Georgia governor signs strictest abortion bill in nation

[Bryan_Ekers]

I understand our cherry-picking industry is woefully inferior, too.

[SlackerInc]

That was good. Clever!

[Bryan_Ekers]

@SlackerInc

That was good. Clever!

It should not be taken as a concession of any of your picks, though, particularly freedom from religion which seems the only one that is relevant to the issue under discussion.

[SlackerInc]

@Bryan_Ekers

It should not be taken as a concession of any of your picks, though, particularly freedom from religion which seems the only one that is relevant to the issue under discussion.

Majority of Canadians support public funding for religious schools, study finds

As debate over religious schools continues in Canadian courts and legislatures, a new poll has found that 61 per cent of Canadians support full or partial public funding for faith-based schools.

That would drive me nuts if my tax dollars were being funneled to religious schools! :mad:

Wikipedia says:

The United Nations declared in 1999 that Ontario was in violation of the international covenant on civil and political rights by exclusively funding Catholic schools over other faith-based schools.[55] In 2007, an Ontario poll conducted by the Strategic Council showed that 71% of people were opposed to expanding faith based funding to non-Catholic religions.[56]

I also remember reading about an atheist in Canada who was not allowed to be a witness in court, although I can’t find anything about it via Google.

[Bryan_Ekers]

@SlackerInc

That would drive me nuts if my tax dollars were being funneled to religious schools! :mad:

And if you were Canadian, treatment of your mental illness would be covered by provincial health insurance.

I’m not going to chase you down this particular rabbit hole.

[OldGuy]

@k9bfriender

The benefit of the Parliamentary system over ours is that the minority party isn’t shut out of governing. Even with a majority coalition, they cannot make as sweeping changes as can be made when the Republicans manage a small majority of seats from a minority of votes.

I really don’t understand this at all. In the US you need to control the Presidency, House and Senate to be sure to pass a law. In Canada, if you have a majority in Parliament, you hold the Prime Ministership, too. The Senate must also approve bills, but they have very rarely not done so. So it would seem easier to shut out the minority party in Canada.

It is still possible for one party to hold a majority of seats in the Canadian Parliament while receiving a minority of votes nationwide by winning many seats by a small margin and losing others by a large margin.

[Bryan_Ekers]

@OldGuy

It is still possible for one party to hold a majority of seats in the Canadian Parliament while receiving a minority of votes nationwide by winning many seats by a small margin and losing others by a large margin.

Notably, though, the boundaries of the districts that elect those seats as well the rules for the elections themselves are under the control of an independent agency and not the elected officials themselves, hence gerrymandering and other shenanigans pose less of a temptation and problem.

Going to proportional or ranked-preferential voting might work slightly better, I guess.

[nelliebly]

@SlackerInc

I was going to make a similar point to HDs, except I have actually always believed (I remember first thinking about this in my early teens) that “there oughtta be a law” where men can register with the government as having a default preference that their sexual partners abort any pregnancy that might occur from a sexual liaison they participated in. This would be a public registry any woman could check. If a man is on this registry, he cannot be liable for child support unless he was married to, or cohabitated with, the woman who gave birth to the baby.

Sure, and if we’re going to do that, let’s have a registry for women so they can have a default preference of either having an abortion OR carrying a baby to term with the father contributing his fair share to either option. How many young men do you think will check this registry before a first date? Would he have to get some ID number from the woman, or would he just have to scroll through all the “Kelly Daniels” and hope he gets the right one? (“Your honor, I thought she was the Kelly Daniels who said she’d have an abortion.”) What if a woman doesn’t choose to register because she thinks it’s nobody’s damn business? How many guys would refuse to date Kelly Daniels because she wasn’t in the registry?

Of course, it’s all moot because the point is not whether the woman gets child support, it’s whether the child needs it. No registry is going to convince a judge a man doesn’t have to pay child support just because he signed onto a “not responsible” registry. It doesn’t, shouldn’t, and won’t work that way.

[SlackerInc]

Doesn’t and won’t, I agree. But I also believe the government should be providing sufficient resources for a low-income mother to raise her child rather than relying on 18 years of monthly payments from a guy she had a one night stand with.

ETA:

@Rick_Kitchen

The Slate is liberal? OK.

You don’t think it is? I assure you, as a Slate Plus member, that it is very liberal.