In today’s Sun:

• Warren Kinsella (Daisy Consulting Group) 

“I think Trump has the advantage. 

“He was created by TV, and made famous by TV. He understands TV better than just about any politician around. 

“Hillary needs to take him very, very seriously. If she gets down in the muck, she risks looking unpresidential. But if she doesn’t respond to some of his low blows, he will win the war of the clips. 

“I prepared plenty of leaders for TV debates, but never a debate with stakes as high as this one — and never with the traditional rulebook being so irrelevant. 

“It’s going to be the hottest show on TV this season.”

This is extraordinary and horrifying. I am astonished by this.

If you object to Canada placing children, inter alia, in solitary confinement, contact your Member of Parliament here. And contact the CBSA, who are detaining children, here.

As a rule, I don’t ever name terrorists, mass murderers and their ilk. They don’t deserve the recognition they seek. 

But this New York Times front-page profile of the Chelsea bomber is worth your attention. What struck me – having written this book, and having written this one, coming out in the next few months –  I was struck by how much Rahami reminded me of the dozens of neo-Nazi skinheads I knew and interviewed over the years. 

He, like them:

• fought all the time with his family, or came from a broken one
• was disinterested in school
• had troubled relationships with the opposite sex, often involving domestic violence 
• had regular run-ins with the law
• initially was enthusiastic about the society he would later pledge to destroy 

The change – the transformation from unremarkable loser to front-page-news killer – always, always comes about in the same way: the young man somehow comes under the influence of an older man, who gives him a credo, a uniform, a brotherhood and a mission. 

And then, like all converts, all zealots, he starts to make up for lost time. 

Don’t just take my word for it.

Good on Butts and Telford. Better to not take money in the first place, of course. But this is a big mea culpa. 

I have. And here’s a bit from next week’s column, in which I, contrarian-wise, do so:

…like it or not, paying for the moves was within the rules. And the rules, believe it or not, were crafted by the very Conservatives now in a spit-flecked fury about it all. It’s right there on the Internet, if you’ve got a few hours to navigate it: executive employees (EX, they’re called) and Government-in-Council appointees (GIC) get financial help on what is benignly called “relocation.”

They get taxpayer help on the sale – that is, the difference between the appraised value of a house, and the actual sale price. They get money to help them in the “home search.” They get dough to travel home every couple weeks while the home search is underway. They get “incidental expenses” covered. Sometimes, they even get to access the treasury to cover the cost of cleaning, pet care (yes, you read that right), and something called “Accountable Sundry Expenses.”

Now, this may enrage you, and it probably should. But it’s been on the books since 2009, by my count, and that means it was the Conservatives who cooked it up. That is, the Conservatives now screaming and yelling about it.