This post is for the tips you have for other readers, links to scintillating posts at your own site (I recommend you use the trackback function). Keep descriptions brief, please. No discussion please – links only.
See you guys in a couple days. Have a good weekend!

A very good, relatively new blog on “goofs, bias and hypocrisy in the media”. That ought to keep them busy.
Looking at it from the “inside”, The Toronto Sun skewers the bias at the Liberal Death Star.
At Proud To Be Canadian, “Exile” does a little venting.
A few days ago, Macleans columnist Steve Maich came to the (weak) defense of Maurice Strong and PowerCorp. Somebody who actually knows what he’s talking about rebuts. Read the comments, too.

I think I’ve earned a brief holiday from blogging, so I’ll just throw up some links I’ve had forwarded or spotted on my own that are relevant to recent events;
I may be taking a break, but Newsbeat1 isn’t. There’s a ton of stuff there this morning. (Take the time to add this site to your blogroll. )
The apple is climbing back into the tree.
Further to the tender sensibilities of those offended by the use of the word “Jap”, (I presume you’ll rise in similar indignation next time you hear “Yank”), a few sentimental wartime postcards.
Greg and others think the Conservatives should release their platform now. Just in time for summer vacation. I don’t.
Someone asks privately about a detail of the RCMP murders that I wrote about at the time – oddly no photographs of the weapon seem to have been published in the mainstream press. Perhaps a photo of a HECKLER & KOCH, HK91 is “inconsistant” with the more important message that the “smoking gun registry” keeps “banned weapons from the hands of criminals”.
At Bound By Gravity, More historical photos, these ones of bombing damage at Saint-L�, France in the wake of D-Day.

Yes, a Blogger’s strength flows from the Force. But beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression; the dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will…”

I’m busy with yard work today, without much time for blogging, so I”ll direct you to a few lesser known sites worth a look, and deserving of more traffic. Some old, some new, some popular in the US but lesser referenced in Canada. Feel free to add your own via trackback, or in the comments.
Jacks Newswatch is on top of the best stuff out this morning. (Stephen Harper is David Duke? Can it get any crazier?)
How many blog sites feature great writing in both official languages? The only thing I don’t like about Polyscopique is that he doesn’t post often enough.
Lorne Gunter isn’t lesser known, but he’s new to blogging.
Today, Laurent has a plug for Right Ho! – writing by another conservative journalist who chooses anonymity.
Speaking of well known people, new to blogging – if you’re a politician (or a strategist) interested in how to incorporate blogging into your party’s communication strategy, make Bush-Cheney campaign webmaster Patrick Ruffini part of your regular reading. Go back through the archives, too.
I’ll probably do another Carnival of the Newbies in a couple of weeks, so if you’ve sent me a link to your site looking for a plug, be patient. And keep writing.

A gathering of tips and items I spotted surfing this morning.
Newsbeat has a series of posts on whistleblowing.
The Times. they are a’changing….

The New York Times, America’s most venerated newspaper, is responding to growing pressure by pledging to increase its coverage of religion and the rural areas in the US, while also recruiting journalists who have military experience.

Comparing Hitler To Stalin;

The full death toll, most of it accumulated in peace time, at the hands of Lenin and his political and ideological successor, Stalin, is estimated by the best authorities at somewhere between 25 million and 30 million people. Not bad in a system for which mass terror and purges were not “intrinsic” parts. In what passes for Steele’s argument, he suggests the scaling down of the terror after Stalin’s death is evidence the system was not inherently terroristic. Does it not occur to him that there was no one left to kill?

The Librano Songbook grows!
Now, is this figure with or without the latest “envelope of cash” for Saskatchewan Premier Lorne Calvert?

