exceptions against a lot of things, not just slander and libel - hate speech, for example. The Westboro Baptist Church gets turned away at the border when they try to come up here to protest. :)

The thing with parliament is that most of the time, MPs are kept solidly in line with how the party moves and votes. Since Harper has said he doesn't want to re-open the abortion debate, theoretically his party's whip should be cracking down on actions that might look to oppose that by his members of parliament. (There's an article explaining about some of that particular process.)

[bastets-place.livejournal.com]

Well, if he has made such a firm stand, and someone in his own group is doing this, isn't this something that could trigger a change in government? I mean, I presume it would take more than one idiot, but it looks like "cohesion" is lost.

[magedragonfire.livejournal.com]

Doubtful. If there's one thing Harper doesn't want, it's losing grip of his beloved majority government.

Really, his stance isn't firm at all; he's just said he doesn't want to reopen the issue. No one who's not a die-hard Conservative believes him about it.