Andrew Scheer, M.P has joined the blogosphere – another politiican taking a chance on speaking directly to the electorate without the safety filter of communications spin. He’s got comments open at the moment – go send him some encouragement. It’ll be interesting to see how long that lasts once the moonbats begin to descend.
He points to an essay by Robin Sears, a former national director of the NDP, titled The Left: From Hope to Sneers in only 25 Years. The essay is available here in PDF
Google’s HTML version.
Sounds like it should be required reading for our friends on the left. But go check out Andrew first.
World’s Longest Unguarded Sieve
If you’re like me, and get a sense that border surveillance on the US-Canadian prairies is more illusion than reality, you’re not wrong.;
A scathing new report by the union representing Canada’s customs agents suggests bad policy and slow police response have turned the country’s border into a sieve easily exploited by criminals.
The leaked document, which was prepared last week for a Senate committee reviewing security at entry points across the country, reiterates longstanding union demands for an armed presence at the border. Appended to the report is a list, compiled by the Canada Border Services Agency, of 116 ports of entry and distances to the nearest law enforcement detachments.
Nearly half are at least 25 kilometres away, with most rural ports located 50 kilometres or more from the closest police station.
“It stands to reason that distance between a police detachment to a customs port is not a perfect marker for police response time,” the Customs Excise Union report acknowledges.
“But it does highlight challenges posed by distance and, in some examples, clearly illustrates that even if a police cruiser could travel at high speed with its siren on, response times are beyond minutes and span into hours.”
There’s a reason he chose the words “even if”.
Andy Rooney On The Witness Stand
A lawyer’s worst nightmare….
Leading a parade of celebrity witnesses who claimed they were stiffed by a speakers bureau, Andy Rooney began his testimony Monday by questioning the wording of the oath to tell the truth. […] “No, no, no, Mr. Rooney,” said federal Judge Colleen McMahon, her head in her hands. “The first rule is the witness never gets to ask any questions … even if he’s a journalist.”
Rooney and others are witnesses in a fraud trial of Alan Walker. Rooney claims he’s owed $10K.
When defense lawyer Kerry Lawrence asked Rooney how he found Walker’s address, Rooney said he didn’t remember, but, “As an old reporter, we have a few secrets, and the first thing is we try the phone book.”
Hat tip to Wizbang
Damn
I just checked the TTLB ecosystem, and the readership surge here at SDA over the past week has moved the site to #18 position in traffic ranking.
Gomery: Open A Window
The way things are going, Justice Gomery is going to have to start checking for Smoking Firearms Acquisition Certificates.
(Former Groupaction Marketing employee) Renaud testified that Guite often said contracts would be approved only after getting the green light from the country’s highest political office.
“He (Guite) said, ‘We’ll look at the project, present this to the (public works) minister and it has to go through the prime minister’s office’ and that’s how it worked,” Renaud said during his second day on the stand.
Another four Liberal MP’s are reported considering crossing the floor. In my opinion, I think it’s the only way honourable Liberal members can preserve their personal reputations at the moment. This is not a new scandal – the odor has been permeating this government for years. Same sex marriage opposition is also a factor – it is not supported by the majority of Canadians, polls reveal, and it decidedly less popular in rural ridings.
Related – Captain’s Quarters is as attentive as ever to developments, providing a valuable linking point between his strong US and new Canadian readership.
Worthington says this weeks testimony has the Liberals “bracing for a bomb”.
Earnscliffe Investigated
Politics Watch has an exclusive report that the Commons public accounts committee is looking for a few good men.
Unfortunately, Mr. Warren Kinsella and Ms. Terrie O’Leary will have to do.
Even more unfortunately, they may have to be subpeonaed. There are a few matters about the firm known as Earnscliffe that the committee would like to have straightened out, and they’re not answering their calls.
Update The subpeonas have been issued.
Quick Question
Does anyone know of a “forum communication” or the name “simard” in connection with the Brault or other sponsorship testimony?
Just checking out something that probably means nothing at all, but I’d be interested in feedback, if any.
Reader Links
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.)
Shootout At The Yonge Street Corral
High noon in the heart of Toronto.
TWO INNOCENT bystanders were shot yesterday when a gunman opened fire on another man on a crowded sidewalk at Yonge and Dundas Sts. “It was terrifying; a shooting on Yonge St. when there are families and hundreds of people everywhere,” said Denise Lewis, 35, who was shopping at HMV when the shooting started on Yonge at Gould St. around 4:30 p.m.
