Because, perhaps, mainly-black men getting murdered in North Toronto meets with the same indifference that attends the murders of mainly-aboriginal women in Vancouver's downtown Eastside.

The Hill Times, virtually alone among Canadian media, gets it. From their page one story today about Airbusted:

"Section 41 of the Parliament of Canada Act prohibits members of Parliament from receiving any compensation from individuals in return for influencing or attempting to influence a member of Parliament. Penalties for MPs who violate this section include a fine of at least $500 and no more than $2,000 and disqualification from being an MP or public servant for five years. Individuals who are found guilty of offering compensation to MPs in influencing or attempting to influence carry a maximum penalty of a year in jail and a maximum fine of $2,000."

Sunday night, somewhere in the deepest Beaches. A good time was had by all.

We were there for breakfast with Santa, a yearly tradition, so we missed my former boss next door. When he walked in, I am reliably told, he got a standing ovation. And some PDA, too, apparently.

I can't recall this happening to Mr. Mulroney on his recent book tour, do you?

The latest from Norman Spector, who would like us to forget that he became Canada's most powerful Big Tobacco lobbyist, shortly after he left the public service:

...

"...at the end of the Mulroney era, Canada was rated the 5th least corrupt country in the world, according to Transparency International. Most recently, we were ranked 14th. Some of that decline is no doubt due to the proliferation of lobbyists."

My friend Paul at Canada's best and most honest news aggregator, National Newswatch, has reminded me it is unseemly to boast about one's soothsaying powers. Or that some of us predicted this would happen, mere hours ago.

So we won't, um, do those things.

Now, perhaps, Monsieur Dion will reconsider his party's stubborn preoccupation with climate change during Question Period (a) the day after Herr Schreiber drops yet more bombshells and (b) when Canada is experiencing one of its coldest winters since the Ice Age.

Or, perhaps not.

I miss the campaign. Sigh.

This one was my favourite.

Some months ago, Liberal Niagara Falls candidate, Facebook friend and SFH fan (go figure) Jim Curran was arrested. For months, he kept positive, he kept cool. This week - after a long ordeal for Jim and his family - he won. The Crown withdrew the charges against him.

My new book is about how to win. But it's Jim Curran who should be writing a book about that subject, now.

Congrats, man.

UPDATE: And another Liberal has been exonerated, here. And the NDP looks like jerks, yet again. (And the Martin thugs, too. But they were never really Liberals, so who cares about them.)

Anyone who thinks the Muldoon-Schreiber Airbusted™ Scandal isn't muddying the Conservative brand is on crack. If you get your news from Bourque Newsbought - with purchased headlines like "CANADIANS TUNE OUT SCHREIBER" highlighted - sure, you might believe that everything is tickety-boo in Toryland.

But my Spidey Sense© tells me that things are not all that they seem. You can mock me if I am wrong, but I don't think I am.

Airbusted™ is hurting them.

[Airbusted™ is copyright Andrew Coyne Enterprises, Inc.]

This is unfair. These two miss the point, I think. This is pretty unsurprising, considering the paper's well-documented antipathy to this story.

With the greatest of respect, as lawyers are wont to say, some of you folks North of the Queensway need to give your head a shake.

First off, not one of the MPs on that Ethics Committee claimed to be a trial judge, ever. Not one of them asserted that the Parliamentary Committee process was superior to a judicial inquiry or some other type of probe. It is merely one of the steps that real or perceived scandals - sponsorship, al-Mashat, you name it - goes through in a democracy like ours. And, in this lawyer's view, the MPs all did as well as a Parliamentary Committee can do, in the circumstances.

Two, declarations that "we learned nothing new" are patently false. Personally, as a citizen, I learned plenty. For example, I did not know a few months ago that Brian Mulroney received $100,000 in cash while he was still a Member of Parliament. If true, that is against the law. That's news, from the perspective of this citizen. But what did some scribes expect? Schreiber to produce the contents of the 18-minute gap in the Watergate tape? What really happened at Chappaquiddick? The secret of the Bermuda Triangle? Not me.

Because some people on Parliament Hill tend to only chase after the shiny ball, they miss significant developments in this sordid tale - like this. The widely-respected gentleman overseeing the Prime Minister's review has now decided to hire experienced legal counsel. That means this thing is about to get bigger, not smaller.

Count on it.

I can tell you that the response on "yes to comments/no to comments" has been unanimous - with one, one-word exception - so far.

No one wants it.

A sampling:

Scott Searle: I say leave the comments out, most people are stupid. I read your website because I think you are smart and I want a divergent opinion. Most comment sections turn into wars between pyjama wearing idiots.

Greg Betts: I'm one of the anti-comments people -- I had a blog that got out of hand because of comments, The site just blew apart. At the same time, heavily moderated comments sections can be useful and fruitful. Most trolls skip back to their bridge if they know that they need a name and have to make it past a filter to spew vitriol...I read your blog regularly and enjoy it thoroughly, but there are a number of times I would have liked to add to the discussion -- for instance about Chretien's secretive support for the Iraq war through debt forgiveness, Gulf patrols, and his covert membership in the Skull and Bones illuminati. Just kidding.

