This Friday I'll be in Calgary at the Essentials of Freedom conference organized by my friend Danny Hozack. If you're in the area please join Danny, me, Brian Lilley, Mark Milke and others to talk about what's going wrong and how to get it right again. Including (but you saw this coming) a discussion of Magna Carta and our upcoming documentary funded through Kickstarter.

Barely a week after the latest bizarre Clinton scandal erupted, this time Hillary's inexplicable decision to use a private personal system for all her email while Secretary of State without telling anyone, a company in Connecticut has created a Hillary Clinton action figure complete with Blackberry. Some people find the general rowdiness of the United States, including its political system, off-putting. They prefer genteel stuffiness in which establishment boats are not rocked and pundits and statespersons are not mocked.

The U.S. political system certainly has its failings, some shared with other Western democracies including Canada and some unique to itself. But I think we need more of the wide-open, lively, dynamic American tone. Their political culture reacts faster, more pointedly and more frankly, letting in more air and making more room for honest expressions of public sentiment.

Charles Adler was guest-hosting the Roy Green show today and invited me on to discuss topics from Manitoba politics to Hillary Clinton's presidential prospects (dismal, I say) to our successful Kickstarter campaign to produce a documentary on the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. (The Magna Carta bit starts at 10:20) [soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/194904663" params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="100%" height="450" iframe="true" /]

Mark Steyn, "The One-Man Global Content Provider," just wrote a great post "The Field Where Liberty Was Sown" about Magna Carta, the "real rights" it contains, and the modern threat to freedom as voters get seduced by the "right" to free stuff from politicians in return for their right to due process, property and so on. In it he kindly praised our documentary project and people have really taken notice. Thanks, Mark. We really appreciate it.

With the temperature a balmy -8 outside here in Ottawa, shortly to ease down to -19, I’m catching up on my NBC news feeds. It’s not pleasant. I’m encountering subject lines (story headlines don’t always match the email teaser) like “15 Dead, Records Obliterated as Brutal Cold Hits U.S.” (with Chicago having its coldest morning in 79 years) and “So Cold You Can Hear Ice Crack, Hammer Nail with a Banana?”. People are doing their best to cope, hence “’Frozen’ Queen Elsa Is a Wanted Woman in Kentucky” (the police in Harlan, Kentucky haven’t lost their sense of humour) and “#ItsSoCold: Your Best Posts About the Deep Freeze”. But it’s a serious business. People have died. “U.S. Economy Could Take $5 Billion Hit From Brutal Winter Weather”. And it’s not over yet. “Record-Shattering Cold Tightens Grip Across U.S.” and “More Brrr! 'Siberian Express' Drags On Into Next Week” with another winter storm coming.

So of course NBC also ran a piece on how cold weather reduces crime, naturally saying that researchers are “driven by a desire to understand what the world will look like as global temperatures rise. They've all found good reason to believe crime, and social disorder, could increase.”

No matter how obvious it is that it’s incredibly cold, the story is that it’s incredibly warm. This, I gather, is called evidence-based decision making.

Meanwhile my Sun Media colleague Lorne Gunter offers the absurd notion that what warms the earth is indeed Mr. Sun and not the local factory or SUV. I mean seriously, what’s the sun, other than a gigantic blazing hot nuclear reaction that showers earth with energy, and whose quiet spells reliably correspond with unpleasantly cold spells?

No no no. If parts of Niagara Falls are frozen, they’re probably just oil-company funded “deniers” who go on about the Maunder Minimum and other things journalists who say the science is a lock don’t know about. It’s hot out there.

I mean, who are you going to believe, alarmists or your own fingers and toes? Come off it.

Apparently it's amusing and cute that Vice President Joe Biden has a habit of getting inappropriately close to women. Of course if it were a Republican it would be an outrage.

Last night I attended an excellent panel discussion "Magna Carta: What does it mean to Canada?" hosted by House of Commons Speaker Andrew Scheer. And I was very struck by a comment by panelist the Hon. Pierre Poilievre (Minister of Employment and Social Development and Minister for Democratic Reform) that our liberties may be eight centuries long but they are only one generation deep. Exactly why we're making the documentary (https://www.kickstarter.com/…/magna-carta-our-shared-legacy…) and I'm delighted to report that we're now at 45%. Nearly half way. A long road ahead... but many thanks to all who have gotten us this far and let's keep it going.

Does anybody remember soft power? Apparently Canada has it in abundance. It just doesn’t work. Click here to read the rest.