There’s a small army of researchers hard at work on public policy projects. But until now, most of their work has stayed hidden from the U.S. taxpayers who fund it.

Now that’s changing. Thanks to the work of Open CRS, the efforts of the U.S. Congressional Research Service – which might otherwise never make it outside of a Senator’s or Representative’s office – are seeing the light of day.

Read on…

If Live 8 has served no other purpose, it has spurred a fascinating dialogue about the role of culture in politics, the limits of charity-based political analysis, and just why it is that Bono is about ninety times smarter than the president of the most powerful nation on the planet.

I have little to add to that dialogue.

There has also been a certain amount of, let’s say, incredulity at the choice of Canadian venue — to which I can say, after spending a month under canvas at CFB Borden, Barrie is like frickin’ Paris. (This one. Not this one.) Besides, Barrie’s just a few more Ontario Municipal Board decisions away from being the last stop on the Yonge subway line.

That said: Am I the only one who hears the lineup of cities – “London! Philadelphia! Berlin! Rome! Paris! Tokyo! Barrie!” – and gets an instant image of Les Nessman?

As the battle over C-38 winds down in Canada, the fight for equal marriage is just starting to gather steam in France.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a Socialist member of the French National Assembly (and avid blogger), reports on the Paris gay pride march:

Read on…

If you’re even a little bit curious about how the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms can protect the equality of lesbians and gay men, I can’t encourage you strongly enough to go read this post on Section 15, the Charter’s equality provision.

Mark, who runs the Section 15 blog, sets it all out in plain language – including the meaning of that contentious phrase “in particular”. If you disagree with C-38, you’ll at least understand how court after court could have ruled the way they did.

And if you do agree with C-38, you’ll come away with all the arguments you need to leave that loudmouth brother-in-law reeling at your next family reunion.

Just checked. Defying predictions, our marriage certificate has failed to explode into a ball of flame and ash.

Of course, there’s still the Senate vote and Royal Assent yet to come.

Awesome: CBC News – Same-sex legislation passed

And here I was being all excited about iTunes supporting podcasts.

Update: Take a moment today to raise a glass to Rick and Steven. And to why this is so much more than a symbolic victory.

One more reason to love reading Declan:

I am not going to blog about today’s front page National Post story, “Canada ‘adrift’: CEOs. Political ‘vacuum’ threatens nation’s standard of living” -

- other than perhaps pointing out that when the article warns of “skyrocketing government spending — up 20% on a per-capita basis over the past five years”, and the CEO’s say, “The country’s fiscal base remains strong, but is threatened by runaway spending growth,”, a balanced approach might have contrasted this whining with the fact that CEO compensation increased by roughly 100% last year.

If this pace of increase was to be sustained for 5 years (and as the Globe article notes, “Compensation experts say the surge in total payouts is likely the beginning of a string of banner years for top executives”), this would compound to a 3100% gain over 5 years.

Actually, if they kept doubling every year, CEO salaries would quickly dwarf pretty much every other economic indicator. Soon the sheer mass of paper required to print the thousand-dollar bills needed to pay them would outweigh the planet itself; the Bank of Canada would probably have to switch our currency from the dollar to the atom in an attempt to buy time.

Even that wouldn’t work; the conceptual mass of their salaries would wind up triggering a gravitational event of such a magnitude that our solar system would collapse in on itself, creating an enormous black hole from which nothing could escape except regular news releases demanding deep tax cuts for the quasar industry.

Clearly, something must be done.

It could be a great summer for reading. Lots to choose from. Great new novels, fascinating biographies, insightful works of investigation…

…and then there’s the swill that Chapters/Indigo is featuring in the most prominent spot on its front page: the wildly misnamed The Truth About Hillary.

Read on…