Unlikely to make much more than local news – like the multiple murder on a reserve here a few weeks ago, these stories undermine the “gun control makes Canadians safer” mantra.
Occasionally, someone defends the registry to me – that the legislation saves lives. The debate ends abruptly when I remind them that it’s already illegal to shoot people.
Chrenkoff
Chrenkoff’s latest roundup of good news from Iraq is out.
Drudge is also headlining a New York Times (free registration required) piece suggesting the US is starting to look at winding down the military presence.
Two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the American-led military campaign in Iraq is making enough progress in fighting insurgents and training Iraqi security forces to allow the Pentagon to plan for significant troop reductions by early next year, senior commanders and Pentagon officials say.
Senior American officers are wary of declaring success too soon against an insurgency they say still has perhaps 12,000 to 20,000 hard-core fighters, plentiful financing and the ability to change tactics quickly to carry out deadly attacks. But there is a consensus emerging among these top officers and other senior defense officials about several positive developing trends, although each carries a cautionary note.
Some occupiers they turned out to be.
The Polls Begin
A new Eskos poll out has the Liberals slipping to 25%, with the Conservatives at 36%. We’ll be seeing a flurry of these in the next few days and weeks, with or without an election call.
Paul Martin remains undeterred! He’s taking the initiative and asking Justice Gomery to “follow the money”.
The Liberal Party will call on Mr. Justice John Gomery today to investigate whether large sums of money allegedly paid to well- connected members for government sponsorship contracts ever made it to the party coffers.
Well, I suppose that make sense in a way… during his years as Finance Minister his job was only to shovel it out.
Poll (PDF) here.
Where Were The Cameras?
Apparently, 15,000 people rallied in Ottawa yesterday to voice their opposition to same-sex marriage. As of 7:46pm on Sunday evening, as near as I can tell, neither the Toronto Star nor the Globe and Mail have reported one. single. word. about them. In fifty words or less, compare and contrast with the breathless, drooling coverage afforded by both outlets to protests involving equal or smaller numbers of people when the subject of the protest is, oh, to pick one random example, opposition to the war to liberate Iraq.
Emulating the New York Times. May their circulation figures be equally rewarded.
Manitoba Liberals Pondering Name Change
Manitoba Liberals meeting in Winnipeg this weekend are looking for ways to distance themselves from their federal colleagues.
There’s been talk of changing the party’s name …
Well, they better get moving before the best ones are all snapped up. The Alberta (fillintheblank) Party has a big head start.
Auditing The Auditors
MK Braaten watched Scott Brison on Question Period this morning. So did I. Unlike me, though, he actually took him up on his offer to look at the Liberal Party audits posted on their website. Here’s just a teaser;
I have analyzed the so called ‘audits’ that the firms have recently performed on the Liberals books. The Liberals hired public accounting firms PriceWaterHouseCooopers and Deloitte to conduct these engagements. As a result of analyzing these statements what I found is quite interesting. The engagements focused on the Quebec wing of the Liberal Party’s finances and also the Federal Liberals finances. Deloitte was in charge of the Quebec wing and PWC conducted the engagement on the federal Liberal party’s finances. In fact, these engagements are not audits but simply an analysis of parts of the Liberals finances that they asked the firm to analyze.
[…]
The nature of this engagement is so the Liberal party of Canada can tell Canadians that it has had its books ‘audited’ by an external auditor. The recent sponsorship scandal has been linked to the Liberal party and its finances. However, in this engagement report, Deloitte writes that the report only analyses encashed contributions from – and disbursements made to advertising and communications agencies. More specifically, this engagement is only analyzing the parts of the Liberals finances that the Liberals asked them to analyze at the discretion of the party,and nothing more. By using the accounting data provided by the Liberals, Deloitte only compared the payments made and received in the books to the amounts deposited and removed from the bank accounts that they were given access to by the Liberal party. Likewise, the report only analyzes the information of four bank accounts, at a single bank, which were provided at the discretion of the Quebec wing.
He’s been kind enough to flesh out the piece with with the donation figures to registered political parties by the Samson Belair/ Deloitte & Touche folks.
A must read, and a fabulous tip if you’re a hungry journalist.
Liberal Scandal Record
A brand new blog that chronicles Liberal waste and corruption. We’re going to see more of these, I suspect.
I’ve mentioned this one, in the past.
Definitely a growth industry!
