In Harper's Canada

... it's inquisitive voters out and fraudsters to the front row:

A Toronto businessman and self-described campaign volunteer who circulates in Conservative circles is facing a criminal charge for allegedly fraudulent credit and debit card withdrawals — a background that did not prevent him from sitting right behind the Harper family at a rally last week.

Snover Dhillon met with Tory MP Patrick Brown, of Barrie, Ont., at an event in the Punjab region of India in January and attended a Tory convention in Halifax a month later, appearing to violate bail conditions set in December that barred him from leaving Ontario.

Stephen Harper's campaign has come under fire for its strict vetting of rally attendees. The prime minister is also facing questions about how a former senior adviser, Bruce Carson, was able to work in his inner circle despite fraud convictions in the 1980s and 1990s and a bankruptcy in 1993.

Dhillon landed a plum seat in the second row of Harper's rally in Brampton, Ont., on Mar. 27, right behind Laureen Harper, her children Rachel and Ben, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, and local candidates.

In short, if you are an undecided voter and openly explore all of the voting options out there, you better not let the Harperites find out that you have been to a *gasp*- Liberal or *GASP* - NDP or *SHOCK* - Green party event, you could well find The Party ... and the RCMP ... have opened a file on you.

Meanwhile, we see the "Tough on Crime" party giving the red carpet treatment and plum patronage appointments to fraudsters.

All this from the party which ran on "more open and accountable government" and "getting tough on criminals" - the cognitive dissonance in their warroom must be positively crippling!

Irony, Thy Name Is ...

Brian Rushfeldt.

In a letter to the editor, Mr. Rushfeldt writes:

It is dangerous for a law to set up categories of people against each other. It violates the notion of equality in our Charter.

Coming from a man who has made a career running Canadian Family Action Coalition, this a truly amazing bit of irony. His entire career has been spent trying to deny others equality and equal rights on the basis of his religious beliefs.

Irony Is Officially Dead

When the man who ran on a platform of improving government transparency and accountability is refusing to be accountable for billions of dollars of taxpayer money, irony has died.

The Liberal Leader says he will not support creation of a special immediate-stimulus fund unless Prime Minister Stephen Harper agrees to provide some accountability for how the money is spent.

Mr. Harper has warned that the special fund is a matter of confidence and opposition parties will find themselves in an election if they won't support it.

Really, Stephen, is it that difficult to actually live up to the promises you made to Canadians in 2006? Why is it hard for you to actually tell Canadians where that money is going, and how it will be used? Or is it going straight into the pockets of your sponsors and you just don't want to admit to that?

Nobody Expects The Inquisition

Least of all a Seminary.

Apparently the Catholic Church thinks they have solved the problem of pedophilia in the priesthood - by trying to filter out homosexual candidates.

The authors said screening would help avoid "tragic situations" caused by what they termed psychological defects.

The guidance says the voluntary tests should also aim to vet for those with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies".

Among other traits that might make a candidate unsuitable for the priesthood, the advice lists "uncertain sexual identity," "excessive rigidity of character" and "strong affective dependencies".

Ummm...yeah...good luck with that. I imagine that the usual techniques involving hot pokers and the like will extract the "truth" from candidates too.

Utterly laughable is the idea that there is some kind of knowable and predictable test of someone's sexual identity. (There is, but it depends entirely upon the individual's desire to be open about their sexuality)

Tests for sexual identity, like any other personality attribute, are fairly hard to assess. I suspect the Church's hunt for homosexuals attempting to enter the clergy will be only marginally more successful than past attempts to unearth "witches".

Harper Wishes What?

Coming from a Prime Minister whose own party quite literally wrote the book on how to disrupt parliament, there's something ironic about threatening to call an election because "Parliament is becoming increasingly dysfunctional".

He sees the very force behind this situation every morning when he shaves - unless of course, PMSH doesn't use a mirror in the mornings.

As the leader of the CPC, and the current occupant of the PMO, Mr. Harper is unquestionably the man who has the opportunity to make parliament work, and yet by his own actions and words, it is clear that he has no interest in such matters. Everything has been about partisan squabbling - even today, he attempts to lay the blame for his party's inability to get some of their "key" legislation through Parliament upon the Senate and the opposition, taking absolutely no ownership for the intransigence of his own party in a minority parliament.

Schadenfreude - Was Evans' Blog Hacked?

I have no idea who did this, but sometimes schadenfreude happens.

It appears that Mr. Evans' blog got hacked in the last couple of days:



The header appears to have been replaced with a series of "spam linkage" for online (read bootleg) pharmacies.

You might want to talk to your hosting provider, Richard, it seems that their security (or yours) has been well and truly breached.