Breitbart;

Eight Olympic cross-country skiers, including two Americans and one former gold medalist, were suspended for five days after they were found to have excessive hemoglobin levels _ the first hint of scandal at the Turin Games.
The suspensions, announced Thursday by the International Ski Federation, last five days from the day the tests were administered. The U.S. Ski Association said the tests were taken Wednesday, meaning the athletes will be barred from competition until at least Monday.
[…]
Besides 23-year-old Randall of Anchorage, Alaska, the other American athlete suspended was Leif Zimmerman, 22, of Bozeman, Mont. The others were: Sean Crooks of Canada, Sergey Dolidovich of Belarus, Jean Marc Gaillard of France, Aleksandr Lasutkin of Belarus, Natalia Matveeva of Russia, and Evi Sachenbacher of Germany.
Sachenbacher won gold in the 2002 Salt Lake City Games in the women’s relay, and silver in the women’s sprint. She is currently seventh in World Cup rankings.
All of the skiers but Matveeva were scheduled to compete in Sunday’s pursuit events.

Well, this is likely to help solve Ontario’s energy generation problems…

Ontario plans to introduce a three-year price subsidy on power rates for big industrial companies, the Globe said, quoting unidentified government and industry sources.
The move is aimed at helping steelmakers, pulp and paper mills and other manufacturers at a time when many companies blame soaring energy prices for plant closings and job cuts, the newspaper said.
[…]
[Energy Minister Donna] Cansfield said the revenue cap on Ontario Power Generation’s unregulated facilities will drop to 4.6 cents per kilowatt-hour from the present 4.7 cents. OPG is the province’s electricity generating utility.
The cap will go back up to 4.7 cents per kWh next year and be increased to 4.8 cents on April 1, 2008.

Over CKOM radio, a Sea King heliicopter has crashed, near Denmark – all 5 crew members are safe.
It was with HMCS Athabaskan.
Related News – Paul Martin holds final “unapologetic” news conference as PM;

“But I feel very proud of what we have accomplished.”

Update: CTV has a report up now.

The downed Sea King is currently sitting in 16 metres of water in calm seas, and has been marked with bouys.

One hopes these are for marine navigation, and not recovery, purposes.

OK, so I laughed.

No soup for Jooooooo!!!!
h/t Jeff Goldstein.

Two readers have emailed me about this;

“I just heard an audio clip on cfra on the drive home that enraged me.
At an all candidates meeting in Refrew, ON. (“up the valley” from Ottawa) last night, a WW2 vet (one Mr. Tomkins) stood up and asked the Liberal candidate, Don Lindsay, what plans the Liberals had to compensate handgun owners for seizing their private property. Instead of answering the question immediately, Lindsay started by spouting Martins favorite line: “The United States is our neighbour. This is Canada. And if you want to live that lifestyle, perhaps you better move there”. The crowd instantly became very vocal and started shoting at Lindsay. Imagine the nerve, the GALL of this man to TELL A WW2 VET to MOVE TO THE US!
I was FURIOUS! And I still am…

Lindsay is running in Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke..
update – Lindsay loses control at Debate
CFRA broadcast mp3 audio here
Flashback – “take your NRA , GUN LOVING ASS BACK TO THE U.S. WHERE YOU BELONG”

*

This is the photo of Dear Leader and his supporters that is currently featured on the liberal.ca main page.

They don’t have a mole in the Liberal Party.
They have a saboteur.
Maz2 notices something in the comments – the Liberal website has nothing listed as scheduled after after Jan 13th..
Not even a Towel Throwing Event.
Update
That didn’t take long. The photo’s been replaced. Now Martin just looks…. depressed and alone. Maybe they left after learning they can’t keep the t-shirts.

Coyne has the best election blog meme of the week.

CKOM radio;

Federal Finance Minister Ralph Goodale is saying an attack ad running in Quebec was never endorsed, approved or released by the Liberal Party.
Goodale argues it is not about the ad itself, but the judgement that was made on it. The Liberal Party chose not to run it, and that he contends, is what is important. He admits politicians must be careful not to make damaging assertions without the evidence to back it up.

On Canada AM ;

Paul Martin defended the series of controversial ads his Liberal Party unleashed this week and continued his attack on Stephen Harper, painting him as a leader who subscribes to a far right-wing ideology.
In an interview Thursday morning on CTV’s Canada AM, Martin said he approved every one of the harshly critical ads — including one that suggested the Tory Leader would use the military to occupy Canadian cities.

Seems nobody told the Deputy Prime Minister, either.

I’m hearing that Paul Martin has actually now claimed that if property rights are added to the Constitution, it will open the door to child labour in Canada.
???
Is everyone in the Liberal war room absolutely certain there have been no recent meteor strikes in the vicinity? ‘Cause, I’m just saying…. there’s a certain flaccid quality to the Prime MInister’s face these days.
(Update: Paul Martin’s * announcement that he is going to propose a world-wide ban on spaceweapons… related?)
Now, if you want to see something really scary the Lanark Landowners Ass’n has a site that outlines the true “benevolence” of government when it comes to property owners.
And then, there’s this:

On December 29, 2005 Navan farmer Michael Vanhauve and his family were served with a deportation order from Immigration Canada. Although the family has lived and worked and contributed to Canadian society for eight years, a 26-year-old conviction for shoplifting in his native Belgium was cited as the reason.

