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Media top headlines January 18

In media news today, CNNs Paul Begala says Democrats dont have bad leaders, they have bad followers, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky admits to poor messaging on COVID guidance, and Spotify remains silent after Joe Rogan critics call for change to prevent COVID misinformation.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was marked with the usual moving remembrances of the civil rights champion, but some in the media used this year's holiday to push the Democrat-led voting legislation, which would result in an overhaul of elections.

The White House and congressional Democrats have been pursuing passage of two elections bills: The Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. But the votes aren't there to break a Senate filibuster, and its proponents both in politics and in the media used Monday to hawk the pair of bills.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is forcing votes on the election bills and a potential carveout of the filibuster this week. Moderate Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., have consistently opposed any efforts to end the filibuster that creates a 60-vote threshold to advance the bills, which all but kills any hope for the legislation.

Martin Luther King III, the eldest son of the late civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., his wife Arndrea Waters King and daughter Yolanda Renee King take part in a Peace Walk on the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge to urge Democrats to pass a law protecting voting rights during Martin Luther King Jr. Day, in Washington, U.S., January 17, 2022. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz (REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz)

Democratic leaders like Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., used their MLK speeches to press for the bills and accusing filibuster supporters of "dishonoring" his legacy. Her narrative was reiterated by the liberal media.

CNN's Victor Blackwell suggested Monday that Democrats should hold a vote on voting rights every six months.

"Should the party do this every six months?" Blackwell asked liberal commentator Bakari Sellers. Sellers said they should be doing it even more often: every 30 days.

(Original Caption) 11/3/1964-Atlanta, GA: Dr Martin Luther King Jr votes as his wife, Coretta Scott King, waits her turn. (Getty Images)

ALVEDA KING TELLS FOX NEWS DIGITAL HOW AMERICANS CAN BE MORE LIKE MLK JR. IN 2022

"The View" spent several minutes linking the holiday to the voting legislation. Co-host Whoopi Goldberg was especially fired up about the bills, accusing Republicans of trying to "block" her and many other American citizens from voting.

"We fought you before many times, and we'll fight you again," Goldberg said. "Because we are America. And we are not putting up with this."

"And that's what I think of when I think of MLK," she later added.

Co-host Ana Navarro also propped up the legislation, asking guest Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., what he thought the civil rights icon would make of the stalled effort.

"King lived and died for this cause," Navarro said. "He's someone who preached the fierce urgency of nowWhat would Dr. King make of the fact that we're still fighting for voting rights all these decades later? And arguably, some would say, going backwards."

"It's disheartening and I have to be honest, I'm saddened by where we are right now," Warnock said. He added that "fear and bigotry" were thwarting Democrats' efforts and that the GOP was placing "power and politics over a commitment to democracy."

Demonstrators hold signs during a march for voting rights, marking the 58th anniversary of the March on Washington, Saturday, Aug. 28, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana) (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

"This Monday is MLK Day. Let's honor Dr. King's legacy and get voting rights done now," Warnock also tweeted last week.

BLACK ACTIVISTS SAY CRT HURTS MARTIN LUTHER KING'S LEGACY

One chyron on MSNBC's "The ReidOut" Monday read, "Voting Rights Under Assault On MLK Jr. Day," as Bernice King, daughter of MLK, Jr., told host Joy Reid, "I think it's time for there to be massive civil disobedience and massive noncooperation with evil."

Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel urged his followers to contact their senators to pass the bills as a way to "honor" Dr. King's legacy.

When President Biden's signature Build Back Better bill failed in Congress, Vice President Kamala Harris immediately pivoted to voting, telling CBS' Margaret Brennan that if they didn't pass the legislation, the U.S. would be "off the map as a role model."

"We have been a role model saying, 'You can see this and aspire to this and reject autocracies and autocratic leadership,'" Harris said. "Right now, we're about to take ourselves off the map as a role modelif we let people destroy one of the most important pillars of a democracy, which is free and fair elections."

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Harris also hawked the voting rights bills during her MLK address on Monday, saying Democrats were fighting against an "assault on voting" in their efforts to pass the legislation.

"The United States Senate has the opportunity and, I daresay, the responsibility to pass these bills through Congress, so the president can sign them,"she said. "And the resistance to doing that will not deter us from our commitment to getting it done."

Read more:

Liberal media use Martin Luther King Jr. day to push election legislation, claim 'voting rights under assault' - Fox News

The Liberals' 2021 election platform did not include a timeline for eliminating the deficit, nor did Finance Minister Chrystia Freelands December fiscal update.GEOFF ROBINS/AFP/Getty Images

Federal government spending on outsourcing contracts has increased by more than 40 per cent since the Liberals took power, a trend at odds with the partys 2015 campaign promise to cut back on the use of consultants.

A Globe and Mail analysis of federal records shows Ottawa spent $11.8-billion in the 2020-21 fiscal year on contracts. That represents a 41.8-per-cent increase from the $8.4-billion spent in the 2015-16 fiscal year, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus Liberal government was first elected.

Ottawa turns to consulting firm McKinsey to fix Phoenix pay system, doubling spending

The Globes analysis examined the latest available data in the governments public accounts related to spending on outside contracts in the category of professional and special services.

This category includes things such as management consulting services, legal services, IT services, temporary help and security guards.

The growth in outsourcing has not coincided with a smaller public service. The number of federal government workers increased from 257,034 to 319,601 between 2015 and 2021, a 24 per cent rise.

Queens University economist Don Drummond, who has held senior federal government roles and who once led a spending review for the Ontario government, said outsourcing can be effective and efficient when it involves bringing in specialized expertise that isnt available in the civil service.

However, it is concerning that both contract and bureaucracy costs have risen sharply, he said. To a degree, this might be related to the extraordinary increase in federal government activities flowing from COVID. But the situation calls for careful analysis that more and more inputs are not being thrown into producing about the same service. That would indicate a deterioration in effectiveness and efficiency.

The 2015 Liberal platform pledged to free up $3-billion a year through a spending review, which it said would include reducing the use of external consultants.

The increased spending on contracts continues a trend identified in a January, 2020, report by the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), a union that primarily represents scientists and professionals in the federal public service. That report focused more narrowly on service contracts in the areas of management consulting, temporary help and IT consultants.

