While Woodworth may be playing dumb regarding the potential implications of flooding the matter with light aka redefining fetuses as people, it's obvious to just about everyone—except maybe those still in utero—where this kind of debate reaches its logical conclusion. And this sad attempt to start down the road to making abortion a criminal act (since, you know, it'd be killing human beings) has upset a lot of people on all sides of the issue. Even fellow Conservative members were quick to denounce Woodworth's move.

Conservative whip Gordon O'Connor spoke during the debate and said he wasn't buying Woodworth's claims that this was all innocent truth seeking: "the ultimate intention of this motion is to restrict abortions at some development stage in Canada." He urged all of his colleagues to vote down the motion, and he said women should continue to be able to have abortions "without the threat of legal consequences." He also, amazingly, said that whether everyone likes it or not, abortion will always be a part of our society, and he doesn't get why pro-lifers "want to impose their belief on others through the Criminal Code." Well, if you'd like an answer to that Mr. O'Connor, make a stop by almost any abortion clinic in the United States, and you'll likely find a number of protestors who'll be willing to scream an explanation into your ear at top volume.

"I think as a Caucasian I have an advantage. When different community leaders such as a Sikh leader or a Muslim leader speaks, they really speak to their own people in many ways. As a Caucasian, I believe that I can speak to all the community," (Wildrose candidate) Leech said on CHKF-FM, a multicultural station in Calgary. He clarified Tuesday that he was trying to say he wasn't at a disadvantage being a white man representing a multicultural community.

That wasn't good enough for Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, who took to Twitter to express his dismay.

"It's not that he shouldn't have said it. It's that he shouldn't believe it. He has not yet said whether he does," said Nenshi. "His clarification did not in any way address the content of his comments. Does he believe ethnic (politicians) speak only to some?"

But unlike previous launch failures, the repressive, isolated neo-Stalinist regime now headed by 20-something Kim Jong Un was quick – at least by Pyongyang’s standards – to admit the fiery failure.

The era of the Big Lie may finally have ended in North Korea, decades after most totalitarian regimes realized that even a brutally-repressed people can’t be kept collectively ignorant.

In the coming days, watching how Pyongyang plays the failure may signal whether the new leader really heralds a new era. The old ‘Big Lie’ of claiming success has been jettisoned. But if the rocket’s failure is blamed on foreign enemies, then the new era may not be so new.

Rick Santorum may be gone, but his campaign debt is not forgotten.

Just an hour after he ended his bid for GOP leader on Tuesday, Santorum circulated a thank you email to supporters — and asked them for one last cheque.

For the second Wednesday in a row, workers are braced for a round of the "affected" notices, which triggers a complicated process negotiated with the 18 federal unions that departments are using to manage job losses of more than 19,200 over the next three years. This will be the largest round of notifications so far but unions expect another next week.

Gary Corbett, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), confirmed the union was given the mandatory advance notice from departments last week that notices will be delivered to employees in 10 departments.

Canadians are willing to pay more taxes to help close the growing income gap and want corporations to pay higher tax rates too, according to a new poll released Tuesday.

The survey of 2000 Canadians, commissioned by the left-leaning Broadbent Institute, found that 23 per cent are "very willing" and 41 per cent are "somewhat willing" to pay slightly more tax in order to protect social programs such as health care, post-secondary education and pensions.

A majority of Canadians – even wealthy ones – are behind the idea of raising income taxes on people who earn more than $250,000 and more than $500,000. The poll found 83 per cent are in favour of that idea.

And 73 per cent agree with raising corporate taxes back up to 2008 levels. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government has steadily lowered the rates since taking office in 2006, arguing the tax breaks help corporations create more jobs. The NDP and Liberals are opposed to the lower rates, saying they haven’t helped create new jobs and that corporations are just sitting on higher profits.

As a country, Canada ranked fifth behind a quartet of northern European nations — Denmark, Finland, Norway and the Netherlands, in that order — but well ahead of the United States and the United Kingdom, which ranked 11th and 18th, respectively out of 156.

Pointing to the “five important facets of life” — family, good health, income, sense of freedom and lack of corruption — Canada performs better than the United States in all but income, said John Helliwell, a University of British Columbia economist and co-editor of the 155-page report.

Why are governments paying private financiers to generate credit they could be issuing themselves, interest-free? According to Professor Carroll Quigley, Bill Clinton’s mentor at Georgetown University, it was all part of a concerted plan by a clique of international financiers. He wrote in Tragedy and Hope in 1964:

The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations.

Each central bank . . . sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.