There are more here. Watch them. Me, I’m my way out of the office to buy half-a-dozen Dodge Durangos, to pay for more commercials like this one.

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My Sun News Network hosting duties complete, I can now celebrate Stephen’s huge, historic win – and take a trip down memory lane, when I spoke before the Nova Scotia Liberal AGM!

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Live! A giant, disembodied, crazed head attacks Brian Lilley on the Sun News Network set on Nova Scotia election night!

Brian didn’t make it.

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Language changes.

Many eons ago at Carleton University’s journalism school, Prof. Roger Bird was listening to some of us energetically debate whether the proper spelling was “cigarette” (as The Canadian Press style guide dictated) or “cigaret” (as the Globe and Mail then bizarrely insisted).

Finally, Bird, who most of us adored, held up his hand. “Look,” he said. “Language is dynamic, guys. It changes all the time. Journalism, and society, have to accept that and reflect that.” Bird, or course, was right. Thus, every year, we hear about how new words and phrases are added to the lexicon.

The Oxford Dictionary, for instance, has just this year accepted “selfie” (a photo of oneself, taken by oneself), “phablet” (a device somewhere between smartphone and tablet), and, my personal favourite, “omnishambles,” which is defined as “a situation that has been comprehensively mismanaged, characterized by a string of blunders and miscalculations.”

The way in which we deal with important symbolic Canadian things, like our national anthem, are usually an omnishambles.

In 2010, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, to his credit, used the Throne Speech to announce that he wanted to restore the “original gender-neutral wording of our national anthem.”

That is, change Robert Stanley Weir’s famous lyric, “in all thy sons command,” to “in all of us command.” Two words. From what it has been, to what it originally was.

A national omnishambles thereupon erupted, with traditionalist folks, mainly Conservatives, braying and screeching that the world was about to end.

At the time, I opined that the Conservatives had made a mistake, not in the decision they had made, but in the ham-fisted way in which they had communicated it. They thereafter beat an indignified retreat, and the anthem remained as is, in all of its boys-only ingloriousness.

Until last week, that is, when a group of prominent women — Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats among them — launched a super-slick website respectfully requesting the change to the original words. Some of these wild-eyed radicals included a former Conservative prime minister and a current Conservative senator.

To those who would say “enough with changey stuff, already,” the Restore Our Anthem group say: “In our opinion, change never stops and Canada never stops evolving, nor should it.” True, that.

They go on: “An amendment of the word sons in our national anthem is one that is not meant to alienate, but rather incorporate, every person in this country who identifies themselves as Canadian — a definition that has changed significantly over the years and will continue to do so.”

No biggie, right? The group of esteemed Canadians notes, also correctly, that government has lots of other things to worry about. But tweaking two words in the national anthem shouldn’t take up too much of their time, at all.

Newspaper editorialists and columnists have mostly shrugged at the initiative, with most suggesting it is probably a good idea.

Most online commenters, who are overwhelmingly white, conservative, angry and wearing pyjamas in their mother’s basement as they type up angry missives, think the Apocalypse is nigh.

I side with Roger Bird, at that long-ago journalism class. Language changes, whether we like it or not. This is one language change that is easy to do — and overdue, too.

An omnishambles it is not.

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Snippet below. Link here.

“…According to the Toronto Police document, Lisi set about trying to retrieve a stolen phone in March.

Ford and Lisi (who has a criminal record for assaulting and threatening women) are friends and Lisi has told people that he has provided drugs to the mayor, which the Star has not been able to verify. Lisi has been an occasional driver for Ford and is known as someone who has tried to help the mayor.

…four days after the Star and Gawker published news of the crack cocaine video, Lisi made aggressive attempt to retrieve the video, visiting the home where the infamous photo of Ford was taken (Ford is pictured with a man who was later murdered and two men who were later arrested in Project Traveller).

The video, which the Star viewed three times, shows an impaired Ford smoking what appears to be crack cocaine and making homophobic and racist remarks. Ford has said he cannot comment on a video he has “not seen or does not exist.”

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Tune in!

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Glen Pearson doesn’t like what I had to say about Michael Ignatieff.  He says I’m “vicious,” “cutthroat,” “shadowy,” “arrogant,” “repellant,” “brutal,” “maddening,” and a practicioner of the “old politics.”  Wow! And those are just some of the nice things he says.

Anyway, I’m not sure what to say, or even if I should, having no recollection whatsoever of meeting Glen Pearson.  The only time he registered on my consciousness (or the public’s), in fact, is when he went on and on – and on – at the 2006 Liberal leadership convention, talking endlessly about himself, to the point that he stomped all over the time allotted for Stephane Dion to speak.  Dion’s microphone was therefore cut off, thanks to supporter Glen, who thereby impressed us all as a self-absorbed ass.

Having spent ten minutes this morning trying (vainly) to locate any evidence that Glen left behind any Parliamentary initiatives of note, I think he’s a bit upset that most of us didn’t really think about Glen that much.  To us, he recalled Pierre Trudeau’s famous maxim – you know the one.

In the end, to quote Himself, Glen was a loser, one who admitted that he and politics “never fit together.”

On that, we’d all agree.