The report notes that spending on IT consultants and management consultants more than doubled between 2011 and 2018.

Rather than Public Accounts data, the PIPSC analysis was based on the governments disclosure of federal contracts, which is subject to frequent revisions as the terms of contracts are posted and adjusted. The union told The Globe its approach allowed for a more targeted look at the outsourcing of personnel spending, given that the Public Accounts data can include other costs, such as fees for software.

The unions report points to the problem-plagued Phoenix pay system as an example of outsourcing gone wrong.

Phoenix was designed under the previous Conservative government through an outsourcing arrangement with IBM. The Liberal government launched the system in 2016. Phoenix has since caused frequent errors that have left workers unpaid, underpaid or overpaid, resulting in widespread disruptions and distress throughout the public service.

The Globe reported in December that the government has paid $560-million in damages so far to public servants as a result of the Phoenix problems. The cost of compensation is approaching twice the $309-million spent by the federal government between 2009 and 2016 to develop the system, which was supposed to generate long-term savings.

The PIPSC analysis highlighted a common practice in which the government initially awards a contract to a company at a relatively low cost following a public competition. Then the value of the contract is increased substantially through amendments. The PIPSC analysis found that IT contracts generally end up costing more than twice what the government originally expected.

In an interview, PIPSC president Jennifer Carr said the growth in outsourcing is creating a shadow public service that works alongside public servants, but is not subject to the same rules in areas like language requirements, employment equity and diversity.

Ms. Carr said outsourcing should focus on short-term needs and allow for the long-term work to be handled by the public service, but she said that often does not happen.

Its not in the best interests of the contractor to give any of that information up to the public service, because basically they would be consulting themselves out of their own job, she said.

Because these contracts are reopened multiple times They wind up ballooning from small amounts to almost triple or quadruple the cost, and its really hard to track the final value of the real cost of the contract because of the reopening.

Isabella Brisson, a spokesperson for Treasury Board president Mona Fortier, defended Ottawas outsourcing approach.

The procurement of professional services is needed to acquire special expertise, and to meet unexpected fluctuations in workload, she said in a statement. Shortages in certain employment groups and specific geographic locations make the use of external professional services necessary to maintain operations. For example, nurses are hired through this mechanism to deliver temporary health care in Northern Canada.

The statement also noted that departments are required to exercise due diligence and effective stewardship of public funds and that all contracts must be issued in accordance with Treasury Board rules.

From a government-wide perspective, the Liberals had been falling behind their own deficit-reduction projections prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The deficit then grew dramatically as the pandemic led to reduced tax revenue, and to increased emergency spending to support Canadian workers and businesses.

The 2015 Liberal platform promised that the party would run three years of deficits of no more than $10-billion before balancing the governments books in 2019-20.

Instead, the Liberal government posted deficits of $19-billion in 2016-17, $19-billion in 2017-18, $14-billion in 2018-19, $39.3-billion in 2019-20 and $327.7-billion in 2020-21.

The Liberal Partys 2021 election platform did not include a timeline for eliminating the deficit, nor did Finance Minister Chrystia Freelands December fiscal update. That update did estimate the size of the deficit would decline to $13.1-billion by 2026-27, though those bottom-line projections do not take into account the billions in new spending promised in the 2021 platform. Updates on that spending are expected in Ms. Freelands 2022 budget.

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Read more from the original source:

Liberals spend billions more on outsourced contracts since taking power - The Globe and Mail

If politics ever seems a bit extreme online, its not just you.

Social media is skewed to the furthest ends of the political spectrum, according to new Pew Research Center polling, with the most conservative and liberal users more likely to post about politics online than moderates.

Pew classified U.S. adults into nine political typologies and found that Americans on the furthest ends of their spectrum, the Progressive Left and Faith and Flag Conservatives, were the most likely to show support for a political campaign or candidate on social media. Those more in the middle the Stressed Sideliners, Ambivalent Right and Outsider Left were less likely to do so.

The findings matched other Pew polling showing those on the ends are more likely to have voted, donated to a candidate or political group or attend a campaign event in 2020. These are the true believers.

Add these politically active users posts to a newsfeed powered by engagement metrics and algorithms, and you have a recipe for social media that over-indexes the fringes. Meanwhile, those in the middle dont post about politics as much.

Americas center doesnt fit neatly into the current party system. Stressed Sideliners are defined by their mix of conservative and liberal views and low political engagement. The largest group in the Democratic Party is Democratic Mainstays who lean to the center on some issues, while the Outsider Left is very liberal and frustrated with the Democratic Party. The Ambivalent Right is the youngest and least conservative Republican group, and theyre also post-Trump, with most preferring former President Donald Trump not continue as a major political figure.

These groups sound as if theyre experiencing a degree of political homelessness, just dont expect them to share a status update about it. Pew found that those with moderate views were more likely to feel reluctant to post about politics on social media.

The truth is that most people simply dont share political content online. Seventy percent of Americans say they post about political or social issues rarely or never.

There are a lot reasons people dont talk about politics online. Some respondents told Pew they dont pay close attention or dont have anything to add. Others are worried theyll offend others or be attacked for their views. A third of those who rarely or never post about politics said they dont want the things they share used against them.

Social media is home to Americans most partisan and politically engaged, and its impossible to understand political culture today without acknowledging the role it plays. Still, its also not the full story. If you ever log on and feel as though your political beliefs arent shared, just know everyone who shares them is probably just lurking.

The true silent majority is the people who arent posting.

See more here:

Are Twitter and Facebook liberal or conservative? - Deseret News

Thursdays meeting could endorse Mr Judah, who was the Liberal candidate for Bentleigh at the 2018 state election, overturn the result and order a fresh preselection, or wait for further information.

Last week upper house Liberal leader David Davis, representing Opposition Leader Matthew Guy, and Sarah Henderson, representing federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, spoke in favour of the status quo.

State party president Robert Clark recommended that the partys constitutional committee examine the vote.

If the committee members loyal to Mr Clark decide the electoral irregularities are too great, then the preselection would be overturned by a vote of 10-9.

Party state secretary Sam McQuestin is yet to give a recommendation to the committee.

