Same Thing Might Work For Senate Reform

A tough-on-crime Conservative senator said murderers should be provided with the tools to kill themselves in jail.

Abolition by attrition, as it were.

Will Their Base Allow Themselves To Be Played For Suckers Yet Again?

"The government is probably just as happy if its senate reform bills and the crime bills don't get through," he said. "It gives them the opportunity to use the elections to try out their platform for the support of their base."

After all, Harper's been playing the same game for five years now.

Who Said It?

It is painful for me to write that with this garrote of a blueprint, the government I generally support is flirting with moral and political catastrophe. My respect for the Prime Minister prevents me from being any more explicit here about the implications of failure to reconsider the government's course on this issue.

Hint: I'm leaning towards allowing him to keep his snowflake. And this...this is quite truly an interesting thought:

The whole concept of prison should be terminated, except for violent criminals and chronic non-violent recidivists, and replaced by closely supervised pro bono or subsistence-paid work by bonded convicts in the fields of their specialty. Swindlers and embezzlers, hackers and sleazy telemarketers are capable people and they should serve their sentences by contributing honest work to government-insured employers.