No SNL sketch: this awaits you on your next trip Stateside.

I am a big, big Obama fan, as regular lurkers will know. But I think these new Transportation Security Administration rules – wherein they are permitted to paw your privates, in effect – are insane. And Obama is insane for letting them happen.

I don’t give a rat’s ass what the Fourth Amendment says. If some bureaucrat touches my kids, I’m drifting him.

From the New York Times:

In the three weeks since the Transportation Security Administration began more aggressive pat-downs of passengers at airport security checkpoints, traveler complaints have poured in.

Some offer graphic accounts of genital contact, others tell of agents gawking or making inappropriate comments, and many express a general sense of powerlessness and humiliation. In general passengers are saying they are surprised by the intimacy of a physical search usually reserved for police encounters.

“I didn’t really expect her to touch my vagina through my pants,” said Kaya McLaren, an elementary schoolteacher from Cle Elum, Wash., who was patted down at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport last Saturday because the body scanner detected a tissue and a hair band in her pocket.

Comments (22)

The news that the Raptors have decided to trade Jarrett Jack has sent me off the deep end. Officially. I cannot believe the stupidity of Raptor managment – or their ownership.

I’m a season ticket-holder, and I’ve had it.

As such, I have written (while at my sons’ back-to-back hockey games, fittingly) the following three-chord ranter, which will clock in at about a minute. It’ll be on the next SFH record, if we can fit it in. In Toronto and environs, I predict it’ll be a huge hit.

Sing along – I know you want to.

MAPLE LEAF DORKS

I hate Maple Leaf Sports
The place is run by dorks
They make lotsa dough
But all three teams, they blow

CHORUS
Raptors – stink!
TFC – stinkier!
Leafs – stinkiest!

Maple Leaf Sports think its funny
To steal all of your hard-earned money
They won’t think it’s so great
When we burn them at the stake

CHORUS (fade)

Comments (10)

To wit:

“The country is essentially split into big blocks defined by geography, traditional voting habits, language and identity (see the Bloc), and nothing any of the parties tries shakes the grip of the other. Occasionally, it looks as if a party might be making a move on one front (Conservatives for a while in Quebec; NDP in B.C.), only to watch the offensive go nowhere. Meantime, no policy has caught the public’s imagination enough to cause major shifts.”

Professor Simpson identifies the disease. But who has the cure?

Hands up, class. We welcome your comments.

Comments (52)

…(highlighted) so I decided to post it.

Comments (4)

…criticism of Israel doesn’t have to mean playing host to a mean-spirited polemicist.

Comments (5)

Dedicated, two.

Comments (2)

Comments (47)

Golly, it sure seems like all that stuff they told us – you know, that there were only one or two “casual” chats between Messrs. Rae and Cannon, and that there were no backroom deals – was, well, bullshit, wasn’t it?

Sgt. Rae, at your service.

UPDATE: From a friend with deep Grit caucus connections: “Rae to Jerusalem. Smitherman to Ottawa. All’s well that ends well.”

Comments (23)

Okay, I’m sorry, but I have a total man crush on this guy [full disclosure: whose caucus I’ve given comms advice].  When I read this (highlighted) Tweet last night, I literally burst out laughing.  It got a lot of media attention, too.

Peeps, indeed.  Hilarious.

Comments (3)

“…by even making the suggestion in the first place, the Liberals can’t speak out against the idea of the extension without coming across as a bunch of waffling wimps.

Which, of course, they are.”

That’s a pretty representative sample of opinion on the Liberal blogosphere, these days. Grits seem to be very, very unhappy with the Afghanistan result.

Messr. Rae and Ignatieff’s volte-face – on ending the war, on Canada’s foreign policy, on ratification in Parliament – has clearly left many Liberal partisans enraged. They are certainly filling my inbox with that sort of sentiment. All of the various tribes – Dionistas, Martinites, Chretienites, even Ignatieff and Rae enthusiasts – seem to be seriously pissed off. I certainly am.

Now, most Liberals aren’t as foolish as Yours Truly, of course, and prefer to make their criticisms anonymously (for now). Having experienced how the current OLO deals with disagreement, I can certainly understand that.

For my column in this Sunday’s Sun, then, I want to provide readers with a sense of the mood in the Liberal Party of Canada in the wake of the Rae-Ignatieff reversal. So if you spot a Liberal blogger/Twitterer/whateverer giving voice to that – pro or con – I’d be grateful if you’d point me in their direction, in comments or by email.

I may be wrong about Liberals being mad at Messrs. Ignatieff and Rae, but I don’t think so. Your help would be gratefully received, either way.

UPDATE: That didn’t take long.  I’ve already received a snotty email from Jason Cherniak, declaring that I should no longer refer to myself as a Liberal (to wit: “at some point don’t you think you should stop claiming to be a Liberal…?”).  Ah, Jason: you just never change, do you?  Next up: they’ll start calling Queen’s Park.  Just watch.

UPDATED: Get a load of this: Jason, a Liberal official, has sent me an “Informal Libel Notice” (whatever that is) for, apparently, calling his snotty note snotty, and for revealing that he no longer wants me to “claim” that I am a Liberal.  I’ve told him to beat it.

Comments (75)