Over the summer the party secretariat, who have been installing a new membership database, took to calling members in an attempt to ascertain their eligibility, which is determined by residence of an electorate, length of party membership and payment of membership dues.

In October the independent Electoral Boundaries Commission created the new seats of Ashwood, taking in Burwood and Box Hill, and Glen Waverley after scrapping the eastern seats Burwood (held by Labor), Ferntree Gully (Liberal), Forest Hill (Liberal) and Mount Waverley (Labor).

Analysts say the new seat is nominally held by Labor on a margin of 2.1 per cent. Burwood was held by Labor on 3.3 per cent.

The Liberal Party, which replaced Michael OBrien with former leader Matthew Guy in a September coup, must win back lost eastern suburbs seats, such as Ringwood, to have a chance of winning the state election in November. The Coalition has 28 fewer seats than Labor, and is behind in the polls.

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The Victorian branch has been mired in factional infighting for years. The controversial preselected candidate for Ringwood, Cynthia Watson, was overwhelmingly formally endorsed by the administration committee last week.

Moderate faction members had wanted to dump the former mayor of Boroondara, a Mormon, because of her conservative and religious views.

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Excerpt from:

Liberals in a lather over preselection irregularities for newly minted seat - The Age

Illustration by Min Gyo Chung

The decades-old liberal consensus on the Supreme Court was about to shatter, in a case far from the headlines.

On the surface, Quebec v. 9147-0732 Qubec Inc. raised a simple question: Could a company claim the same protection against cruel and unusual punishment that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms ensured for individuals?

The company was facing a mandatory minimum fine of $30,000 for doing unlicensed construction work. The court had already struck down certain punishments against individuals. Why not do the same for fines involving businesses? All nine judges in this case rejected that notion, saying that the protection against cruel treatment exists to protect human dignity, not companies.

Normally, that would have ended debate; yet even as they agreed 9-0 on the matter at hand, they split 5-3 on a far more consequential issue: how to interpret any and all rights in the Charter. (One judge stayed out of this debate.)

The liberals on the court argued that the purposes of Charter rights are what matter most. They are to be discerned not merely from the words of the Charter but by examining how rights such as equality or freedom of expression have played out around the world for instance, in the rulings of other countries courts. That open-ended approach can lead to broad protection of rights and interpretations that change with the times.

The conservatives argued that the text of the Charter has a kind of exalted position a primordial significance, they called it, setting out a more restricted approach they say is less likely to be shaped by the judges own policy preferences.

The November, 2020, dispute echoed one that has obsessed the United States Supreme Court for years. In that country, the debate is between the originalists who believe constitutional rights were frozen in time according to the intent of the founders, and liberals who believe the understanding of rights shifts with the times.

Suddenly the first 40 years of the Charter were up for grabs.

The Charter, which took effect on April 17, 1982, is Canadas constitutional bill of rights, the supreme law that gave individuals the right to challenge any government action that limits basic freedoms. And it gave judges the power to declare these laws invalid.

From the beginning, the Supreme Court said Charter rights deserve a large and liberal interpretation, and the judges used their new powers to change the country, striking down laws that criminalized abortion and medical assistance in dying, and paving the way for gay marriage.

Judges read the Supreme Court's decision on the federal government's constitutional package in 1981, during the buildup to the patriation of the Constitution.Fred Chartrand/The Canadian Press

Now the courts liberal approach to rights itself was in question.

The conservative viewpoint won out: The words of the Charter have primacy. The Constitution is not an empty vessel to be filled with whatever meaning we might wish from time to time, a majority of five judges wrote, a slap not only at the dissenters but seemingly at the court itself for much of its post-1982 history. The implication was that the court had been making up the Charters meaning as it went along.

The dissenters fired back that everything that had made the Supreme Court an international leader on rights was now at risk. Reading the Charter too literally would effectively kill it, they said, quoting a U.S. law professor who warned not to read the provisions of the Constitution like a last will and testament lest it become one.

The case with the unmemorizable name was a tipping point. The Supreme Court was now setting in place a foundation for a narrower interpretation of Charter rights, and a smaller role for the judiciary in applying them.

That was not all. For the first time, the Supreme Court had split almost entirely by party of appointment just like its U.S. counterpart.

Judges chosen by Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper were on one side, and judges named by Liberal prime ministers on the other, with a lone exception on each side.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Richard Wagner, shown on screen, introduces Justice Mahmud Jamal at a 2021 ceremony.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

Ever since that case, the divisions have hardened and the debates have become more rancorous. Seven rulings over the past two years have split the nine-member bench largely by party of appointment. The Harper-appointed judges have won five of them.

A new era has begun at the Supreme Court, driven by new faces, new alliances and new leadership.

The courts previous chief justice, Beverley McLachlin, a fearless champion of rights who was widely acknowledged as an exceptional consensus builder, retired in 2017. Rosalie Abella, the courts most outspoken liberal, left in July. Three judges now hitting their stride including Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus first appointee, Justice Malcolm Rowe are taking repeated aim at the courts long-standing liberal consensus. Presiding over this shifting landscape is Chief Justice Richard Wagner, who tends to be more deferential to government than his predecessor, and less likely to seek consensus on rulings.

The stakes are high. Quebecs Bill 21, banning teachers from wearing religious dress such as hijabs, could be on the docket this year or next. This winter, the court will hear cases on major Harper-era crime laws that allowed for 100-year-plus parole waiting periods for mass killers, and established a four-year mandatory minimum for armed robbery.

The court will be asked whether Indigenous offenders have a special claim to being able to serve their sentences at home for major crimes such as drug smuggling. All manner of new cases are coming on climate change, Indigenous rights, and the rights of women, disabled people and racialized minorities.

The numbered-company case marked a rightward turn. Benjamin Berger, a professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, sees the conservative majority ruling as pivotal. We actually have a different approach to interpreting the Charter after this.

Which side do the justices choose?

Percentage in favour of government or claimant

(All current except Justice Abella)

Note: Numbers don't add up to 100% because some judges sat

on cases but didn't vote

the globe and mail, Source: Globe analysis

of charter cases in the last ten years

Which side do the justices choose?

