If you're in the Ottawa area on Oct. 30 please consider joining MP David Anderson (Cypress Hills-Grasslands, and Shadow Cabinet Secretary for International Human Rights and Religious Freedom), Janet Epp Buckingham (Director of Trinity Western University's Laurentian Leadership Centre), Jay Cameron (Litigation Manager for the Justice Centre for Canadian Freedoms) and myself to discuss "Canadian Freedoms: Growing Threats?" at the Parliamentary Forum on Canadian Freedoms.

It's in Room 430, Wellington Building (197 Sparks St.) from 7 to 9 p.m. on Monday Oct. 30 and it is open to the public. But you need to RSVP to David Anderson's Legislative Assistant Tristan McLaughlin (613-995-1616 or david.anderson.a1@parl.gc.ca) and you will need photo ID for admission to the Parliamentary premises.

I'll be talking about Magna Carta, how Parliament evolved to protect the freedoms guaranteed in the Great Charter, and how the weakening of Parliament in recent decades threatens our liberties.

In my latest National Post column I say the strong showing of the allegedly "far right" Alternative für Deutschland in the German election means you must either call one in eight German voters a neo-Nazi or concede that many normal people are deeply dissatisfied with politics as usual nowadays.

"I sleep like a baby, too. Every two hours, I wake up screaming."

Then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, re reports that President George W. Bush had slept like a baby in the runup to the Iraq war, quoted in Globe and Mail Nov. 16, 2004 (I swear I thought of this joke years earlier but Powell beat me into print and may himself have come up with the gag long before)

In my latest National Post column I say tax reform would be easier to discuss and accomplish if governments weren't universally desperate for money. So arguably politicians and voters should give more thought to why they are.

In my latest National Post column I say that not attacking North Korea is a lot riskier than it sounds.

"The first impression that one gets of a ruler and of his brains is from seeing the men that he has about him."

Machiavelli, quoted in Dan Rather The Palace Guard

In my latest National Post column I say it's time to leave Afghanistan and keep our powder dry and our morale up for the next challenge.

In my latest National Post column I wish news stories would more often refer to government spending being cut, especially by contrast with the lurid and generally inaccurate "slashed".