Hey kids, its mega-sized news roundup time yet again

• One of the coaches of the minor league Ontario hockey team involved in the infamous bench clearing brawl incident has been suspended for 3 years. The other coach has yet to be disciplined.
  
  Look, one of the things about this story to bear in mind is that the parents fought: they should be disciplined by either the law or minor hockey. The coaches fought and encouraged the kids to fight: they should be disciplined by either the law or minor hockey. But meanwhile, a huge incident has been made out of the fight itself (it would have still been a story, though a smaller one, had the brawl been restricted to the tots playing). The thing is, that so many people seem not to pay attention to, is that the kids are eight. Eight year old kids fight. I got into fights when I was eight, and so did 99% of my readers. [There is no integer that can be divided by "7" to produce 0.99 -ed] Kids getting into a fight isn't a big deal. Lay off on it already.
  
  
• "Lunch box monitors" will soon be an Ontario reality if this Human Rights challenge is successful. Yes, that's right, by not inspecting 100% of lunches for peanut or egg traces, the education system was depriving people of their fundamental rights to be overly sensitive hypochondriacs.
  
  
• Anybody else miss Maxime Bernier? With him out of the Industry portfolio, Jim Prentice is heating up support for strict anti-copyright laws in Canada. Er, does that mean that we get to drop the surcharge on tapes and DVD-RWs?
  
  
• This is what Austrailians get for dropping conservative John Howard. "Reverse Racism" rulings that will 99% likely go unchallenged.
  
  
• Who cares that he's in a wheelchair? Disability, according to thousands of Sikh's who blockaded the Vancouver Airport, should get a guy off the hook for entering the country on a forged passport.
  
  
• New Saskatchewan Premier is taking a page from Ralph Klein's book as he prepares to follow up on his campaign promises. Also, like Klein, it seems the less conservative the promise, the more likely its going to go through...
  
  
• There is starting to be a heated debate about whether or not the Queen of Canada will celebrate the 400th anniversary of the founding of a French colony. Which the frogs lost due to their weak skills in battle. And are still a little touchy about. Read the comments for the good bits, particularly this bit of insight:

  Mike from Canada
  Elizabeth II is the Queen of Canada at the moment...all of Canada, and that includes Quebec. She should be invited. After all, on the very Coat of Arms for Quebec, the Heraldic Lion, representing the British Monarch, still stands proudly. Besides, if there is a perceived threat to Her Majesty, she has many advisors and security staff who will mitigate and advise on that matter. Invite her, and let her decide if she'd like to come.

  
  
• Karlheinz Schreiber is now claiming foreign interests are responsible for the Joe Clark defeat in 1983. I suppose next he'll tell us who was on the grassy knoll. Does anybody seriously believe what he says anymore? He just wants to tell enough juicy stories so that some pro-Clark MPs (if, indeed, any ever existed) push to permanently block his extradition.
  
  
• The culture wars are heating up, and for once the French don't look like they are going to lose. (For the record, I still think they will). The medical casualties of Quebec's culture clash

  MONTREAL — In the spring of 2005, Bashkim Omeri's wife had a miscarriage in a Montreal hospital. He was told that her blood type was A-positive and that she needed "immunoprophylactic treatment."
  
  According to hospital officials, Albanian-born Mr. Omeri misunderstood them and thought his wife was HIV-positive. A week later the 36-year-old immigrant died after he threw himself before a truck.
  
  His was one of four cases Quebec coroner Jacques Ramsay made public yesterday to underline that accommodating immigrants with different cultures and languages is not trivial, but sometimes a matter of life and death.
  
  Dr. Ramsay plans to present the four cases to the provincial inquiry headed by academics Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor, which is holding hearings into the accommodation of minorities.

  The most frightening bit, though, comes from the bottom of the article, where the PQ (or is it the Liberals? Does it even matter anymore which of these two parties wins in Quebec?) has come up with a bold idea:

  More dramatic ideas will be heard this morning with the testimony of Parti Québécois adviser Jean-François Lisée, who is behind the party's idea of making proficiency in French mandatory for newcomers who want to vote or run for office.

  
  
• Rogers is now embroilled in an online controversy when it became known that, like Shaw, it is taking giant leaps to end "net neutrality"
  
  
• Cult, anyone? FaceCrack is now being used by 1 in 4 Canadians.
  
  
• Human evolution is apparently speeding up.

  In the past 5,000 years, genetic change has occurred at a rate roughly 100 times higher than any other period, say scientists in the US.

  How do you explain welders then?
  
  
• Our solar system is getting squashed. Can we blame Micheal Moore?
  
  
• Yesterday I put up a post linking Conrad Black and Micheal Vick. Today, the Chicago Tribune follows my lead.
  
  
• Now that there's a small shortage of radio isotopes, the government is rushing in to force the plant to reopen. Is this really a good idea? You'd have to ask some sort of scientist who is also politically aware. Good luck finding one of those!
  
  
• A group of Iranian exiles says President Maher Arar Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is still making nuclear weapons. To which the only proper response is... well, duh! Ahmad-Arar-ejad responds to the allegations:

  "This group cannot be the basis for correct information," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a news conference in Tehran.

  Er, yeah, we'll believe you on that one right away, President Wacko!