Percentage in favour of government or claimant

(All current except Justice Abella)

Note: Numbers don't add up to 100% because some judges sat

on cases but didn't vote

the globe and mail, Source: Globe analysis

of charter cases in the last ten years

Which side do the justices choose?

Percentage in favour of government or claimant

(All current except Justice Abella)

Note: Numbers don't add up to 100% because some judges sat on cases but didn't vote

the globe and mail, Source: Globe analysis of charter cases in the last ten years

From the Charters earliest rulings, Chief Justice Brian Dickson laid out an expansive path: Rights were to be applied liberally and generously, not legalistically.

Once enacted, he wrote of the Charter in a 1984 case, its provisions cannot easily be repealed or amended. It must, therefore, be capable of growth and development over time to meet new social, political and historical realities often unimagined by its framers.

Human rights and the power of judges grew steadily afterward, through the Supreme Court appointments of five prime ministers, up to and including Mr. Harper, and then into the early years of a sixth, Mr. Trudeau.

Those were tumultuous decades of change marked by groundbreaking Charter rulings. The federal Lords Day Act, which attempted to compel Christian religious observance by making it a crime to open a store on a Sunday, was struck down (1985); the criminal law on abortion fell (1988); gay rights were read into the Charter (1995); criminal suspects could no longer be extradited to face the death penalty (2001); federal prisoners were restored the right to vote (2002); and medical assistance in dying became lawful (2015).

On seemingly the most divisive of issues, the court was unanimous.

In 2011, when the Harper government tried to close a Vancouver clinic where illegal drug users shot up in the presence of nurses, the court ruled 9-0 it could not do so, because the closing would endanger lives.

In 2013, the court struck down three prostitution laws, 9-0, as endangering sex workers. In 2015, the court was unanimous when it legalized assisted dying.

Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin is sworn into office in 2000.Tom Hanson/The Canadian Press

Yet even that list only hints at the extent of the rights-enhancing, judicial-authority-enlarging consensus of the final years of chief justice Beverley McLachlins tenure.

Harper-era crime laws fell repeatedly. The court even declared a constitutional right to strike, in a 5-2 ruling that reversed a 32-year-old precedent. In 2014, the court went so far as to constitutionalize itself declaring that no government could alter its composition or eligibility requirements without the unanimous agreement of Ottawa and the provinces. It was another unanimous ruling.

Even when there were dissenters, the court did not split by party of appointment; the judges were not partisan, in the sense of favouring legislation from the government that chose them. (And they still arent; of the seven cases that divided the court, most did not involve federal legislation at all.) Chief Justice McLachlin tirelessly promoted internal discussion to minimize disagreement and achieve consensus, Jamie Cameron, a professor emerita at Osgoode Hall, says.

Late in Chief Justice McLachlins tenure, though, three judges joined the court who would soon begin an assault on the consensus. Chief Justice Wagner, who replaced her, would say publicly that dissent is normal in an open society, and that he would worry if the court were always unanimous.

The consensus would break apart.

Richard Wagner, right, delivers the speech at his 2012 welcoming ceremony to the court as Beverley McLachlin, fourth from right, looks on. As chief justices, the two have taken different approaches to forming consensus among judges.Blair Gable/Reuters

In the cases that split by party of appointment, three Liberal appointees have typically voted on the left: Justice Abella (prime minister Paul Martins 2004 pick, and now retired), and the former law deans Justice Sheilah Martin (Trudeau, 2017), and, somewhat less reliably, Justice Nicholas Kasirer (Trudeau, 2019). Justice Andromache Karakatsanis, a Harper appointee (2011), also votes consistently in the liberal camp.

Justice Mahmud Jamal, a Trudeau appointee, has now replaced Justice Abella. He is a wild card on one hand, a former business lawyer who espoused judicial humility in his application form, a term that judicial conservatives in Canada use as a synonym for restraint; on the other hand, hes an activist who took on pro bono Charter cases in many social causes.

Whether the liberal wing will be as bold with him as Justice Abellas replacement is an open question. Underscoring her leadership, she was the author (or in one case, the co-author) of the dissents in all five split cases in which the liberal viewpoint lost.

In the middle, swinging left or right, depending on the issue: Justice Michael Moldaver, a Harper appointee from 2011, and Chief Justice Wagner, whom Mr. Harper chose in 2012, and whom Mr. Trudeau named chief when Ms. McLachlin retired; after 17 years of an anglophone at the helm, it was a francophones turn to be leader. Both Chief Justice Wagner and Justice Moldaver have a tough-on-crime tinge, and are liberal on womens rights. Justice Moldaver reaches mandatory retirement age on Dec. 23.

Justices Suzanne Ct and Russell Brown.Philippe Landreville and Andrew Balfour/Supreme Court of Canada

Stephen Harper, who stood well outside of the liberal consensus (he once accused the court of acting unconstitutionally by reading gay rights into the Charter), appointed two of the three consensus-busting judges: Justice Suzanne Ct (2014, but too late to hear the big cases such as assisted dying), and Justice Russell Brown (2015).

Justice Brown was an obvious outlier when Mr. Harper appointed him from the Alberta Court of Appeal in 2015. An acerbic blog hed published years earlier, when he was a law professor at the University of Alberta, made that clear. He described himself as a conservative libertarian, took shots at Justin Trudeau, then in opposition (unspeakably awful) and even launched a fusillade at then-chief justice McLachlin, wondering whether she had an anti-Conservative bias. A rugby player, he seemed to enjoy knocking heads.

Justice Ct has been an outlier par excellence. In her first three years, she became the most frequent dissenter in the courts post-1982 history, breaking from the majority in 32 per cent of cases, according to research by University of Ottawa law professor Vanessa MacDonnell. The 10 judges who sat alongside Justice Ct in those three years dissented on average in just 8 per cent of cases.

The first woman appointed to the Supreme Court directly from practice, she had been known as a ferocious litigator the description is from Montreal lawyer Doug Mitchell when she was representing Big Tobacco, among other clients. She brought a litigators go-it-alone spirit to the court.

