Lots of Interesting News

But no time to write much about them.

*The Bouchard-Taylor report is released. (You can get an abridged English version here.)From the Globe account, it seems they have taken a firm cosmotarian stance, reminiscent of Taylor's old antagonist, Pierre Elliott Trudeau. They are about to find out how Lord Durham would have felt if he had cared about French Canadian opinion.

*The always-dangerous concept of fiduciary obligations by corporate officers to bondholders has, as Malcolm X or the Reverend Wright would put it if they were corporate law nerds, come home to roost. The Quebec Court of Appeal stopped the takeover of BCE by the Ontario Teahcers Pension Plan, a $35 billion transaction. BCE is trying to get to the Supremes before June 30, which would be virtually unprecedented. (The only example I can think of where the red nine tried to move that fast was the misguided decision to give leave in the Tremblay-Daigle dispute over whether a biological father can prevent an abortion.)

*In Khadr, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that agents of the Canadian government operating in foreign parts are only exempt from the requirements of the Charter where they are acting in accordance with Canada's international law obligations. The SCC relied on Rasul and Hamdan to conclude that Guantanomo Bay was operated contrary to the Geneva Conventions at the relevant time. (Of course, the Bush administration was loud and proud in saying that the Geneva Conventions didn't apply.) This fits with my thinking that the SCOTUS's decision would inveitably embolden the judiciaries in other Western countries to help shut down the Bushian war on terror.

Update: I wonder if someone better informed about African-American culture than myself could explain what is so threatening about chickens.