As I write this, I’m at Ted Reeve Arena, the rink in my neighbourhood. My son’s team, the Penguins, is playing Ted Reeve Thunder. If we lose, that’s the end of the season, pretty much.

Sitting here, I’m reminded of this story. It’s been on the minds of lots of coaches, players and parents, this week.

The fact that it involves the Penguins and Ted Reeve teams isn’t the only reason. I’m preoccupied with it because my son, Son One, should be playing tonight. But the doctor won’t let him.

About three weeks ago, at a tournament in London, my son was driven into the boards, hard, by a player who used his knee to do it. My son was carried off the ice and couldn’t walk.

He hasn’t played since. Yesterday, I took him to the doctor, and was told that the damage may be significant. Tomorrow, we’re trying to get him an MRI.

It isn’t how we figured the season would end. Why did it happen to our son, and other sons?

Well, other people have their reasons for the bad stuff that happens in amateur hockey. Us? We attribute lousy refs. In the GTHL, we have an abundance of crummy officials. They’re terrible. They’re the dregs.

Kids will continue to get hurt if we continue to have refs who don’t know what they’re doing. To me, to us, it’s that simple.

The kid who ended my kid’s season didn’t get a penalty. And he did it right in front of a ref.

Want kids to be safer when they play? Get better officials.

Oh, and one other thing: it’s just a game. It isn’t worth kids getting hurt.

UPDATE: We won! Not dead yet!

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Son Three at this weekend’s meet, mid-stroke.

He won by going straight, going true, and without making any deals with an opponent swimming in another lane. Without trading anything away, in effect.

He won two medals.

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The only reason pitchfork-wielding Canadian taxpayers aren’t charging onto the Hill to string up assorted senators, of course, is this: They’ve seen it all before. It’s an old horror movie and they know how it ends: Badly, for them.

Suggesting that parliamentarians abuse the rules to line their pockets, therefore, isn’t exactly front-page news. Nor is it a uniquely Canadian phenomenon — the current allegations around Canuck senators Pamela Wallin, Mike Duffy, Patrick Brazeau and Mac Harb notwithstanding. It happens everywhere, and it happens all the time.

The Mother of All Expense Account Scandals, we reckon, took place a few years ago, at the Mother of All Parliaments in Britain. Then, dozens of Members of Parliament were caught up in an expense account scandal that makes our honourable members look like mere pikers.

In the Brit scandal, MPs were found to have expensed mortgage payments for mortgages that had been paid off. One expensed nearly $4,000 for a floating duck island for the pond in his garden. Another statesman charged British taxpayers close to $5,000 to clean out his moat.

Another parliamentarian, the “care services” minister, apparently cared quite a bit about his London flat, and expensed about $100,000 to furnish it. A minister of justice, no less, tried to expense a $5,000 flat-screen TV.

Other stuff expensed: Nail polish, panty liners and (my personal favourite) diapers.

Whenever an expense-account scandal happens — and they seemingly happen all the time — they tend to follow a time-worn trajectory. The media go wild, and publish more. The public gets mad, and votes less.

Meanwhile, the politicos always follow the five stages of scandal: Silence, followed by cover up, then denial, followed by acts of contrition, and concluding with resignation. (As in, actual resignations.) All to be followed by born-again religiosity and memoir-writing.

But, for all that, one question remains stubbornly unanswered — why do they do it?

Why do people in high-profile positions spend taxpayer dollars as if it were their own? Don’t they know they will always get caught?

One American psychotherapist, Judith Acosta, tried to answer the question in an essay. She was blunt: Politicians, she says, are sociopaths.

It’s a tempting analysis, but having spent most of my adult life around politicians I am inclined towards a different, admittedly unscientific, assessment.

Politicians are (clearly) goal-driven. They tend to regard the universe as a win-lose proposition. They believe that, upon election or appointment, they have been admitted to another plane of existence, wherein (as Acosta says) the rules do not apply to them so much, or at all.

I’ve also found that they harbour deep resentments. Every day, they meet rich and powerful people who want things from them. Because they work hard, and they don’t have much of a life anymore, they feel — and my heart sank the first time I heard this now-storied phrase — they are entitled to their entitlements. Rules, begone.

That doesn’t make them sociopaths. They are, instead, next-door neighbours.

They see the grass on the other side, they see it is greener, and they want it.

So they go after it, and they don’t give a damn who is paying the bill.

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As Daughter One and Son Two tear up the slopes, I write in the insanely overcrowded ski “resort” cafeteria. And I eavesdrop.

Based up the bits and pieces I have overheard, I offer the following:

1. The Ontario PCs have been hiring campaign managers and staff for weeks. They will vote against the Throne Speech and March’s budget. They’ve got a popular party and an unpopular leader. Despite that, they’re getting ready.

2. The Ontario NDP will let the Throne Speech pass, but will probably vote against the budget in March. The government will accordingly fall, and an election will happen, likely in May. The New Democrats have a very popular leader – and a party about which voters are less enthusiastic. They are less ready than the PCs.