Mark Radke: I read your blog with some degree of regularity and I notice that you have now posed the question of whether you should accept comments on it. My vote is 'no'. I wish it were otherwise but, unfortunately, the nasty, vitriolic and, may I say, asinine, comments on the Globe and Mail site (on each and every story), are such that I can't bear to read more of them. In one sense, the joke is on me as I keep returning to them - hoping for an intelligent voice. I rarely find one. Incidentally, my leanings are quite a bit to the right of yours and I frequently disagree with you. That doesn't mean that I want to call you names (usually) and, in my view, that is what 'comments' sections usually become - name-calling. We're beyond the school-yard. I hope.

E. Heron: Just tried to send a comment to stick to your old policy. However, it didn't go because of the anti-spam tag. What's that about? Anyway, you have my vote herewith.

Rob Gilmour: Not that my opinion matters, but I vote with a resounding no re: allowing comments on your site. (Not that adding the word "resounding" really adds any weight to a single vote either...) I don't check your site 2 - 3 times a day to read what other people think. The problem with opinions (mine included) is that everybody has one. Please keep up the great work. To me, your site is named warrenkinsella.com, not "warrenkinsella.com and a bunch of thoughts from people I don't care about and probably haven't fought in one trench or done much other than sit in front of their screen at 3 am thinking about their next moral outrage."

The Christian Conservative: Don't bother with a comments section... it will only increase your risk of a coronary, after which we won't have any of your commentary to comment on... which would be kinda self defeating, no? ;-)

Neil Middleton: I too vote against comments. I come to your site to read your opinion. I think you do a good job of acknowledging opinions counter to yours by linking to outside sites. I visit them if I am interested. I do not think that comments will add much depth or quality to the site. There are plenty of forums for political discussion elsewhere.

Michael Slavitch: Comments are what did in [NAME DELETED TO AVOID HURT FEELINGS]. 'nuff said.

Here's what I posted about comments in the old version of this web site:

...

[This web site] doesn’t have a comments section: Warren doesn’t have a comments section – like Paul Wells, like Adam Radwanski and plenty of smarter other folks don’t – not because he doesn’t value intelligent feedback, pro or con. He does, he does. Warren doesn’t have comments because he is too busy to start policing the inevitable orgy of hatred and libel. Life is too short, etc. Besides, as an alleged lawyer, Warren’s reading of the law is that he would be sued, along with the defaming commenter, for permitting [CENSORED] to be called a [CENSORED]. If you want to comment, Warren welcomes your emails, at wkinsella@hotmail.com. If he likes what you send, and if it won’t result in both of you getting sued, he’ll ask your permission to post ‘em. But comments sections are out. Warren gets sued often enough for his own words. He doesn’t need to get sued for your words.

...

That's one side of the argument. Here's the other side, abbreviated:

1. The new version of this web site permits comments moderation.
2. Lots of you, for years, have said you'd welcome the opportunity to make a comment or two, and you don't think it would be abused.
3. If comments get out of hand, I can shut them down.

We can get into a lengthy discourse on what the law is, and my views on why “innocent dissemination” may or may not be applicable, and so on. But I won't, not yet anyway.

Instead, I invite regular readers to vote, here. Should we give comments on entries a try, or not? Let me know what you think.

Clinton is a regular correspondent, and has rethought his Iraq view. Here's his blog.

• Sue, win, then donate the money to some BC women’s shelters.
• If Mr. Mulroney was still in public office, he could declare these press releases as an election expense!
• Travesty sure didn’t mind it when a certain outside firm was doing it for Paul Martin!
• “Kick ass.” I like that, for some reason. But will it work? Again, who knows. Who cares. We’ll work hard to beat whomever they come up with.
• It's an improvement on bringing in the army to shovel snow, but not by much.
• Good story. Myopic Mathyssen, who only won down in London by 800 or so votes after trying about 100 times unsuccessfully, is likely done like dinner. London folks don’t go for this kind of crap.
• Remember Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte, Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz.

Knowing the MP in question a little bit, the allegation struck me as bullshit. Not others, apparently.

Turns out it was:

...

Tory MP falsely accused of viewing soft porn in Parliament amid duel for female votes (Politics-Women)
Source: The Canadian Press
Dec 5, 2007 20:02


By Joan Bryden

THE CANADIAN PRESS

OTTAWA _ Conservatives and Liberals duelled Wednesday for the favour of women voters but it was the NDP that fired the most sensational shot.

However, it eventually turned out that Irene Mathyssen, a New Democrat MP from London, Ont., was firing blanks.

Mathyssen stunned all sides by complaining that she'd seen Tory MP James Moore checking out a ``scantily clad'' woman on his laptop computer in Parliament.

Moore, a parliamentary secretary from British Columbia, vehemently denied the claim. And late Wednesday, Mathyssen apologized to Moore.

NDP spokesman Ian Capstick said Mathyssen phoned Moore and he explained to her that the photos she'd seen on his laptop were of his girlfriend.

``Ms. Mathyssen has accepted the explanation and offered her apology to Mr. Moore,'' Capstick said.

``Ms. Mathyssen will be making a formal statement in the House of Commons at her earliest opportunity.''