'The real threat to our future is peak water'

Peak oil has generated headlines in recent years, but the real threat to our future is peak water. There are substitutes for oil, but not for water. We can produce food without oil, but not without water.

We drink on average four quarts (4.5 litres) of water per day, in one form or another, but the food we eat each day requires 2,000 quarts of water to produce, or 500 times as much. Getting enough water to drink is relatively easy, but finding enough to produce the ever-growing quantities of grain the world consumes is another matter.

In Secret, Court Vastly Broadens Powers of N.S.A.

WASHINGTON — In more than a dozen classified rulings, the nation’s surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans while pursuing not only terrorism suspects, but also people possibly involved in nuclear proliferation, espionage and cyberattacks, officials say.

The rulings, some nearly 100 pages long, reveal that the court has taken on a much more expansive role by regularly assessing broad constitutional questions and establishing important judicial precedents, with almost no public scrutiny, according to current and former officials familiar with the court’s classified decisions.

The Temptation of Coups

There is something seductive about a military coup. Maybe it’s the uniforms, or the idea that it will bring order to chaos. Liberals are not immune, as we can see from the reaction to the Egyptian military’s forced removal of Mohamed Morsi, the country’s freely elected President. They may be particularly susceptible to the romance of it all—to crowds in the street demanding change and getting it, with the help of a military deus ex machina (or deus ex Apache helicopter). Just as common is the dismay when violence follows. Military coups are the national-politics version of drone strikes: the allure is that of a clean sweep; the reality is too many people dead and reverberating anger.

How to Win in Washington

Kurt Bardella is not a guy you can easily root for. He activates your radar and not in a good way. He laughs too much and too loud. He hangs out in cigar bars. When he talks with you, you suspect you are being worked.

 I liked him instantly.

By that I mean Bardella gave me a headache, but I liked that he flouted the norms of the smooth Washington hustler. In a city where even the most rabid striving must be cloaked in nonchalance, Bardella never pulled this off or even tried. He was not shy about sharing — on his Facebook page — his ultimate ambition: to become the White House press secretary. He was not reticent in acknowledging a danger of his brash style: “I’m never that far away from blowing myself up completely,” he told me once. “It’s all part and parcel of my inferiority complex.” But generally, Bardella added, he was pretty good about channeling his demons in a way that benefited his boss, Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California.

Elizabeth Warren Tackles Wall Street

Senator Elizabeth Warren has introduced what I would call a seismic proposition, one very likely to disturb the sleep of complacent politicians. Why, she asks, should the Federal Reserve lend money to banks at an interest rate of less than 1 percent when the government intends to charge students 6.8 percent interest on their college loans? The senator posted an amusing billboard on her official website: Want to borrow money from the government? Don’t be a student. Be a bank.

The Roberts Court's Civil Rights Denialism

The United States has always ridden a roller coaster of bitter division regarding the meaning and status of our civil rights. It is the best of times! It is the worst of times! One study among several shows that a majority of white Americans now feel that “any gains made by members of minority groups necessarily come at [our] own expense.” The implications of this unfortunate tension go well beyond racial politics, however; and during the month of June, a veritable arpeggio of Supreme Court holdings highlighted a perceptual chasm whose address will have to be the next leg of a civil rights movement embracing all Americans.

Access Watchdog Wants Power To Order Release Of Documents

As the Harper government braces itself for a steady drip of damaging details as the Senate expenses scandal winds its way through the courts, it may find itself rueing the day it abandoned one of its key promises in the 2006 election campaign.

That promise — to update the Access to Information Act — is something that Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault is lobbying hard for the government to follow through on.

Prime minister maintains former chief of staff acted alone in Duffy scandal

CALGARY - Prime Minister Stephen Harper is sticking to his story in the Senate expense scandal, maintaining his former chief of staff acted alone in paying Mike Duffy's invalid expense claims.

Harper repeated on Saturday that it was Nigel Wright's decision to give Duffy $90,000 out of his own pocket to reimburse the Senate and he must take the responsibility.

"It was a decision of Mr. Wright and he will be held accountable for that,” Harper told a news conference that he called to comment on a train derailment and fire in Lac- Medantac, Que., earlier that day.

Doug Holyday’s hypocrisy in Etobicoke byelection

Byelections are a byproduct of political infidelity.

Politicians take a solemn vow at election time to remain faithful ’till the next election do us part. If they prematurely abandon us for a better offer, they have betrayed their democratic covenant.

Seven impatient and impetuous MPPs (six Liberals and one Tory) have quit the legislature since the 2011 election, when they sought a full, four-year term of office. Now, the province must hold five costly summer byelections at great expense (on top of two costly campaigns last summer).

Alberta Flooding: More Foreign Workers Needed To Rebuild Province, Redford To Tell Harper

CALGARY - Alberta Premier Alison Redford says she wants to talk to the prime minister about allowing more temporary foreign workers into Alberta as her province rebuilds from recent flooding.

Redford says Alberta is going to need a robust workforce as homes and businesses are restored in devastated communities right across the southern part of the province. Both Redford and Prime Minister Stephen Harper are in Calgary this weekend for the Stampede.

"I think we need to think about what it's going to take in terms of labour and workforce to rebuild southern Alberta and we'll talk a little bit about that," Redford said to reporters before the start of the annual Stampede parade.