UPDATE: From a commenter, who knows Glen well: “When Dion was elected leader, Pearson talked like he was Dion’s point man. When things started turning sour for Dion, we had an EDA meeting in which Pearson lamented that they couldn’t get rid of Dion fast enough, and had some rather nasty things to say about Dion’s character. He was Iggy’s man now.”

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Gary McHale is suing me.

McHale, who you can read about here and here and here, is suing me because I wrote a Sun Media column describing him as “an Ontario anti-Native, anti-police activist who has spent time in jail for his misadventures.”  He is also suing because I asked him why he did not bar racist Paul Fromm and the neo-Nazi Northern Alliance from attending his rallies.

I am vigorously defending the action, which will culminate in a trial in Hamilton sometime in the next few months.  I will be posting details about the trial, so that those of you who wish to attend can do so.  I fully expect the far right to be in attendance, too, as they have done so in various other such lawsuits against me in the past.

I am also seeking contributions for costs of defending McHale’s lawsuit.  If you want to contribute, please click on the “donate” button to the left, under the blogroll.  It’s going to be expensive, because we plan to fight McHale every step of the way.  If you want to donate directly to my legal team, Ruby Shiller Chan Hasan, you can do so by contacting them here.

My web site’s readers are (I think) the smartest folks on the Internet.  They have helped expose all kinds of things in the past.  I’m asking  for their help with some additional research once again, about these points:

• that McHale is anti-Native
• that McHale is anti-police
• that McHale has spent time in jail
• that Paul Fromm showed up to express support
• that the Northern Alliance showed up to show support

You can send whatever you find to me here, or in comments, below.

If you can help, in any way, I will be eternally grateful.  I intend to fight McHale for as long as it takes (in the Ian V. Macdonald case, the litigation went on for sixteen years, and all the way up to the Supreme Court of Canada).  Every bit helps, as they say.

Thanks, guys.

UPDATE: McHale has tried to post a comment on this web site, saying that he “loved this post.”  Glad to hear it.  So, to the many folks who have already made generous donations – and/or who have sent along kind words – let’s keep at it!

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NEW YORK — Does this happen in Canada?

Darin K. Williamson, who has been asking me a lot of questions on the train between Newark and New York, tells me not to worry.

“I’m on the job,” he says, lifting his plainclothes shirt a little to show me his detective’s badge, attached to his belt. Beside the belt is a gun.

Williamson had been asking me about the 40-odd Grade 7 and 8 kids I was helping to chaperone on a school trip. So I started asking him about the shutdown of the U.S. government by Tea Party lunatics.

Williamson is unimpressed. “All these millions of people going without pay this morning, because the Republicans hate one man,” he says, holding up a single finger. “Millions hurt, because they hate him.”

Williamson is right, of course. And, on the early morning flight that was ferrying the kids, their teachers and me to the United States, we therefore did not know what would await us when we arrived at Newark’s airport.

Tea Party fanatics wanted to kill the Affordable Care Act, taking effect that day. President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party objected, noting the act, called Obamacare, had been a central issue in the 2012 race.

The people had chosen to decisively re-elect the president, but the Republicans didn’t care.

And so, on Tuesday morning, nearly a million federal employees were “furloughed” — in effect, told to stay home because Congress had not approved the funds to pay them.

The airport had two or three border services agents on duty, however, and the kids got through.

But Darin K. Williamson sat on the New York-bound train, shaking his head. “Does this happen in Canada?” he asked again, sounding amazed.

No, he is told. Canadians may sometimes object to the leaders we get. But we generally do not experience very many bloodless coup attempts, in which the lives and livelihoods of millions are held for ideological ransom.

“You’re lucky,” he says.

For us, the government shutdown would be an inconvenience — the kids wouldn’t get to tour the Statue of Liberty because it (and other) federal sites had been shut down. But it was nothing compared to the misery and pain that an extremist GOP rump was inflicting on untold millions of seniors, veterans and average Americans.

If the shutdown lasted very long, some economists warned, the cost to the still-struggling U.S. economy would be as high as $55-billion.

Now, before we Canadians get too cocky about all of this, let me offer another encounter with an average American citizen, by way of comparison.

On the next day, we took the kids to the Museum of Jewish Heritage.

Much of the museum (necessarily) chronicled the rise of National Socialism, and the implications of that for Jews and others.

As the kids watched a video about the tragic wartime journey of the S.S. St. Louis, our tour guide — a nice older lady known to us only as Jill — sidled up to me. “What are you looking for?” she asked me. I had been carefully examining displays about the early days of Naziism in Germany and the countries Germany came to occupy. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I said. Try me, she said.

So I related the disturbing tale of how Canada’s second-largest province planned to pass a law outlawing the display of crosses, Stars of David, turbans and veils by public servants.

I wanted to see what historical precedents existed for such bigotry, I said. Jill was genuinely shocked.

“Is this actually happening in Canada?” she asked. “Canada?”

Yes, Jill was told. Canada. We may not have government shutdowns, but sometimes we experience things that are measurably worse.

“Don’t ever get too cocky,” I tell some of my charges later on. “They’ve got lots of problems. But so do we.”

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