The third consensus-buster is Justice Malcolm Rowe the first appointee from Mr. Trudeau. Mr. Rowe, appointed in 2016, would become Mr. Trudeaus gift to the conservatives on the court, augmenting Stephen Harpers legacy, much as Justice Karakatsanis proved to be Mr. Harpers present to the liberals.

The avowedly pro-Charter Mr. Trudeau, whose father Pierre was the visionary who launched the constitutional bill of rights, had initially announced that he was seeking to increase gender and racial diversity with his first appointment and would do a nationwide search. He was pushed, however, to respect a convention that required the next judge to come from Atlantic Canada. Justice Rowe, though a white male, did bring diversity: he was the first appointee from Newfoundland and Labrador.

In Canadian terms, he is a judicial conservative. Not a social conservative and not remotely tough on crime. But a firm believer in judicial restraint the idea that judges should not make rulings based on their policy preferences. That makes them more like legislators than judges, in this view.

We should stay in our lane, he told the Runnymede Society, a Canadian group that aims to shake up what it sees as liberal uniformity on the bench and in law schools.

He has lived up to those words. Of all the judges with whom he has sat on the Supreme Court, he has sided most often with government in Charter cases, and least often with the individual claiming a Charter violation, research by The Globe and Mail found. An outlier, he almost never writes for the majority in Charter rulings that are not unanimous not even a handful in five years.

In Canada, judicial conservatism is associated with deference to Parliament, a limiting of the judicial role, a respect for the separation of powers. Justice Rowe says he endorses the liberal idea of the living-tree approach the idea that the Charters interpretation can change with the times and is capable of growth and expansion within natural limits but only to a point. Sometimes people leave off the part about the natural limits, he said in a keynote address to Runnymede last spring. (The Globe attended the groups virtual conference.)

Like the other two consensus-busters, he is a disruptor. He can be irascible or sarcastic in the courtroom when he feels lawyers are pushing the judges beyond where they should go. In the fall he stunned lawyer David Butt, who was pressing for greater participation in the legal process for sexual-assault complainants, by saying that his approach reminded him of Chairman Maos Great Leap Forward.

The self-made Justice Rowe, whose father had a Grade 6 education, has a deep background in government. Before he was an appeal-court judge in Newfoundland and Labrador, he was the head of his provinces civil service, and before that an adviser to Progressive Conservative justice minister John Crosbie in Ottawa.

With remarkable candour, he explained the conservative revolt against the continual expansion of rights and the judicial role. Were being pushed, pushed, pushed, more and more and more, to take on this larger role, he said at Runnymede, expressing frustration with an environmental group that wanted the court to compel governments to take action on climate change. Discretion cant be free flowing. It cant be absolute discretion. To be properly legally exercised it must be exercised in accordance with principles or a framework. Thats sort of going out of vogue.

Lawyers, he said, are so limited in their understanding that they are blissfully unaware of their own ignorance. He added: To have courts, judges, reformulate policy, redesign programs, direct public finance is about as sensible as asking me to fly an airplane or perform brain surgery.

Justice Malcolm Rowe.Andrew Balfour/Supreme Court of Canada

Alone or in combination, Justice Rowe, Justice Brown and Justice Ct have pushed to constrain rights and the judges role. Consider the right to a French-language education for francophones outside Quebec. When the court defined that right to mean the same high-quality schooling as the majority, even if that means comparing rural French-language schools to English schools in populous areas, Justice Brown and Justice Rowe dissented in a 7-2 ruling in 2020.

How about the criminal-justice systems treatment of impoverished offenders? The court ruled 7-2 in 2019 that a Harper-era mandatory surcharge forcing all offenders to pay for victim services was cruel and unusual punishment of the poor, and therefore illegal. Justice Rowe and Justice Ct dissented.

When the court voted 5-2 to restore the right to vote in federal elections, for Canadians who have been outside the country for more than five years, Justice Brown and Justice Ct dissented in the 2019 case.

Womens rights? The court ruled 6-3 in 2018 that a Quebec pay-equity law that did not allow for retroactive payments was illegal discrimination against women. This time all three dissented. Gay rights versus religious freedom? The court rejected a proposed Christian law school 7-2 over its requirement that gay married students renounce sexual activity; Justice Brown and Justice Ct dissented in the 2018 ruling. Climate change? Last year, the court ruled 6-3 that the federal government could impose a carbon tax on the provinces; the trio dissented.

International human rights? When the court ruled 5-4 in 2020 that African workers had a right to sue a Canadian company in Canada, over allegations of torture, the trio dissented, joined by Justice Moldaver. Chief Justice Wagner swung the vote to the liberals.

The three as a unit differ from the rest of the court in that they take a much more cautious and gradual approach to developing the law, Thomas Slade, a lawyer at an Ottawa firm specializing in the Supreme Court, said. They will sooner look to existing legal principles than to try to create new ones. If they were contractors, theyd be renovating an old house rather than building a new one.

Justice Rosalie Abella.Chris Helgren/Reuters

The sometimes-harsh tenor of debate illuminated how divided the court has become.

A 6-3 ruling by Justice Abella that found the RCMP discriminated against women was corrosive of the rule of law, Justice Brown and Justice Rowe wrote in a joint dissent in 2020. (Justice Ct wrote a separate dissent.) Justice Abella called their dissent formalistic, mechanistic, sterile, stuck in the pre-Charter era and merely a repeat of their dissent from the Quebec pay-equity case.

University of Calgary law professor Howie Kislowicz says he is seeing pretty fiery rhetoric for the Supreme Court of Canada. For a reader of the Supreme Court of the United States it still seems pretty tame, but it seems to be moving in that direction. That I find notable, maybe even a little troubling. It can end up highlighting the personalities in conflict, which I dont think is healthy for the law.

The efforts of the consensus-disrupting trio have called into question some of the courts long-held premises. Their dissents have ensured that certain legal issues havent been laid to rest, Mr. Slade says. Unanimous judgments are like throwing cold water on the fire. Dissents, on the other hand, keep the embers burning, making it easier for those legal issues to take life again.

The stage was set for Quebec v. 9147-0732 Qubec, and the battles to come.

Illustration by Min Gyo Chung

Not surprisingly, Justice Rowe and Justice Brown spoke for the conservative majority in the numbered-company case. Their decision, in its central thrust and disdainful tone, sounded like a cross between Justice Rowes address to Runnymede and Justice Browns old blog.

