I took a moment the other night and listened to a few words of Canadian PM Paul Martin the on C-Span. It was an unpleasant moment. I don’t much like him, although I claim to understand nothing about Canadian politics, except that I regret that there is such an anti-American undertone to it. There is more to Canadian politics than that, of course. I’m glad that John von Heyking is paying attention to the upcoming election in Canada. This is his third article on it, and arguably the most serious. It concerns article 33 of the Canadian Charter, and why Martin is willing to have it changed, and why his conservative challenger Stephen Harper wants to keep it. It goes to some fundamental issues of Canadians’ ability to govern themselves.