Confessions of a Shiftless Mind

May your children get sugared up and pass out early… and may the vandals find someone else’s house to egg…

What a stupid holiday. Unless you are a kid. Ohhh…. now I get it…

An eye-opening look at youth criminal justice in Canada - by a youth corrections officer.

Hat tip to Kitchener Conservative. You’ve done us all a service in publishing this piece.

UPDATE: A commenter asked who to contact on this issue. The Justice Minister’s contact info:

The Honourable Vic Toews
Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada
284 Wellington Street
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0H8
Toews.V@parl.gc.ca

You may want to contact the Liberal Justice Critic as well, seeing as how they are for the most part responsible for this joke of a justice system.
Sue Barnes
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6
Telephone: (613) 996-6674
Fax: (613) 996-6772
E-Mail: Barnes.S@parl.gc.ca

And the NDP Justice critic.
Joe Comartin
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6
Telephone: (613) 947-3445
Fax: (613) 947-3448
E-Mail: Comartin.J@parl.gc.ca

Why buckshot? Because I am all over the place today.

I received an email the other day on the Manning Centre’s upcoming conference in Vancouver on the Faith-Political Interface. I am seriously considering going.

This France thing - I don’t understand how ongoing political unrest of the magnitude that France has been experiencing for over a year now, is not making news in any meaningful way. Why is the media not looking seriously into the root causes of this? Why are ordinary Canadians pretty much completely unaware of this? Is Paris a 3rd World country that we can simply ignore unrest there?

This weekend was an emotional roller coaster. Some shocking news Thursday night, then on Friday night I watched a friend of mine completely lose it for no apparent reason. Kind of set the tone for the rest of the weekend. And it is going to keep me running with the aftermath the rest of this week.

Behind the scenes of the development of Peter Jackson’s epic “Lord of the Rings” trilogy of films, excerpted from a Peter Jackson Biography that is forthcoming I believe. They are part of my top 5 favorite films, and they had better be as the books are the BEST I have ever read and as far as I am concerned, never will be. (Hat tip to TheOneRing.net.)

That’s studio executives for you. Thankfully, Jackson and Walsh managed to evade committing to killing one of the Hobbits.

What happens when the bureaucracy threatens to end an entire generation of doctors?

Startling words from a doctor who would never wish his profession on his own children.

She has a heart for the suffering and she can do the science - but I’m scared of leading her into my world, pushing her even just a little, into the devouring vortex of medicine.

Truth.

Hat tip to Pursuing Holiness.

There is no “Christian Taliban” and there won’t be one. We are more secular now that at any other point in our history.

Amen to that.

The Relapsed Catholic discovered this nugget of perversion. A stripper pole designed for preteens to play with.

Wow is all I can say. Any other parents want to take a bullwhip to the toy designer of this little number for children?

Maybe those radical Imams are right. Western civilization may be beyond redemption. Then again, according to the article, the toy store has pulled it now.

Rory Leishman makes a very good point. I would address the reasons you must go to the blogosphere to read this widely published national columnist, but my care rests more with the subject of his writing - the overturning of public lewdness laws in Canada. I would quote the article, but frankly I would rather not read the subject of our court’s ruling again - out of regard for guarding my mind and keeping it for my wife’s body only.

One more case where Biblical prophecy comes to pass in our time.

For they mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of sinful human nature, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity - for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him. - 2 Peter 2:18,19

But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God - having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them. - 2 Timothy 1-5

It really makes me sad that women and men so disrespect themselves and each other that they would do things like that. I have to ask how wounded in your soul do you have to be to participate in such things, but worse, that those who would be entertained by it are so lost that they cannot muster up an ounce of compassion to help restore such people’s dignity, but instead simply focus on their own selfish pleasure.

So, Microsoft rolls out the first new version of Internet Explorer in what seems like a decade last week, and this week, Firefox is launching Firefox 2.

IE7 has actually had me using it on occasion instead of avoiding it like the plague, but Firefox has all my regular browsing and “default browser” status on all my PCs. Despite internet statistics indicating IE is still in the lead with 87% of browsing traffic, all I know is my blog sees a dead heat, with the last few weeks showing Firefox by a nose.

Long live Firefox!

Check it out. The Red Ensign yet flies, and the bloggers who support it are not silent.