3. Under Dalton McGuinty – who gave us Family Day, thank you very much – the Ontario Liberal coalition was mainly voters who supported McGuinty provincially and Harper federally. That’s why McGuinty was always careful never to move too far to the Left. His successor, however, wants to create a new coalition – progressive Liberals and fiscally-minded New Democrats. It’s a laudable goal, but she doesn’t have enough time. McGuinty’s coalition took years to create. You can’t create an entirely new one in a few weeks. Particularly when you’re in government. And particularly when your party has lost most of the central campaign managers who helped you win in 2003, 2007 and 2011.

So, after all that overheard stuff, what are all the Family Day families truly thinking?

They’re presently looking awfully orange, from where I sit.

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He’s in lane two. But he comes first with Daddy-o.

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Sayeth Emerson.

Otherwise, you’ve only killed yourself.

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Just noticed I now have more than 11,000 “followers” on Twitter.

That’s nice.

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Whenever a politician starts talking about “values,” you can rest assured whatever they say next won’t be particularly valuable.

Take Angry Tom Mulcair, for example, the hapless leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada (please). Last week, Tom got angry again, and started taking swings at evangelical Christianity. He was upset that an evangelical Christian aid group, Crossroads, had formerly called homosexuality a “sin,” and that it had received $500,000 or so from the federal government for its work in Uganda.

“It goes against Canadian values. It goes against Canadian law,” said Tom, who then went on to suggest that Crossroads — and, by extension, the Conservative government — somehow favoured categorizing homosexuality as a “perversion,” and necessitating capital punishment.

Now, it should be noted that Crossroads has since removed the web page containing the “sin” statement, and asserted that it loved “all people unconditionally.” Meanwhile, International Cooperation Minister Julian Fantino ordered that the funding of Crossroads would be reviewed — and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird angrily told a Commons committee that the government “categorically rejects” the notion that being gay is in any way a sin.

Angry Tom, however, was in high dudgeon. That wasn’t nearly enough for him. In a scrum outside the Commons, he said: “It’s shocking to hear Minister Fantino defending the indefensible — standing up today and defending a group that on its website is attacking something that’s recognized and protected by Canadian law. So it goes against Canadian values, it goes against Canadian law and he can’t defend that.”

It’s unclear what Angry Tom, aflame as he was about values and whatnot, would like to see happen instead. Julian Fantino (who was formerly the Toronto police chief, a position in which he attended Pride parades, hired a high-level gay liaison officer, and was regularly lauded by the LGBT community) ordered a review of Crossroads’ funding (and has since decided to maintain its grant). John Baird categorically condemned anyone who would call homosexuality a sin. Even if you aren’t a fan of the Conservatives — and I’m not — that’s not a bad response, on either count.

Angry Tom, however, was dissatisfied. He is after something else, you see. The NDP leader, dropping in the polls as he is, is attempting to style himself as the defender of “Canadian values.”

In that way, he figures, he can depict the Conservatives as un-Canadian in the depths of their tiny black hearts.

Politicians, as noted, blather and yabber about values all the time. I know — I’ve recently published a book on the subject, called Fight The Right. Therein, I note that politicos have been claiming for years that their party’s values and Canadian values are interchangeable.

So, right after the 2011 federal election campaign, Stephen Harper made his annual visit to the family friendly Calgary Stampede. There, beneath a Stetson, he bashed his opponents (as expected) and insisted his Conservatives are super-duper winners (ditto).

Then he said this: “Conservative values are Canadian values.” And: “Canadian values are Conservative values.”

Liberal leader Bob Rae — whose party Harper described as relevant as “disco balls and bell bottoms” — declared Harper was sounding pretty arrogant, which was true. One of The Globe and Mail’s resident greybeards, Lawrence Martin, agreed it was arrogant, and the Globe would certainly know arrogance when it is sees it. So did a Saskatoon Star-Phoenix columnist, who opined it reeked of “annoying arrogance.” In the Winnipeg Free Press, Frances Russell — no Harper fan — agreed the Stampede tub-thumper was a lot of triumphalism, hubris and arrogance. There you go, “arrogant.”

But what is really arrogant, instead, is any politician — previously Harper and now Mulcair — declaring that they have cornered the market on Canadian values. When nobody does.

Fantino and Baird did the right thing in response to Crossroads’ stupid statement. Angry Tom Mulcair, meanwhile, did what he always does.

He added nothing to the debate that was, you know, valuable.

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From Rob Cameron, at wemaketeeth@me.com:

Trudeau the first not harmful enough? Now, the not so bright son thinks he merits the highest office in the land. God help Canada. People like you, lawyers, should be prohibited by Constitutional Amendment from having anything to do with governance or public policy. You are a disgusting leftover Liberal cretin.

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From 1878. When I saw this today, in Montreal, I was amazed. Can anyone say how Max communicated that the girl had been among the dead?

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