And I'm back

Had a lovely time in NY, NY, and you don't need me to tell you what a great city it is. More on that later.

The Virginia Tech shootings: Good lord, how awful. Words fail me. But after the first 24 hours or so, when there was no news coming in, do you think maybe CNN could have looked at some other things happening in the world?

Ontario's Citizen assembly votes overwhelmingly in favour of a mild form of closed-list, Multi-member PR. This prompts CalgaryGrit to write the stupidest thing I've ever read from him:

I have to give a thumbs down to Ontario's MMP referendum. I'm not completely against electoral reform, but when you have party leaders writing the party list, you have a situation where MPPs are being appointed which strikes me as being completely against the principle of having an elected house.

Now, I know he's not in fact this dumb, but let's be clear: nobody gets to Parliament -- certainly not Queen's Park in Ontario -- without at least a wink and a nod from the party leadership. In some cases, you get the Michael Ignatieffs of the world who get gifted safe seats from the leadership where there's, if anything, less accountability then there would be in a closed list.

The PR system proposed by the CA is not perfect, but it's so much better than the status quo. The only substantial criticisms I've heard from the well-informed revolve around whether it's marketable, not whether it's good enough.

I intend to vote for this reform, and I hope to see it win.