Consistency and coherence matter, they said; the dissent from the liberal judges had added to the confusion around the courts use of international law and rulings from other countries. They offered a new, more restrictive framework for using these non-Canadian sources. Regarding the warning not to make the Charter a last will and testament, they said it was a felicitous line but it didnt diminish the texts primordial significance. They stressed that their position was in keeping with how Chief Justice Dickson wanted things to be. (Justice Rowe called himself an orthodox Dicksonian at Runnymede.)

Three dissenters, led by Justice Abella, called the majoritys approach insular, a major insult for a national court. (The remaining judge, Justice Kasirer, chose not to join either side.) Like the majority, they cited Chief Justice Dickson for support. But they said giving the text primacy could limit the scope of the rights being protected.

Overemphasizing the plain text of Charter rights creates a risk that, over time, those rights will cease to represent the fundamental values of Canadian society and the purposes they were meant to uphold, Justice Abella wrote.

Conservative academics such as Dwight Newman at the University of Saskatchewan say the liberal emphasis on the purpose of rights known as the purposive approach has led to a free-floating exercise. Once you say youre engaged in a purposive approach and you cite principles like the living-tree principle enough, then it becomes an invitation to engage in revision of the law, based on personal preferences, he said.

But to liberal critics, the majority ruling had turned away from the courts long-held belief in the importance of international law, and influential rulings from other leading judicial bodies such as the European Court of Human Rights. I fear that in the Quebec case were cutting ourselves off from that, Sujit Choudhry, a constitutional lawyer who practises globally and in Canada, says. He called the European court the worlds most important human-rights court.

The conflict on the Canadian Supreme Court was over entirely different visions of what judges in a constitutional democracy do a conflict that continues to play out.

Toronto Mayor John Tory embraces Councillor Gord Perks at a 2018 oath ceremony after an election where city council was greatly reduced by order of the province of Ontario.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail

The question in Toronto Council v. Ontario in October was whether unwritten constitutional principles the implicit values of the Charter could be used to strike down a law, even when no explicit right was violated. It was a variation on the argument about the primordial significance of the text.

See the original post:

Canada's Supreme Court is off-balance as 'large and liberal' consensus on the Charter falls apart - The Globe and Mail

An MP has quit Boris Johnson's Conservative Party to defect to the opposition, calling the British prime minister's behaviour "disgraceful" as he faces a growing rebellion from in his own ranks against his premiership. Christian Wakeford, who represents the Bury South constituency in northern England, said Johnson's policies were doing nothing to help the people he represents and that he was joining the opposition Labour Party. "My decision is about much more than your leadership and the disgraceful way you have conducted yourself in recent weeks," Wakeford said, a reference to a growing scandal over reports of parties being held at Downing Street during COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020. "I can no longer support a government that has shown itself consistently out of touch with the hard working people of Bury South and the country as a whole," Wakeford added. Wakeford said the country needs a government that "upholds the highest standards of integrity and probity" but told Johnson "both you and the Conservative Party as a whole have shown themselves incapable of offering the leadership and government this country deserves". Australian Associated Press

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January 19 2022 - 11:22PM

An MP has quit Boris Johnson's Conservative Party to defect to the opposition, calling the British prime minister's behaviour "disgraceful" as he faces a growing rebellion from in his own ranks against his premiership.

Christian Wakeford, who represents the Bury South constituency in northern England, said Johnson's policies were doing nothing to help the people he represents and that he was joining the opposition Labour Party.

"My decision is about much more than your leadership and the disgraceful way you have conducted yourself in recent weeks," Wakeford said, a reference to a growing scandal over reports of parties being held at Downing Street during COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020.

"I can no longer support a government that has shown itself consistently out of touch with the hard working people of Bury South and the country as a whole," Wakeford added.

Wakeford said the country needs a government that "upholds the highest standards of integrity and probity" but told Johnson "both you and the Conservative Party as a whole have shown themselves incapable of offering the leadership and government this country deserves".

Australian Associated Press

Read more here:

Lawmaker defects to opposition in UK - Daily Liberal

community,

It can be hard work trying to get your first casual or part-time job and confusing to work out what career path to take. Join us at Dubbo Library for a 'Get Work Ready' session with the Joblink Plus Youth Team. Aimed at young people aged 13-18 years who are looking to enter the workforce, this session will help you find your ideal career with the Joblink Plus career quiz, create your resume, learn skills to help you find a job that's right for you, and enjoy free pizza! READ ALSO: Nominations open for 2022 Local Women of the Year Awards The session is free and will be held on Friday, January 21, 6pm to 8pm. Bookings essential. For bookings, go to mrl.eventbrite.com.au The Summer Reading Club continues until the end of January, which means kids have time to enter, complete a reading log and collect a prize. Open to children aged 5-16, the Summer Reading Club will keep your kids reading until school starts. Visit the library and register to receive a free Summer Reading Club pack and reading log. Then record in the reading log each book you read or story you have listened to. Once you've read 10 books, return your completed reading log to the library and collect a prize. The Summer Reading Clubs ends on January 31. For more information, contact your local branch. Dubbo library has daily art and puzzle activities next week to keep children entertained, cool and help fill in the last week of the school holidays. No need to book, drop into the children's area and complete a puzzle, colour-in or make papercraft with friends or family. READ ALSO: Dubbo drive-in site at 12R Narromine Road sold in start of new chapter Borrow from a fantastic range of eBooks, eAudiobooks, and eFilms, and read the latest digital of popular magazines. For more information visit mrl.nsw.gov.au/online-library Dubbo Library hours: 10am to 6pm Monday to Friday; 10am to 3pm, Saturdays; 11am to 3pm, Sundays. Corner of Talbragar and Macquarie Streets, Dubbo. Phone 6801 4510.

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Help your teenager get work ready

It can be hard work trying to get your first casual or part-time job and confusing to work out what career path to take.

Join us at Dubbo Library for a 'Get Work Ready' session with the Joblink Plus Youth Team. Aimed at young people aged 13-18 years who are looking to enter the workforce, this session will help you find your ideal career with the Joblink Plus career quiz, create your resume, learn skills to help you find a job that's right for you, and enjoy free pizza!

