Utopia, you are standing in it!

Today, the Supreme Court heard  the most important case on the intersection of religion and education to arise in decades–Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue. A few years back, Montana had passed its first school-choice program, a tax-credit scheme that allowed a small tax credit for donations to scholarship programs that helped kids afford private school.

As in any state, many of Montana’s private schools are religious. Right after the state legislature passed the tax-credit statute, the Montana Department of Revenue promulgated a rule that immediately gutted the program by forbidding students attending religious schools from receiving scholarship money.

The Department based its rule on Montana’s Constitution, which says the legislature can’t “make any direct or indirect appropriation or payment from any public fund or monies . . . for any sectarian purpose or to aid any church, school,” etc. Plenty of states have very similar “no-aid” clauses…

On the evening of January 21^st an infiltration took place on the border with the Gaza Strip.

“IDF soldiers opened fire at a group infiltrating the border fence along the Gaza-Israel border on Tuesday, hitting three Palestinian suspects who used the inclement weather to hide in a wooded area near Kibbutz Kissufim.

The IDF reported that one of the terrorists hurled a grenade or an explosive charge at a force that surrounded the three.”

As local media reported, the IDF released video evidence of the infiltrator throwing the explosive device.

To date the BBC has not produced any reporting on that incident but the next morning the BBC’s Jerusalem correspondent Tom Bateman did put out three related Tweets in which he found it appropriate to focus on the age of the armed border infiltrators and unnecessarily qualify the facts of the incident using the well-worn “Israel says” formula.

I almost never visit the My Modern Met site, but it must be good, as I often get suggestions from readers about articles there. I think I found this one on my own, but probably through Facebook. It’s the story of how an enterprising young photographer, Jon Carmichael, took a spectacular photo of a solar eclipse. Click on the screenshot to see the story.

The date was August 21, 2017, and you may remember that there was a total eclipse that day visible in much of the U.S. (I saw part of it, though it was overcast in Chicago). Carmichael decided to try to photograph the eclipse from in the air—on a commercial flight.

He chose a Southwest flight from Portland, Oregon to St. Louis, Missouri, which would put him in the path of the eclipse when he was in the air. But he neglected to buy the early…

The Good Friday Agreement (also known as the Belfast Agreement) is 20 years old today, but recent events in Northern Ireland have shown that power-sharing has proven a difficult exercise. Alan Whysall, who was involved in the negotiations that led to the Agreement as well as its implementation, examines what has gone wrong since the Agreement was signed. A second blog, to be published tomorrow, will discuss what can be done to get the Agreement back on track.

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, (‘the Agreement’),  but the system of power-sharing government it established in Northern Ireland has not functioned for over a year. It was widely seen in Britain, as elsewhere, as a significant act of statesmanship, supported by both main parties. But it now appears at risk, as the Irish border becomes a critical issue in the Brexit negotiations.

What has…

In 1973, the UK government organised the country’s first referendum, on the subject of whether or not Northern Ireland should remain part of the UK. Now, as Brexit and its potential consequences make another border poll look like an increasing possibility, David Torrance looks back on the poll, its background, and its later constitutional significance.

Introduction 

The first constitutional referendum in the history of the United Kingdom took place on 8 March 1973. It was held nearly four years after the beginning of ‘The Troubles’ – a sharp deterioration in the security and political situation in Northern Ireland. 

What became known as the ‘border poll’ (although it was also called a ‘referendum’ or ‘plebiscite’, no one could quite agree on terminology) emerged as a means by which to ‘take the border out of politics’, or so it was hoped. In discussions with the Government of Northern Ireland (NIG)…

UPDATE: Over at Pharnygula, P.Z. has his own take (negative) on Bering’s paper and the lax standards of evolutionary psychology.  P.Z. notes that the “adaptive” results of the handgrip study cited by Bering have not in fact been replicated by other investigators.   That calls the results into question, something that Bering conveniently omits from his piece.

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In the past week I’ve read two “pop” articles on evolutionary psychology.  One, “Social Animal,” in the latest New Yorker, is by New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks.  It’s apparently an extract from an eponymous upcoming book.  The piece is cleverly framed: it’s the account of a first date by two fictional people, “Harold” and “Erica,” in which all of their conversation, their gestures, and their subsequent courtship and marriage are couched in terms of evolutionary psychology, with Brooks describing the research backing up the story.  Here’s…

THE Simpsons and Medieval Tech | Climatism

“We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms.
That’s the only reason to build them.
They don’t make sense without the tax credit.
–– Warren Buffett

“Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work;
we need a fundamentally different approach.”
–– Top Google engineers

“Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels
in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole
is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.
– James Hansen
(The Godfather of AGW alarmism / former NASA climate chief)

***

H/t Guy Takamatsu

HAPPY Hump Day!

