Joe Biden’s re-election bid is under siege. Following his nationally televised debate meltdown, deep pocketed donors have withheld funding. At least 20 congressional Democrats are demanding the president drop out of the race. A new poll shows almost two-thirds of Democratic voters agree.

The party’s leadership is now trying to accelerate Biden’s confirmation as its nominee ahead of the Democratic National Convention next month. Yet even if they succeed, Biden’s issues of age and frailty won’t disappear. And as Republicans rally around Trump as a martyr — viewing his brush with death as a sign of divine intervention — lingering concerns over Biden risks invigorating the independent third-party candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Otherwise known as RFK, the former environmental lawyer and member of America’s pseudo royal family has zero chance of actually winning. But polling from May shows him pulling in roughly 10 per cent of voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. This could be enough to tilt the entire outcome of the elections in Trump’s favour.

The Electoral College system in the U.S. amplifies the strategic importance of these swing states. In a tight national race, voters in such districts essentially decide the winner.

There was a small victory in Gambia this week when a proposed law to legalize female genital mutilation (FGM) was defeated by human rights campaigners. It was a quite small victory, however, because the great majority of little girls in Gambia are still being mutilated by the professional ‘cutters’ who move from village to village.

The World Health Organization estimates that about 230 million women and girls have undergone this traditional procedure, in which at least the clitoris but often also the inner and outer labia are cut away by a knife, usually without anesthetics, antiseptics or antibiotics. Infections, some of them fatal, are commonplace.

Most girls are “circumcised” in this way in Egypt, Sudan and the Horn of Africa, in the Muslim countries of West Africa, and in Indonesia, usually under the age of five. It is less common in the eastern Arab countries (e.g. Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Yemen), and rare in Iran, Turkey and Pakistan, but the victims are overwhelmingly Muslims. So are the perpetrators.

This poses a real problem for the anti-FGM campaigners, because most of the people who do this to their girl children are convinced that it is an Islamic practice, or even a religious obligation. It particularly appeals to men who are obsessed about female ‘chastity,’ because it takes the fun out of sex for women, including even masturbation.

THESE are the “lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer” that Nat King Cole sang about in 1963, back when I was a boy. It’s certainly muggy out there — the many fireflies prancing about and above our lawn over the past few nights have reminded me of how, for most of my life, their signalling has trumpeted the arrival of the “dog days” of summer. And this year has been no different.

Now an older man, however, I appreciate just how remarkable this perennial rejuvenation is. Over decades, generations of “lightning bugs” have glowed before me. And then each cohort has disappeared. Likewise, my friends and I have had our time to glow. Now some no longer do, some no longer can, and all of us know, full well, that it will all end, for all of us, sooner or later. Even so, what connects us to the wondrous world we live in, to a creation, endures. Nothing really ends. That is comforting.

Lately, I have been rather languorous, agreeably losing myself in reading and idleness. Ensconced on a lakefront porch, affording precious remaining time to submerging myself in the worlds and words of others, I know I am playing truant from the knight-errant-like deeds I have pledged to, hoping to prove my chivalric intentions — it will not surprise some to learn that Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote rests beside me. But I also have needs, and life never works to do what you will.

Saturday, for example, started as fine a summer’s day as any, but ended otherwise. First, unexpectedly, I was tasked with picking up parcels at a poste restante on the American side of Wellesley Island. So I found myself driving to Fineview, a New York state hamlet with an appreciable Thousand Islands view. Just as we approached this settlement, a Midland Painted Turtle edged onto the highway. Now, if I deem it safe, I always help a turtle survive those less-than-concerned motorists seemingly oblivious to such creatures — so, four-way flashers engaged, I ran to where this turtle meandered. Scooping the chelonian up, I deposited it into a stream, flowing in the direction he was heading.

Canada’s Jewish community is investing vast resources into defending itself against the anti-Israel “encampment” movement on university campuses from coast to coast, including Winnipeg. But universities have not been listening to our reactive strategies, signalling that it may be time to rethink our approach.

I have followed with interest the pros and cons regarding the issue of what to do with the Ten Commandments monument at Assiniboine Park that was removed and placed in storage to make way for the Leaf.

I particularly write in support of its reinstallation in the park as recommended by Gail Asper and reported by the Free Press July 2 (Gail Asper calls on city council to reinstall Ten Commandments monument in Assiniboine Park) and the thoughtful and sensible report and commentary by John Longhurst in the Faith section on July 13 (Ten Commandments monument in spotlight).

I especially would like to add 10 further important considerations and important facts that should be taken into account on this issue and reasons to support its reinstallation:

1. Removal of this monument from the park would be an affront to the Fraternal Order of Eagles who donated this to our city back in the 1960s.

Medical isotopes produced by cyclotrons are injected into patients for positron emission tomography, or PET imaging. PET images are used to diagnose cancer, demonstrate how far the cancer has spread (which stage it is), assess how well patients respond to therapy, and to reveal if their cancer has come back later.

Almost everybody who feels obliged to comment about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump is insisting that “violence has no place in American politics,” but of course it has. Four U.S. presidents were assassinated while in office, and three others (now including Trump) have been injured in assassination attempts.

This week, Canada’s premiers will gather for their annual summer conference in Canada’s ocean playground, Nova Scotia.

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew will show up sporting the highest popularity rating for any premier in the country. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith will arrive with the highest populism ratings in the country.

Canada is still exporting live horses to be killed and eaten in Japan.

Years after the Liberal government promised to put an end to the cruel industry, horses packed into crates continue to be flown from airports in Winnipeg and Edmonton, all the way to Alaska, then on to Japan, without any relief along the way. And if that wasn’t bad enough, a new investigation — a first of its kind from on the ground in Japan — is now revealing that the gruelling travel conditions these animals are forced to endure are even worse than we thought. Advocates are now calling on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to halt these shipments, as travel times routinely exceed legal limits.

Canadian animal law organization Animal Justice, along with Japanese animal protection group Life Investigation Agency, tracked four shipments of horses leaving Edmonton this past May and June, for Kansai and Kitakyushu airports in Japan. Canadian law prohibits transporting horses for over 28 hours without food, water and rest. “Yet official time records kept by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency generally end when the horses touch down in Japan, failing to account for the rest of the horses’ harrowing journey,” says Animal Justice in a statement.

Footage gathered in Japan shows horses being made to suffer through lengthy waits post-flight before being transported to a nearby quarantine facility. Total times from landing to reaching the feedlot ranged from four hours 20 minutes to an excessive 6.5 hours, delaying essential food, water and rest.

Tracking low in the polls for two years, having lost the recent byelection in the Liberal stronghold of Toronto-St. Paul’s, and seemingly headed to defeat in the 2025 general election, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has so far resisted calls for an emergency meeting of the national parliamentary caucus of all elected Liberal MPs.

Instead, he has begun calling them individually to discuss how the party can recover politically with him as leader.

Party caucuses are little studied and are not well understood by most members of the general public. Based on my three past studies of national party caucuses, involving interviews with hundreds of MPs, I have concluded that caucuses play a mostly hidden but important role in the parliamentary and wider political processes.

Most MPs see Parliament as an arena for a clash of opposing teams. The pervasiveness of the metaphor of team play means party loyalty, more than discipline based on rewards and penalties, accounts for MPs voting mainly along party lines. Defending the party’s position in a parliamentary process has come to resemble a permanent election campaign.