The session is free and will be held on Friday, January 21, 6pm to 8pm. Bookings essential. For bookings, go to mrl.eventbrite.com.au

Still time to enter the Summer Reading Club

The Summer Reading Club continues until the end of January, which means kids have time to enter, complete a reading log and collect a prize. Open to children aged 5-16, the Summer Reading Club will keep your kids reading until school starts. Visit the library and register to receive a free Summer Reading Club pack and reading log. Then record in the reading log each book you read or story you have listened to. Once you've read 10 books, return your completed reading log to the library and collect a prize. The Summer Reading Clubs ends on January 31. For more information, contact your local branch.

Free daily activities for kids

Dubbo library has daily art and puzzle activities next week to keep children entertained, cool and help fill in the last week of the school holidays. No need to book, drop into the children's area and complete a puzzle, colour-in or make papercraft with friends or family.

Your 24/7 online library is always open

Borrow from a fantastic range of eBooks, eAudiobooks, and eFilms, and read the latest digital of popular magazines. For more information visit mrl.nsw.gov.au/online-library

Dubbo Library hours: 10am to 6pm Monday to Friday; 10am to 3pm, Saturdays; 11am to 3pm, Sundays. Corner of Talbragar and Macquarie Streets, Dubbo. Phone 6801 4510.

See the rest here:

At the Library | Session to help teens prepare for work - Daily Liberal

We Believe:

In the inalienable rights and freedoms of all peoples; and we work towards a lean government that minimises interference in our daily lives; and maximises individual and private sector initiative

In government that nurtures and encourages its citizens through incentive, rather than putting limits on people through the punishing disincentives of burdensome taxes and the stifling structures of Labor's corporate state and bureaucratic red tape.

In those most basic freedoms of parliamentary democracy - the freedom of thought, worship, speech and association.

In a just and humane society in which the importance of the family and the role of law and justice is maintained.

In equal opportunity for all Australians; and the encouragement and facilitation of wealth so that all may enjoy the highest possible standards of living, health, education and social justice.

That, wherever possible, government should not compete with an efficient private sector; and that businesses and individuals - not government - are the true creators of wealth and employment.

In preserving Australia's natural beauty and the environment for future generations.

That our nation has a constructive role to play in maintaining world peace and democracy through alliance with other free nations.

In short, we simply believe in individual freedom and free enterprise; and if you share this belief, then ours is the Party for you.

To download the Federal Platform - click here

The Liberal Party of Australia Federal Constitution is available to download and print.

Originally posted here:

Our Beliefs | Liberal Party of Australia

It would be ridiculous to complain at this late date that the pandemic has been "politicized." Was there ever a Platonic-ideal alternate America in which the arrival of COVID-19 was likely to be treated as a neutral public health question? Give Donald Trump credit, sort of: He understood from the outset that the pandemic would be a political issue telling us way back in March of 2020 that he was eager to keep "his numbers" down and one that clearly posed a threat to his chances of re-election. Nothing testifies more clearly to his enduring power over his supporters than the fact that Trump expanded his 2016 vote total by 7 million, after his administration's callous, incoherent and grotesquely incompetent mismanagement of the only major national crisis he faced as president. (Not counting the one he created himself after losing the election.)

As soon as it was clear that case numbers were out of control in the nation's big cities, the question of whether to keep the public schools open was political too. In New York, where I live, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio offered a poli-sci textbook example of an elected leader trapped between competing constituencies: He had social-policy wonks telling him the schools were crucial support systems for working families and at-risk youth (which of course is true), the teachers' union threatening a wildcat strike, conflicting advice from public health officials and enraged parents screaming at him from all sides. We'll never know how many people died unnecessarily because of de Blasio's Hamlet dithering in that traumatic month of March, but the number definitely isn't zero.

Fast forward nearly two years, and here we are again: the same, only different. Of course the circumstances have changed: We have vaccines and boosters and far more effective therapies, and we face a new variant of the virus that's far more infectious but a lot less likely to kill you. (New York has a brand new mayor, who seems even less willing to make tough decisions than the last one.) There's no national lockdown, and most stores, restaurants and other public-facing businesses are muddling along, assuming they have enough healthy workers available to open the doors. Even where schools have closed or reverted to remote learning, no reasonable person expects (or wants) that to continue for more than a few weeks.

You see what I did there, right? "Reasonable people," LOL! If the pandemic itself has become more manageable, and now seems more like a chronic or recurring public health issue than the end of the world, the supposed politics around school closures during the omicron surge have only gotten dumber and more deeply dug-in.

It's not that I don't feel compassion for anguished and frustrated parents I'm one of them. No one thinks the remote schooling that dominated the 2020-21 school year was a hugesuccess, and it was a lot more manageable for high school students like my kids. It can only have been agonizing for parents of younger children, especially in less privileged circumstances, to feel like their kids lost a year or more of academic and social progress they can never get back.

But that doesn't mean there's a one-size-fits-all solution to how we get through the winter of omicron. And it definitely doesn't mean that the difficult, complicated and highly personal set of choices that now confronts parents, kids, teachers, school officials and elected leaders in different ways in different parts of the country all of us facing an unpredictable virus whose long-term effects remain poorly understood can or should be boiled down to a partisan conflict or culture-war issue that has almost nothing to do with the real-life chaos on the ground in many schools.

RELATED:Our new "live with it" COVID strategy is devastating health care workers

When I read articles seeking to defend American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten from right-wing attacks, or gaming out how the dispute between Chicago teachers and city government might play with midterm voters, the issue seems to be mostly about crafting magical formulas that might rescueDemocrats from electoral disaster, not which of the imperfect options before us is best for kids, families, schools and teachers right now. That's horse-race journalism at its most destructive, when the question of how, when and where to educate children under some of the most challenging conditions imaginable becomes purely instrumental, either an asset or a liability in short-term political calculus.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Similarly, when the author of a Politico op-ed reports being called a racist by other Bay Area moms for wanting schools open (triggering a "political identity crisis," i.e., OMG am I a Republican?), and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot impliesthat the teachers' union head might bea racist for wanting them closed, that's just a sign of full-on panic: Nobody has any answers, and in the grandest tradition of the left, supposed progressives revert to sanctimonious name-calling and specious claims to the moral high ground.

