Dear PMSH: It's Time To Drop It...

Your cheezy little lawsuit has served its purpose (mendacious as it was). It's time to drop it. Changing counsel about is just shuffling the chairs. The tapes you claim were "edited" clearly were not.

Continuing this suit is just demonstrating that you have no intention whatsoever of actually collaborating with the other parties on anything - not as long as you feel you have a club you can swing.

Uh huh ... Why Don't I Buy This?

So, now several months after the Cadman Affair burst open, the HarperCon$ are now claiming that a key tape has been doctored.

There are things about this claim that I simply do not buy. First off, there's too many other parts of the story that don't line up with that claim. Even if we accepted Conservative claims that Harper wasn't directly involved, the involvement of guys like Flanagan and other "inner circle" players means that Harper had to have been aware of what was going on. His micromanagement style guarantees that Harper knew damn good and well what his minions were negotiating with Cadman - micromanagers don't give their people that kind of latitude.

Suddenly, the Con$ervatives - a party that has hardly been overly concerned about honesty and transparency since last election - are running to the courts to try and make sure the Liberals can't use this tape in election ads - this on top of an unresolved libel suit that Harper has filed. So anxious the Con$ are, they cannot even allow the due process of the court system to do its job? Really?

There's an old saw about how one "doth protest too much", which tends to suggest strongly that they are more involved than they are going to admit to. Would the power-chasing Con$ pass up an opportunity to topple the Martin government? - even if it meant stooping to bribery of some sort? I doubt it - Harper's antics at the time don't support the idea that this is a man capable of biding his time.

My challenge to the HarperCon$ on this is simple: Put your case forward in court, and let your story speak for itself. If, as you claim, Harper is lily white, then it shouldn't be too hard to demonstrate that. If that tape is doctored in some critical way, that should also be fairly easy for your "experts" to prove before the courts. Now, the other question we should be asking is if the tape you claim has been doctored is in fact the correct tape, or is it one that your bunch of juvenile delinquents that created your "Dion is Evil" website cooked up?

So, PMSH, Who's Paying For This ?

So, Harper's gone ahead with his lawsuit against the Liberals over the Cadman affair.

The first thing I'd like to know is just who is paying Mr. Harper's legal expenses here. It better damned well not be the taxpayers of this nation.

Second, I'd like to point out that considering the kind of crap that his bunch have thrown about in their 'attack ads' aimed at Dion, I wonder how much of those ads counts as libelous using the kind of farcical sophistry that Dear Leader has adopted to justify his lawsuit against the Liberals. I can only imagine.

Not only is it extremely rare for the PM to sue anyone while sitting in office, it's beyond rare to sue the opposition in a sitting parliament.

From where I sit, this looks like still more thuggery from a two bit PM who has shown repeatedly that he can't handle one bit of criticism aimed his way. As Canadians, we should be worried about this lawsuit, as it tells us not only something about the character of the current government, but it also is nothing more than an attempt to ensure that an issue related to this government is not discussed openly in the public eye.

Turning To Libel Chill

How interesting. Harper now wants to claim libel over the Chuck Cadman bribery affair.

As is typical for a micromanager, he wants to control everything, and when something starts to get out of his control the first tool he reaches for is the threat of libel action.

He doesn't come clean on the issue, he doesn't provide a sane explanation for the events that are apparently so well documented. No, instead, we find Harper pulling from the Lyin' Brian toolbox, and threatening lawsuits. This coming from a man who spent much of the previous election promising Canadians a more open, honest, accountable government, and has delivered Truly Awful Government instead.

If we wish to talk about libel, perhaps we should be taking a closer look at the 'attack ads' that Harper's bunker has been lobbing at Dion.

Harper, Bribery and Dying MPs

Up to this point, I've been somewhat cautious about the allegations of an attempt by the HarperCon$ to bribe MP Chuck Cadman in the months just before he died.

However, over at Benediction Blogs On is a very good summary of the story that ties together enough threads to seriously call into question the events just before Cadman's vote propped up the Martin government just a bit longer.

Up to this point, I've been willing to give Harper the "benefit of the doubt", reading the situation as not much more than the shenanigans I would expect to have seen going on on Parliament Hill at the time. However, there's enough that doesn't pass the smell test here to make the allegations not only serious, but it calls into question the moral and ethical integrity of the current government.