After a fruitless chase of the culprits responsible for spiriting away the Ghosts of Liberal Past, Ralph Goodale resumes the hunt…

GOODALE: Well, my question was: was it or was it not? It’s important to get to the bottom of this. The story in the Vancouver Sun appeared to be talking about what would be considered secret security information. That information is secret for a reason yet it’s in the public domain. It needs to be examined very carefully as to how it got there. It was within the ambit of government. Suddenly it’s in the public domain. It is secret security information or at least it purports to be. I think the government has that question to answer.
[..]
REPORTER: Sir, you pinpointed the PMO as the potential source of that information. What evidence do you have, if any?
GOODALE: I asked the question was it or was it not the Prime Minister’s Office. The point is the Prime Minister’s Office is the pinnacle of government. They need to get to the bottom of this.

For (in the words of Lorne Gunter) – another cow pie to step in.
h/t National Newswatch.

I checked.

Didn’t find mine.
Update… Well, knowing this makes the gun registry price tag worth every billion. Yes?

What primordial fragment left over from the Original Big Bang of Loser locks eyes with Karla Homolka across a crowded bar and thinks to himself, “I’ve finally found her – the mother of my children“?

“If you’ve never driven a D-10, it’s the coolest experience,”

AP;

The former United Nations oil-for-food chief was charged Tuesday with bribery and conspiracy to commit wire fraud for his role in the scandal-tainted humanitarian program.
The charges against Benon Sevan, 69, of Nicosia, Cyprus, were contained in a rewrite of an indictment stemming from the scandal over the operation set up from 1996 to 2003 to permit the Iraqi government to sell oil primarily to buy food and medicine for suffering Iraqis.
[…]
Federal and state prosecutors also announced the indictment of Ephraim Nadler, 79, of Manhattan, on the same charges. He helped a coconspirator obtain the right to buy Iraqi oil under the program in exchange for commissions from the oil sales and then funneled approximately $160,000 of these oil commissions to Sevan, the indictment said. Nadler is the brother-in-law of former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
[…]
On Feb. 22, South Korean businessman Tongsun Park is scheduled to be sentenced for his conviction on charges he accepted at least $2 million to serve Iraq’s interests in the scandal. He could face up to five years in prison.

Previous entries on Tongsun Park

Like a pendulum do….
Anyone know where a blogger can git one of them there fancy countdown clocks?

Dec.29 Updates: Some of the response to this news is curious, if not downright illogical. “Executing Saddam won’t improve the situation in Iraq” would be one way to sum up the argument. The New York Times dives head first into the realm of absurdity, arguing the execution doesn’t “nurture hope for a better future” – as though allowing the spider-hole dictator to escape a legally delivered sentence to taunt his victims under state protection for the remainder of his days would signal some turning of a corner in Iraqi justice.
Well, executing Saddam has nothing to do with “improving” Iraq (though it’s hard not to argue that his demise would do so by default). Executing Saddam has to do with delivering justice to a mass murderer on behalf of his victims.
Jules Crittenden reflects on his time reporting from Iraq;

So now comes the part where a monster, reduced to a ridiculous cranky old man, will have a rope put around his neck and take his drop. For civilized people it is impossible not to feel some empathy with any man’s mortality in the cold moment of execution. In my house we have a joke. Saddam doesn’t like Fruit Loops. More for us. Now, No Fruit Loops guy is going to get it. Even more for us.
We all know the enormity of his crimes, and many of us know men and women who are dead because of him. But the only satisfaction I’ll feel with his death is to know that there is still justice that is carried to termination and not cynically subverted in this world. It is only more death on top of death after that.

More Updates – Word behind the scenes is that Saddam’s time is best measured in hours, not days.
Waiting… at Iraq the Model.
Post mortem note – And… the book is closed on one former murdering dictator. CBC made some noise about the haste of the execution, depriving the Kurds of their day in court. Apparently, nobody in their research department stumbled upon the fact that Hussein was nearing the magic age of 70, and the “get out of noose free” card that comes with that under Iraqi law.
Confederate Yankee’s source places the main event “at 4:22 AM… and every media source on the planet is wrong about the 6:00 AM execution.”
Video.
New- WMD found and neutralized, in Iraq.

CTV;

Andrea Johnson was remembered as a loving mother who eventually succumbed to a depression she could no longer fight, tragically committing suicide and taking her son’s life.
Johnson jumped from the Morningside overpass onto Hwy. 401 below on Dec. 3 with her two-year-old son Sulla Genua. The mother died at the scene while her son passed away en-route to hospital.
Her sister, Tanesha, gave the eulogy at a funeral service for both the mother and son.
“When Sulla was very small, Andrea would read him books, teach him the days of the week and his numbers.”
Calling Johnson a beautiful young woman, she said her sister was a source of pride.
Tanesha apologized to her late sister for not recognizing the depth of depression Johnson was experiencing.

Now, ask yourself a question. Had it been the father who, in the “depth of depression” had dragged a screaming two year old Sulla Genua into the middle of the street and shot him in the back of the head, before turning the gun on himself – would the Toronto Star be mourning his unfulfilled university degree? Might the Globe And Mail headline note his “devotion” as a father?
Would they have commented on his looks?
Patrick Kelly of the National Post is one of few who get it right. Murder-by-Mommy is no statistical aberration;

While the Canadian public worries about perverted strangers or abusive fathers taking the lives of young children, it is biological mothers who are doing much of the killing. Women murder their children nearly as often as men; more often when the victims are under five years of age, according to experts on child killings, and to Statistics Canada data.