British Polls Begin To Shift
“American abroad” New Sisyphussays margins are closing between Tony Blair’s Labour Party and the Tories in the just announced British election – plus;
” astonishing news is the continued rise of the fanatically pro-European Union Liberal Democrats, a party which, in our estimation, is absolutely astonishing in its ability to be wrong on just about every important issue of the day, foreign or domestic.
He then says the unthinkable.
Harmony In The Workplace
When assigned to cover a war zone, you’d hope that the colleagues watching your back aren’t carrying knives.
h/t The Corner.
Breaking Saskatchewan Weather News
Keeping an anxious nation* updated on continuing developments in the “Summer Weather Comes Early To Saskatchewan” story as it unfolds;
“Winter Weather Lingers Late In Saskatchewan”.
After a front moved in with high winds from the northwest all day Saturday, Saskatchewan residents were greeted this morning by rain, which has now turned to snow. Winter storm warnings were issued late last evening for the southwest. The sun rose at ….
Today’s weather here underscores the absurdity of the CBC’s attention to “breaking records”. The fact is this – there is no such thing as an “unusual” temperature on the prairies in the month of April. Or May. Or September or October or November. The only constant is inconsistancy.
Like the rest of the national media, The People’s Network is oblivious to this. For all the purported claim to “bringing Canada to Canadians for the low, low cost of $1billion dollars a year!”, Western viewers are resigned to seeing our presence on the national networks largely confined to residents jogging in January, snowbound in June or standing in a feedlot.
As someone snarked the other day, it’s a good thing that the grain elevators are coming down in Saskatchewan – it may finally force CBC reporters to look for different backdrops.
The Martin Connection
Months ago Canadian bloggers began digging through the Elections Canada database and discovered that a numbered company was the largest contributor to the party. Jay Currie asked; “Who is 55555 Inc.? Why did it/they give the Liberal Party $2,974,341.20? What did they get in return.?”
Mike Brock produced a chart.
MK Braaten;
Previously, Chuck Guite testified that he recalled that he had a telephone conversation with Terrie O’Leary who told him that “Paul would prefer (Earnscliffe)” for advertising contracts. Earnscliffe is an advertising/consulting firm which has very close ties with Paul Martin and was a large supporter in his leadership bid. In return, Earnscliffe’s owners David Herle and John Webster, who are also the national Liberal Co-chairs, donated nearly 3 million dollars to the Liberal party through a container company #55555 Inc. In total, Earnscliffe has earned over $6 Million dollars in government contracts under Martin’s watch. The question remains is whether Martin deliberately diverted contracts toward Earnscliffe, which is operated by Liberal party members, who then diverted money through #55555 Inc and back to the Liberal party. A phantom company with no previous history turned out to be the largest contributor towards the Liberal party in 2003; this definitely seems odd. Why else would a container company, whose financial statements are not public, donate millions of dollars to the Liberals? Similarly, Groupaction was given millions of dollars in contracts and was used as a container company. Government contract money would be ‘washed’ through Groupaction before it was illegally returned to the Liberal party disguised as donations. When Martin was running for leadership, Shelia Copps dared Martin to reveal who donated to his leadership campaign. Mr. Martin responded that the money was in a ‘blind trust’ and he did not know who contributed. Why the secrecy?
Discussion of this numbered company has arisen previously – without doing a lot of surfing around, it seems to me that the explanation given was that it represented the surplus from Paul Martin’s leadership campaign.
Now, here’s a question I can’t answer – perhaps readers can. What are the reporting procedures on donations to party leadership campaigns? Someone have Sheila Copps’ phone number?
9th Of April
The 9th of April has proven that the free world now has the guts and the required determination to make the change and throw the legacy of the past century behind its back; dictators shall be endorsed no more and the struggle will continue until humanity is freed from its dark nightmare that lasted way longer than it should have.
The winds of change that have blown away the tyrant in Iraq have begun to reach more and more people everyday and the heroic stand of Iraqis is inspiring freedom lovers in Beirut and Cairo, Kuwait and Bahrain, Arabia and Damascus; people are screaming enough is enough; enough for tyranny, enough for repression and enough for slavery.
Some naysayers and losers will say that terror had marked the past two years in Iraq but we the Iraqis believe that terrorism is merely the defeated remnants of evil fed by the other tyrants who got terrified from the fall of their demonic master. They’re holding onto a weak thread that will soon be broken no matter how hard they try.
Today we can see the idol of terror shaking and losing balance from the powerful strike Iraqis had given it on the glorious election day; the day when the world stood amazed before the extraordinary bravery of Iraqis defying fear and walking through bullets and bombs to say their word and give terror the purple finger.