Waiting for the band
A week later
…and I’m still walking around, grinning, as I ponder the collective fate of Phony Tony and Benedict Baldy.
Equally, I breathlessly await their run on the NDP ticket, somewhere, sometime soon.
My first celebrity retweet
…and I was totally in love with her in my youth, too.
Too bad I called iMessage “iMessenger,” by the way. Factual errors on a global scale. Sheesh.
Liberals dead?
Chantal Hebert is way, way smarter than me. But this column has me befuddled. To wit:
Well, no.
Grits were written off as dead in Ontario – and we did a 20-point turnaround to win a minor majority. Grits were supposedly in big trouble in PEI, and came back with a big majority. Quebec Grits were supposedly beyond hope just a few months ago, and now it is their main opponent that is dead or dying. Newfoundland Libs, with a new leader, were supposedly going to be replaced as Official Opposition by the NDP – but they weren’t. B.C. Liberals had joined the ranks of the walking dead, too, until Christy Clark made them competitive again, and the NDP aren’t looking nearly as smug anymore. And so on.
I’m not one to be complacent – we won the Ontario election because we weren’t, and because we took our opponents very, very seriously. But these periodic obituaries being penned by the commentariat are really starting to piss me off. They’re just wrong.
Anyway, I shouldn’t let the crepe-hangers irritate me, I guess. As Chretien once said to me, when some of his opponents were (again) spreading rumours that he was dying: “The best way to disprove these rumours about me dying,” he shrugged, “is to keep on living.”
And so he did.
And so will we.
RIM/Blackberry are a joke
My secret life revealed, updated
We won at the Court of Appeal!
We won that case, which was a very challenging case, on every count. Shortly afterwards, however, Macdonald and Christie filed an appeal. A few days ago, that appeal was heard.
Without boring you with a lot of details, I can tell you that the Court of Appeal summarily dismissed the appeal. In fact, the appellate judges didn’t even call on our very capable lawyers (Scott Hutchinson and Brennagh Smith) to respond to Christe’s arguments. If you know the law, you know what that means. So, the Court of Appeal left the costs award of $180,000 untouched, and they ordered the additional costs in the Court of Appeal of $25,000. That means the total now owing is $212,000 – and counting.
The panel was the Chief Justice, Justice Sharpe (who I am told is widely touted for the Supreme Court of Canada) and ACJ of the court, Justice Cunningham (who presided over the Larry O’Brien trial). The short oral reasons of the court should be available soon.
Can the case, which started in 1996 or so, drag on any longer? Sure. Macdonald and Christie can seek leave to go to the Supreme Court of Canada – which is something only rarely granted, in fewer than 10 per cent of cases. They have 60 days to file their leave materials.
In the meantime, forgive me for feeling good about this one. It feels really, really good.
(Oh, and since we’re talking about the far right and the law, let me simply say that Kathy Shaidle’s life is about to get rather complicated. Stay tuned.)
In today’s Sun: racist is as racist does
Is it racist to be critical of a liberalized immigration and refugee policy?
No, it’s not. People of good faith can disapprove of policies which are aimed at boosting the numbers of immigrants and refugees.
In fact, it’s well known among political veterans that one of the demographics often most hostile to increased numbers of immigrants is immigrants themselves. As one seasoned campaign pro — a Liberal — once said to me: “Lots of immigrants get here, and then they want to slam the door behind them on other immigrants.
Bit of a surprise, isn’t it?”