Today, the Landowners are fighting the order;

The Landowners will assemble at the Vanhauve family farm at 3890 Rockdale rd Sarsfield (Highway 417 to Vars exit, travel North on the Rockdale rd), on Thursday January 12.
The house will be surrounded by heavy equipment and area landowners who will prevent any and all attempts by any officials to enter the Vanhauve family farm. The landowners will be assembled by approx. 11:00 am, the deportation order is to be executed by 6:00 p.m. additional background info is enclosed.

(Via Maz2 in the comments.)

I wasn’t going to let myself hope when Wells said the Liberals were toast.
I soldiered on, door knocking until my knuckles were sore, when AC said they were toast.
But now….

Paul Martin, in a scrum with reporters, after releasing the Liberal platform this afteroon;

“Let me be very, very clear.”
“The fact is that same-sex marriage and a woman’s right to an abortion are the kind of Canadian values that built this country. They are the values of my father and great Canadians like Tommy Douglas and I will not be the Prime Minister who goes down in history as having taken them away.
“The fact is that they are fundamentally more important than the preservation of Canada’s single-tier public health care system.”

(Or something to that effect.)
Update – The NDP have noticed. This is really their issue and if they can play their cards right, they’ll keep the soft NDP support from wavering to the Liberals. I’d be making a big deal of this, if I were Jack Layton.
Nothing on Conservative.ca yet. That may be tactical, leaving the field open for Layton. They’re not competing for the same votes here.

Regular reader “gimbol”;

I was watching the CTV scrum of Martin answering questions from reporters after his big speech today.
Gloria Galloway coldcocked Bucky with a question that I’m sure almost made him lose his lunch.
Not verbatum but I think I’m close to the verbage.
“..If you remove the NWSC and the supreme court decides to deny two tier medicine is a violation of right to security of person, what are you going to do then?..”
Methinks Gloria was reading your “SWTE:Martin Abandons The Canada Health Act”

I hope the hell someone was.
I can’t believe it’s taken this long to ask the question.

Andrew Coyne;

The parodies have begun. In our cities. In Canada.

(click the image)

I have a little black “geek girl” t-shirt I like to wear once in a while…

Heh.

Your assistance is requested.

If I can’t have a Bonsai Kitten, please bring me one of these.
(for those readers with tender sensibilities, the first link is a well-known internet hoax. If it offends you, go back to answering email from Nigerian princesses.)

Angry has a heads up.

Ottawa Citizen (via Bourques Voy forum);

Elie Betito is known in political circles as the chief spokesman for generic drug company Apotex, and can often be seen on the Hill helping the company in its ongoing campaign for changes to patent drug rules. But Mr. Betito got a splash of ink this week for something entirely different over an e-mail he sent to Stacey Cherwonak, a sport shooter and forensic firearms expert with the RCMP in Ottawa.
As a volunteer on Liberal candidate Bonnie Brown’s campaign in Oakville, Mr. Betito fielded Mr. Cherwonak’s angry e- mail last week over the Liberal announcement about further restrictions on handguns. He closed his e-mail with, “you lying bastards.”
Mr. Betito e-mailed back: “take your NRA , GUN LOVING ASS BACK TO THE U.S. WHERE YOU BELONG, E. BETITO.”
Mr. Betito admits the e-mail was written in “a moment of insanity,” and says he was provoked into the foolish move by the tone of Mr. Cherwonak’s message and his concerns about the Dodge City environment in the Toronto ‘burbs. He has resigned from Ms. Brown’s campaign and apologized to Mr. Cherwonak.
But Mr. Betito says he now feels like he’s the one in the crosshairs. Once his e-mail was posted on a blog, it spread rapidly among the guns ‘n’ ammo set across North America. He says he has received hundreds of e-mails from the U.S. and Canada, many threatening in tone.
“I have been bombarded,” he said. “I got concerned about my welfare. I never knew the reach and breadth of these groups.” Mr. Betito says some e-mails are suggesting a boycott of Apotex’s drugs and others were sent to his bosses to demand he be fired.
One message confused his gender and began with the salutation, “You Liberal slut.” One website posted his home address. ‘This is the greatest level of intimidation I have ever seen,’ Mr. Betito said, and that’s something coming from someone who regularly picks fights with the most powerful industry in the world — the brand-name drug companies.
And Take Your Beer and Popcorn With You
Meanwhile, Mr. Cherwonak is giving some serious consideration to taking Mr. Betito’s advice. “I may be taking my gun- loving ass to the U.S. after all,” he said. He is reconsidering his future in Canada because of the Liberal approach to gun control. He calls Liberal leader Paul Martin’s proposal on new handgun restrictions “a grub for votes in Toronto,” that may force him to relocate if he wants to continue competitive sport shooting.
The message from Mr. Betito did not surprise him, he said, given the party’s past position on guns. It was one of only a few replies he received after blanketing Ontario Liberal MPs with his e-mailed message of protest.
One reply from a Liberal campaign worker came with a suggestion: “It said you better practise because Harper’s going to send you to Iraq,” he said.

The post that started it all is here. One point I’d like to add to the Citizen item – Betito’s address was available on the internet prior to this incident. However, I hope folks let up on Mr. Betito now. He’s done the honourable thing by resigning.
There was a time when a citizen like Stacey Cherwonak wouldn’t have had his complaint heard unless a friendly media outlet chose to voice it for him. When the message is pro-gun, the likelihood of finding such an outlet is slim.
Those days are over. Within hours of posting the exchange, the information had been read here by thousands of Canadians, and through the multilayered network of blogs, lists and forums, to thousands more before the first dead tree story went to print.
Welcome to the brave new world of filter-free politics.
(More here on the blogosphere angle.)