Well, this is a curious little find. (Thanks to an email tip from an “anonymous” reader). From an old anti-tobacco web page;

The Canadian Tobacco Co. Ltd.markets two brands of cigarettes available at duty free shops. According to their packaging, they operate out of either a postal box number in London or Toronto, Ontario. They have recently entered the market with two low-priced brands known asCanadian and Canadian Extra Light.
They feature several easily recognizable Canadian landmarks. In December 1997, Canadian cigarettes we purchased two cartons at the Windsor Tunnel Duty Free Shop, and at the Blue Water Bridge Duty Free Shop in Sarnia.
Each carton has a picture of either the CN Tower, Niagara Falls, Lake Louise, the Canadian Rockies or the Vancouver skyline. CN Tower spokespersons will not take the responsibility for the use of their logo by this tobacco company. It may be that some people are trying to hide this egregious campaign to advertise tobacco.
The parent corporation is actually theSea and Sky Supply company located in Holland. The owner of the company is Tony Lammers, a businessman who markets various and sundry products to duty free shops and airlines all over the world. We have been unable to reach Tony for personal comment, but we have left his company e-mail.
�
A crown corporation known as theCanada Lands Corporation owns the CN Tower and leases it to the TrizecHahn company. They are supposed to do all the promotions for the publicly owned business. A major principal in that company, and many others, like Barrick Gold, is Peter Munk. Peter just named a cardiac wing after himself at the Toronto Hospital, and is still recovering from the Busang gold fiasco to comment either.
Alphonso Gagliano, the Minister in charge of Public Works and Government Services is responsible for the CLC and what it owns, markets, and promotes. He is unavailable for comment. Canada tobacco only has a box number in London, Ontario and could not be reached by phone for comment. If any of you find him, let me know.

From what little else I can find, it seems that Canadian Tobacco did a bit of race sponsorship, but I’ve not confirmed that.

It’s a dog show weekend here at the ranch. I may get a couple of posts up, but in the meantime, I invite you to use the comments or trackback feature to direct readers to interesting material. (Be sure to indicate if the link contains not-safe-for-work content or excessive profanity.)
Here a few that landed in my inbox;
Check out this Captain’s Quarters link… it usually means something good.
Dear friends from Ontario –please take this seriously. What used to be a fringe movement is on the cusp of becoming mainstream.
Via a reader who passed along the tip in French – I’ve found an English language report that Liberal MP Don Boudria will not be running in the next election.
And this? Not exactly news. Andrew Coyne says as much, but in about 674 more words.

‘Tis the season for anhydrous ammonia tanks.
Back later.
In the meantime, drop your worthy finds in the comments, or send me a trackback.

Working at the shop again this morning. So, it’s a reader tip day – dump your finds in the comments, or send a trackback if you’ve written something good.
Don’t forget to send me your links for Carnival of the Newbies. I only have a handful so far. Any blog that’s been launched in the last couple of months is fine by me.
To watch Paul Martin’s speech again, David Janes has video. And if anyone has film of a pot of bubbling oatmeal porridge they’d like to share, I’ll be sure to post that too.

A bunch of stuff on my plate today, so I’ll leave you kids to play amongst yourselves for a few hours.
You know the drill – if you’ve spotted a good story or post out here, or have one of your own you want to suck a little traffic to, either track back to this post, or leave the url in the comments.
What I would be really interested in are bloggers out on from the left who have useful thoughts on how the Liberals can purge their party of the corrupt and their enablers so that Canadians on all sides of the spectrum can have confidence that our differences are simply ideological and not criminally motivated.
It’s not enough for the current group to lose government. Even a defeated Liberal party is a concern to Canadian democracy if the current band of movers and shakers are allowed to regroup.
I have some of my own, but there’s time later for that.

I have a heavy week of work ahead of me, so blogging will likely slow up.
I’ll inviting readers to post the good stuff they find out there today in the comments. I’ve turned the html back on, so hopefully they’ll function properly as clickable links.
(If it’s not work safe, please indicate that too.)

Oil-For-Food investigative journalist Claudia Rosett has been nominated for a Pulitzer. And deservedly so.