The reality check doesn’t last long, however. A few paragraphs into the article, University of Toronto criminology professor Rosemary Gartner pops in to restore these “almost more gentle” killers to their proper status as victims.
Update – John B, points out in the comments that in 2005, a “loaded missile” threw his 5 year old daughter from a bridge on the 401, and then jumped.

The distraught family of a dead 16 year old boy allege racism on the part of justice officials who have not yet charged the man who took his life.

“If he was a native man and he killed a white man it would be first-degree murder,”

The Calgary Sun quotes uncle, Rick Bear Hat;

“He has taken a kid’s life over jumper cables,”

(They were wrapped around his neck at the time.)

If you find yourself choosing unlikely letter combinations.
h/t

To the casual observer, the difference between the white-tail and mule deer is assumed to lie in the comparative length, size and shape of the ears.
It doesn’t. The crucial difference between the two species lies somewhere between them.

As a cross-country driver of some experience, I’ve always found the behavior of mule deer to be disconcertingly placid. The creatures gather in small groups to graze in the ditches and at the road edge, lifting heads to stare you in the eye with a mixture of bemusement and mild alarm, They’re almost bovine in their behavior, but don’t let that fool you – they enjoy the head game.

Quite unlike white-tails.

The normal mood of the white-tail deer alternates between panic attack and severe clinical depression. To complicate matters, the species is particularly sensitive to “seasonal affected disorder”, the season that affects them most known as “hunting season”.
Which leads me to last Friday morning. I was cruising along the narrow secondary highway about two miles west of Souris, Manitoba when the early morning light was interrupted in a demonstration of just how suicidal this species can become when all three mental states converge.
The flash of movement was four white-tails, running hard in single file. The first deer crossed the shoulder about 75 feet in front of my 2000 Dodge Caravan – a vehicle with a front profile specially designed to scoop large game up from the pavement and deposit it in the driver’s lap.
At such moments, the thought processes that occur during normal decision making are replaced by the road-conditioned instinct that takes over when forced to select from a set of distressingly bad choices.
PRIORIZE.
One …SEMI ONCOMING stay in the damned lane and two BRAKEHARDNOW and get behind that lead s.o.b before he comes through the windshield now three – get outatheBAM!
As is typical of such situations, there was no time for a third priority.
Just as I lifted off the brake to jam down the gas, the second deer smashed into the passenger door, taking out the mirror before rolling down the length of the van.
I suspect three and four probably met their fate intersecting the space-time continuum of the tractor-trailer unit. I don’t know. I didn’t go back to survey the carnage. My van had suffered quite enough of that as it was.

But all things considered, the best outcome possible under the circumstances, with bonus points for coming out of it with a vehicle that’s still drivable. The only question remaining is whether the insurance adjuster decides to write it off, in which case, I may be a bit “SAD” myself. I’ve only had it 5 months.

You go, girl

Agriville Forum;

It’s amazing what a curious mind can discover, if you know where to look.
The following is a submission by the Save the CWB Coalition that has been made publicly available. What was interesting was when I clicked on File then Properties then Summary, I discovered the document originated from the computer of a JNWhitley from the Canadian Wheat Board. I then clicked on Statistics and discover it was created Oct4.2006 and was last saved by Yvonne Rideout KAP’s general manager. So the CWB wrote the submission and sent it to KAP, who then turn around and present it to Minister Strahl as their own work. These people are beyond reprehensible.

(larger version)
More – The Canadian Barley Growers have called on “the president and the chairman of the Canadian Wheat Board to resign for allegedly violating a government order banning advocacy for its monopoly.”

They just don’t make them like they used to.
Kris Robinson – “Chalk one up for the big girls!!!”

Around midnight they found a 69-year-old Huntington beach man naked and covered in oats.

The streets of New York are a dangerous place for a granny confined to a wheelchair.
Alone, vulnerable, and of course – there’s the problem of recoil…

At least 27 die as US occupation fails to ensure sufficient supply of flashlights;

“The looters seized the security vacuum yesterday as the police protecting the pipeline withdrew from their posts,” said Dr. Hussain al-Janabi, director of the Diwaniya hospital. He said he was told that the explosion took place when one of the looters “lit up his lighter to see if his jerry can was full or not.”

“…thanks so much for everything you’re doing to kill my business.”

For the private and public “get well” notes.
While I appreciate the helpful hints ” stick your nose in it and then swallow a few times, slowly drawing the salt water up into the nasal cavity” , and the advice “don’t try the hot bath and rum thing. Its a hoax. I tried it and couldnt drink an eighth of the the hot bath”, what I probably need most is to take it easy.
FYI, for all the references I’ve made to NeoCitron (or as one of you has suggested, “NeoCon Citron”) my symptoms have more resemblance to whooping cough than the sniffles. This has been going for on over a week, and it’s getting rather old. (To add injury to insult, I think I pulled/sprained my ribcage this evening. All in all, a helpful turn of events.).
“Take it easy” includes not having to monitor my comments section to curb runaway troll threads. I’d appreciate your co-operation in this.
And for anyone who decides to take advantage of the situation, I have a very good friend with the skill, the experience, but most importantly – the personality disorders – required to raise a mushroom cloud over your hard drive.
Now, as you were….

Alertnet

The United Nations is investigating a suspected child prostitution ring involving its peacekeepers and government soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the U.N. mission said on Thursday.
Among accusations being investigated is that pimps are using the presence of U.N. peacekeepers to lure vulnerable girls to go and work as prostitutes in areas of South Kivu where they are deployed, the mission said in a statement.
[…]
Last year, the U.N. barred peacekeepers in Congo from fraternizing with local people after investigations found some soldiers and civilian staff were guilty of rape and paedophilia including enticing hungry children with food or money in exchange for sex.

h/t

*.