A little gem to help you through the rest of the working week, courtesy of our favourite politically incorrect family – The Simpsons.

WATCH (2 mins) …

•••

UNreliables related :

• GREEN JOBS : Helicopter De-Icing For Wind…

Introduction

On 19th January, after discussions within the Royal Family, it was announced that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will step back from royal duties, no longer receive public funds, or ‘formally represent the Queen’. Neither will they use their HRH titles, and more generally they will not be classed as ‘working members of the Royal Family’. Instead, the Sussexes will pursue a new life in Canada, outside the structure of the Royal Family, although they have committed to continue to ‘uphold the values of Her Majesty’.

Not all the details of this arrangement have been finalised ahead of its implementation in the Spring and given that Prince Harry is sixth in the line of succession it may appear that there are few, if any, constitutional implications. However, this blog addresses perhaps the one constitutional issue that the Sussexes decision raises – Prince Harry’s position as a Counsellor…

* 1793 – After being found guilty of treason by the French National Convention, Louis XVI of France is executed by guillotine.

Louis XVI (August 23, 1754 – January 21, 1793), born Louis-Auguste, was the last king of France and Navarre before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution.

Louis-Auguste de France, who was given the title Duc de Berry at birth, was born in the Palace of Versailles. One of seven children, he was the second surviving son of Louis, the Dauphin of France, and the grandson of Louis XV of France and Navarre and of his consort, Maria Leszczyńska. His mother was Marie-Josèphe of Saxony, the daughter of Prince-Elector Friedrich August II of Saxony, (also King Augustus III of Poland) and Maria Josepha of Austria.

In 1765, at the death of his father, Louis, Dauphin of France son and heir apparent of Louis XV, Louis-Auguste became…

The annual Demographia report on housing affordability across a range of English-speaking advanced countries was released earlier this week.

If you are a New Zealander who cares at all about efficiency, fairness (especially to the rising generation), functioning markets it makes pretty bleak reading.   The focus of the analysis is on the ratio of median house prices to median household income.   Here is ratio for the median urban market in each of the countries they look at

(They also look at the two city states Singapore  (which is in the middle of the pack) and Hong Kong (which is off the charts, see below).

And here is a chart focused just on fairly large cities (>1 million people).  I’ve shown the ten cities with the lowest price to income ratios, the ten with the highest ratios, and a selection (every ten or so rank places) of those in-between.

When PhDs Don’t Understand Westminster Parliamentarism

The debates in Westminster parliamentarism on the role of Crown-in-Parliament vs. the Crown-in-Council mostly result from legitimate differences of interpretation of Crown prerogative, such as between Dawson’s and Forsey’s respective schools of thought. Unfortunately, sometimes the debates result from factually incorrect assertions that even PhDs and tenured professors propagate, perhaps hoping that their credentials and their name will suffice in place of arguments or citations! Christian Nadeau, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Montreal, provides one such example.

Nadeau wrote “Constitutional Rule Bending: When Angry Citizens Push Back and Fight for Democracy” in the same issue of Canada Watch to which Peter Russell contributed the article featured in my previous blog entry. Essentially, Nadeau interprets the prorogations of 2008 and 2009 as evidence Harper’s desire to govern without the Crown-in-Parliament, and emblematic of a contempt for parliamentarism. Ironically, Nadeau shows contempt for Westminster…

The Radicalism of the “Stop Harper” Lobby and of the High-Tory Monarchists

Last year, Bridget DePape abused her position as a Senate Page and mounted a silent protest with her “Stop Harper” sign in the Senate chamber while the Governor General read the Speech from the Throne that opened the 1^st Session of the 41^st Parliament. DePape has since inspired a new virulent “Stop Harper” Lobby, which has adopted histrionic extra-Parliamentary tactics and anti-constitutional viewpoints on the role of the Governor General of Canada and Queen of Canada in our system of Responsible Government.

Much to my surprise and chagrin, I have also recently learned of the existence of what I can only describe as a small fringe element of High Tories in Canada, who have expressed objection to this entry on some social media because they maintain that the Sovereign in the United Kingdom and Governors General…