“Rosett’s …dogged pursuit of the oil-for-food-for-dictators scandals at the United Nations pushed that story in all of its mind-numbing complexity into the media mainstream, where it has done more to set in motion long overdue oversight of the United Nations than all of the previous blue ribbon reports and congressional hearings combined…Whether or not the Pulitzer committee recognizes Rosett for her incredible contribution to freedom through her superb journalism over the past few years, those who follow the media know she is the standard setter.” – Hugh Hewitt, Weekly Standard

Kelowna Police are going soft on crime.
The “paradoxes and contradictions of life in post-9/11 Canada: two versions of reality that tacitly undermine one another, and by so-doing muddle and mock of our collective response to the terrorist threat.”

Well! If I had known this was so easy, I’d have stopped blogging a long time ago and just let the readers take over.
Spent today mostly resting up, a little shopping and getting very, very lost here in Raleigh, where the street system was designed by graduates of the Throw A Plate Of Spaghetti On the Floor School of Engineering.
News here seems to be wall to wall Terri Schiavo, (though my host just walked into the room and told me about the school shooting in Minnesota).
You folks know the drill by now – if you run across interesting links, post them in the comments. I’ll try to get online in the evenings, but it’s going to be 12 hour days at the shows for the next week, as I’m working for a handler friend to help offset the expenses and give myself something to do.
Unless I get fired, which is a distinct possibility.

Hey folks. Kate writing from sunny North Carolina. There are daffodils here. Considering the snowplows we had to wait clear the runway in the stop in Regina, it’s an improvement.
No time to surf or blog, (or watch the news) so again, I’ll invite my readers to post any links to good news items or blog posts in the comments. And keep beating up on poor old Joe Green. He’s resilient, if nothing else!
My lucky seminar attendees are starting to congregate and I’m getting ready for the powerpoint presentation. (Topic is breeding, evaluating, training and grooming Miniature Schnauzers.)
Let the indoctrination begin!
And Kathy K. … if you’re surfing through. I’ve been trying to get hold of you!

I’m the one who usually does most of the work here, so while I’m away, I’m going to invite readers to pick up the slack. Just submit links to any blog post or news item you find that you think others may be interested in, in the comments of this post. A simple cut and paste URL and brief description should do it.
(To keep things clean and easy to follow, try not to use this post for other comments.)

Posting here is about to slow down considerably. I leave tomorrow for North Carolina to give a seminar, followed by a week of dog shows. While I will have computer access, time to write will be limited. If I can get the page loading restored, I may ask a couple of friends to guest, but as it is, I’m reluctant to post much anyway, as there is a risk that I’ve been corrupting data. In the meanwhile, a few of the tips passed along in the past couple of days. I confess I haven’t had time to check them all out.
World Tribune is reporting secret video of public executions in North Korea is about to be released.
I haven’t seen this, but I trust the source, who says its a “rather thought provoking look at the possible future of media.” Takes about 10 minutes to view, so I imagine its a hefty download. Page is here.
Toronto Sun editorial on grow ops.
Gomery is getting to the meat of the matter. Sponsorship contract recipients were expected to funnel cash back to the Liberals! Who knew?
There’s been a lot of buzz lately about the lack of women in op-ed pages, and the blogosphere, where there has been considerable whining that “the boys won’t link to the girls”. As I head towards my 300,000 visits and over 400 incoming links (or so Technorati says) in just over a year, all I can offer is this one word observation – bullshit.
And over at the Shotgun, Kevin Steele discovers a familiar figure pops up in – of all places – the investigation of the 1985 Air India bombing, in a post titled Who Erased The Tapes?.

A few reader tips before I head to town.
Former CSIS agent is blunt. If you want to stay off Canada’s list of terrorist groups, vote Liberal.
An article from 1997 to disabuse you of any warm and fuzzy notions about UN peacekeepers.

The Middle East Earthquake. As usual, Publius has everything you need to follow events in Lebanon.

Joe Wood and family are going to lose their house due to a tax bill on virtual money.
The Airbus that lost its rudder over the Caribbean?It’s happened before.