In the Facebook parents' group for my son's high school which has 3,000 students and has had hundreds of omicron infections among students, teachers and staff parents who are keeping their kids home through the surge have effectively been called paranoid snowflake babies who are confirming Republican stereotypes and dooming us all to the Trumpian Fourth Reich. But again, I think this comes out of a mostly laudable desire to do the right thing for your own family and the right thing for the larger society, in a situation where nobody knows that that is.

Speaking of my son's school:

I'm not outing anybody or anything at this point to acknowledge that the original Reddit post quoted therein, which went viral last weekend on various social media, was written by a student at the Bronx High School of Science, one of New York's famously controversial "specialized" high schools (where the sole criterion for admission is an SAT-style standardized test).

I think that student sums it better than I possibly could: There's no right or wrong here. Remote schooling sucks; conditions at Bronx Science suck right now too. Everybody is trying to do the best they can in a constantly changing situation and, in that case, in a hothouse environment where students a great many of them first- or second-generation immigrants are grinding out GPA points in hopes of an Ivy League admission.

Of course it isn't like that every single day, or at every school in every community. In fact the profoundly ordinary point I'm trying to make is that every situation, every school, every family and every student is different, and maybe we should cut each other a break instead of defaulting to totalizing rules or "no true Scotsman" fallacies or asking But is it good for the Democrats? about difficult individual decisions.

My son hasn't been going to school, for personal and family reasons that aren't anybody else's business. I have no right, and no desire, to judge other people who believe it's important for their kid to be in the building no matter how much of a shitshow it is orhow little instruction is happening.

It would be easy way, way too easy to put all the blame for both the chaos and the dumbass bickering on Republicans, whose mendacity and hypocrisy around every aspect of public education is epic in scale. They have managed to link the imaginary shibboleth of "critical race theory," understood to mean any account of American history that might imply that any white people ever did anything bad, to the innocuous-sounding but deeply dangerous concept of "parental rights," and then somehow or other to the widespread (and entirely understandable) unhappiness that public education from March 2020 through at least June 2021 was a godawful mess in much of the country.

RELATED:"Parental rights" started on the Christian fringe now it's the GOP's winning issue

It's astonishing that anyone in my profession allows Republicans to pretend to care about the public schools, since it's not even a secret that the right's ultimate goal is to undermine them, discredit them, defund them and then destroy them entirely although perhaps the more benevolent and far-sighted among them understand that some stripped-down version of three-R's education (which the private sector may be unwilling to provide) will still be necessary for future service-sector workers in the lower-caste districts, even after America has been Made Great Again.

Nonetheless, Republicans have successfully implanted the idea in their supporters and, to a disheartening extent, among the general public that the socialist liberals and their nefarious puppet-masters in the teachers' unions want all-remote school from now till doomsday, along with mandatory triple-masking at Buffalo Wild Wings and vaccine boosters loaded with Bill Gates' nanobots every two months, as decreed by the tyrannical Dr. Fauci, who apparently spent 40-odd years studying infectious diseases as part of an ingenious long-term scheme leading to his seizure of full dictatorial power.

In fairness, most Republicans don't say most of that stuff most of the time at least, those who aren't Crossfit franchisees with evident personality disorders but they're getting a lot cozier with it. The basis of Glenn Youngkin's Virginia gubernatorial campaign was essentially to carve up that message into little digestible bits, like the Caterpillar's hallucinogenic mushroom in "Alice in Wonderland," that could be served up at different strengths to different audiences. Although the conventional wisdom following a close election is never to be trusted, it appears plausible that Youngkin lured away some white suburban normies on the vague premise that Democrats had screwed up the schools with too much bureaucracy and technology and extended readings from Frantz Fanon.

But the garment-rending over the current school dilemma is largely happening among liberals, who have reacted to the Virginia election and the looming prospect of Republican victory in the midterms in time-honored fashion: with widespread panic and confusion, along with a misguided desire to "pivot to the center" and placate imaginary middle-ground voters with explanations, apologies and heartfelt confessions. If you feel compelled to announce that you're not in favor of endless school closures and you don't think white children should be sent to re-education camps, you've already lost the debate.

It's admittedly difficult to stand on the courage of your convictions when you don't have much of either. That may well be a problem our children are forced to solve. But not right now.

Read more on America's education wars:

Read more:

Everything sucks here: Liberal parents are losing their minds over COVID-related school closures - Salon

Bill Maher has some thoughts about the status of comedy in America.

The 65-year-old comedian also explained the difference he sees between liberals and the so-called woke ones.

Talking to the Alabama outlet AL.com, Maher revealed he likes performing in red states.

I attract mostly a liberal crowd, but liberal is different than woke, the Real Time with Bill Maher host said. To me, woke, if we want to use that broad term, is something that is not an extension of liberalism.

Its very often the opposite of what an old-school liberal like me believes. Ive never been someone who was part of any specific party, per se. I usually vote Democratic, but it depends on the person, he added.

Maher continued, Certainly in the age of [Donald] Trump, theyre never going to get me there with the Republicans. But there are many Republicans who are not Trump Republicans. And they have a good point, that there is that faction of the left that we will call woke whos gone off the deep end.

He then touched on a recent show he did in Nashville, Tennessee, where he saw that his audience was split between conservatives and liberals.

I must say, in this era of a lack of bipartisanship, where everything is binary, Maher explained, gender may not be binary, but politics sure is right now.

It was great to see where there were people who dont agree politically who can get in the same room, he said. There were a few groans from the right when I said something bad about them, and some from the left when that happened. But basically, everyone laughed together. And we have to get back to that.

The former Politically Incorrect host continued to say that social media turned politics into a persistent digital war and that has to stop. He then stated that some left-leaning people claim to be righteous in many of these social media discussions.

I think you can claim the moral high ground if youre anti, he told the publication. I feel like thats the Achilles heel of the left right now. They identify issues mostly by what they can feel superior to another person for.

Read more here:

Bill Maher spells out difference between liberals and woke liberals - New York Post