Third of seven or eight (depending on how you count) drummers in Deep Purple; generally reckoned the best of them all.

Now you got me wondering what Rob Ford’s idea of heaven would be like. Thanks, bud. Thanks a lot.

Nah, Rick Moranis never hurt anyone. Or not badly enough to deserve Molsons, anyway.

Or Iggy Pop, I’d wager.

I say huzzah! for ice wine. But then I would, wouldn’t I.

Not to the Queen as a person, no.

But the man was right: some days, you just can’t get rid of a bomb.

You can certainly debate how sound the constitutional theory is; whether a symbolic head of state (monarch in this case, though it doesn’t have to be) would or will, in practice, ever really serve as a check on the government’s abuse of its power, and so forth. But so goes the idea, anyhow: governments are transitory,…

Of course, I see your point. We use “government,” meaning civil service, in the same way. (And sometimes “ministry” to mean “PM and cabinet of the majority party”).

But the monarchy is purely ceremonial, and has no place in government. The monarch has no power, and hasn’t had any for at least a couple of centuries now. When Parliament opens, the Queen reads the speech the government puts in front of her, even if -- which on-one knows, since she doesn’t let on -- she might find…

I don’t like loyalty oaths either. But it’s not, despite appearances, an oath of fealty to a person, as in feudal times. You swear allegiance to the Queen only insofar as she personifies the Crown, meaning the state — the people, laws and traditions etc. Still archaic, I know. But state =/= government, which is the…

“When their statutory terms ended,” that should of was.

In principle, in the Westminster system, the voters don’t elect a government. They elect a parliament, part of which then forms a government, while the rest holds it to account.

You can also have a minority government without a formal coalition. Minority governments by informal agreement are somewhat common in the Canadian system, where formal coalitions, for whatever reason, are quite rare. (I mean informal agreements among the parties, of course. The plurality party is still formally…

Yes, the combination of first-past-the-post voting, and >2 major parties, produces absurdly undemocratic results. I speak from bitter experience.

Ah, but he’s probably instructed the White House kitchen staff to buy only California rice -- grown in a semi-desert, using mined groundwater. That’ll show those “environmentalist” hoaxers!

Well that is in 1973 dollars. Starting around then, there was some serious inflation and...

And an alternate Wheedonverse too: the only difference being, it’s happening in a world without shrimp.

Or: convert the jackets to vests, make the stripes broader, and add some straw boaters. Voila: Senate barbershop.

Born 1968; started working for Nixon as a research assistant in 1990.