Readers have been sending a steady stream of news links over the past couple of weeks. I’ve arbitrarily chosen a few – I’m sure I’ve overlooked some I shouldn’t have. In addition to doing a lot of posting, I’m also starting to come face to face with some work deadlines. A lot of the stuff sent demands blog posts of their own, but sometimes I’m preoccupied with other things, other times (Steyn columns come to mind), the links have propogated across the blogosphere already, and I figure that most of my blog-surfing readers will have or soon will, come across them somewhere else.
“He was a founding director of a Scarborough mosque and a doting father who brought his children to the park for picnics on weekends. Now he’s been named as a key commander of a terrorist group linked to Al Qaeda that’s fighting against the Americans in Iraq.”
(From August of 2004, background on terrorist groups in Canada.)
Pierre Pettigrew says the US State Department asked Canada not to add the Tamil Tigers to the list of terrorist organizations. Official US State Department response: “Say, what?”
Finally – Confounding the experts, scientists discover that ice melted before the invention of the internal combustion engine. Who knew?

Program note: Mark Steyn will be on C-Span’s Washington Journal tomorrow morning.

A quick and dirty roundup of reader tips, before I leave;
Another good article on the questionable actions of CNN in allowing Eason to “run wild” for so long, by Brent Bozell
DC Circuit Court recognizes bloggers as journalists.
Ezra Levant in the Calgary Sun;

“It is now clear that Canada could never have the kind of accountability first-rank countries demand of their leaders. We could never have a Watergate in this country, never an impeachment.
“Our leaders are above the law. The Gomery Commission would not have been born were it not for the permission of Martin, a witness and suspect himself. As Chretien demonstrated to the delight of our press corps, its an obviously powerless inquiry that exists to whitewash, not to get justice.“

Hydro-Quebec tries to block a broadcast that reveals they provide virtually no security for their major power installations. Somewhat surprisingly, a Quebec judge disagrees.
It doesn’t pay to be a whistleblower when you work for the federal government.

When I came forward and blew the whistle on the refugee board, a number of negative reactions occurred. They included an anonymous note that I received, calling me a troublemaker and telling me I should quit the refugee board. The executive director took a decision that my access to the office should be denied, and my access card was deactivated. The executive director then wrote me a letter and said, well, we told you that your access card was deactivated and we also told you how you could access the building. In fact, no such directions were given, and through the Access to Information Act, the Freedom of Information Act, and the Privacy Act, I received that information.
I was assaulted by the regional director in Toronto. I was subjected to a disciplinary hearing for seeking the advice and assistance of a lawyer. I was harassed by IRB managers when I was on sick leave. The IRB engaged in a cover-up sanctioned at the highest level of that organization. My health and dental benefits were cut off effective July 1, 2004, and I have not received any pay from the government since March 15, 2004.
I mention this to you because I thought about you committee members last night and about how important you are, because challenging unethical workplace conduct comes at a price. That price includes threats to one’s physical, psychological, and financial integrity. The current system and the proposed system for dealing with these matters are inadequate, and it is you, the committee here, who have an important role to play in terms of giving whistle-blowers who come forward meaningful protection.

A letter from a reader with experts from Hansard. Lengthy, so the rest is in the extended entry. Auditor Generals report on the Liberal government’s unaccountable foundations, recent gang violence and the fraudulent gun registry, and the lack of action on filling manpower gaps in the RCMP. The reader (who requests anonymity) comments;

The media don’t challenge the Minister on her veracity. It simply doesn’t add up.They only have aknee jerk, band aid approach to security for Canadians and she keeps pumping out the bilge. She claims that they are putting $8 billion into security and the media ,like sheep, buy it. How many RCMP and CSIS agents have been hired above those retiring with that $8 billion?
The Senate Report on National security pointed out all the gaps, yet the media sleep.The ports are undermanned, they are closing detachments in Quebec, every unit from white collar crime to drugs, to intelligence are undermanned ,yet she says all is well and the media believe her? The RCMP have 2500 fewer officers today than 12 years ago but everything is under control? The crooks and terrorists are laughing themselves silly.They keep reorganizing, redeploying,with fewer officers and she says that less is more? Where’s the media? or security of Canadians is not important.

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