From the Harper profile John Geddes and I wrote two years ago:

Someone who was there paraphrased Harper’s message to his ministers at his first cabinet meeting in 2006: “I am the kingpin. So whatever you do around me, you have to know that I am sacrosanct.” Harper was telling his ministers that they were expendable but that he wasn’t. If they had to go so that his credibility and his ability to get things done were protected, so be it.

“It wasn’t personal,” this source said. “It was his office.”

The doctoring of a Senate internal economy committee report to erase some references to Mike Duffy’s conduct was perfectly consistent with Stephen Harper’s long-standing preference for making questions go away rather than answering them. Nigel Wright’s resignation is an expression of Harper’s style, not a repudiation of it.

Already this morning the Conservative pity party is arriving at a run, violins at the ready, to play sweet odes to the purity and self-sacrifice of poor lonely Nigel Wright. But questions remain about a cheque nobody has seen, an extensive campaign to cover up Duffy’s actions that cannot plausibly have been the work of one man, and a government that remains more eager to clap itself on the back for its ethics than to answer any question about it.

It’s really sweet that Stephen Harper believes he cannot win a fair fight of full information in the light of day, but as an operating principle it is getting tired. The desire to bring every debate to a screaming halt rather than engage the debate is one of this prime minister’s two or three most obvious defining characteristics. It’s obvious even where scandal is not involved. As one example among many, the Supreme Court reference on Senate reform this autumn will hear three days of public arguments the Harper government did everything to avoid, first by stalling for years on the very notion of a reference, and then by asking the Court, pathetically, to bypass public argument and go straight to delivering an opinion.

We will see more of that in the days ahead. It is easy to predict, based on long observation of this prime minister, that any question about what this government did, what this prime minister’s Senate appointees did, how Harper’s office handled it, and what will be done to fix these attitudes in the future will be answered with, “Nigel Wright gave up his job. Isn’t that enough? It’s time to move on.”

If that is the response of this government, the Conservative party and its assorted cheerleaders to legitimate questions about Stephen Harper’s stewardship of your tax dollar, then you should understand Wright’s resignation as merely an extension of the runaround we have been getting for months […]

Hey folks!

I just spent a couple hours organising tags, so we’ve got a new tags page.

And with that exciting news, please return to your forever-changed lives.

- Kyle

Rob Ford distracted at flag-raising for day against homophobia and transphobia, omits word ‘transexual’ from remarks

yuriintroublenow:

i can’t believe that we have 12 more years of steven harper before his external shell starts corroding

(via kanyesianeconomics)

The Senate

Interview in French, 8 minutes long, but god is it worth it to stick around.

Coderre completely fails to defend himself, gets spooked and tries to bail 5 minutes in, at which point the interviewer, Guy Simard, completely flips.

“Non, non, salut Monsieur Coderre, on n’a plus besoin de vous.”

Rarely can one person change the course of history for an entire country. Elijah Harper did.

In the Manitoba legislature in 1990, Mr. Harper clutched an eagle feather as he blocked the passage of the Meech Lake accord – the agreement that had been negotiated between Ottawa and the provinces to bring Quebec into the constitutional fold […]

[H]e was best known for his historic role in blocking the Meech Lake accord that had been negotiated by Progressive Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney.

The agreement needed to be ratified by the federal Parliament and all of the provinces.

Mr. Harper and other native leaders opposed it because it did not guarantee rights to aboriginal peoples. So, when Manitoba politicians were asked whether they would give unanimous consent to speed up debate on the accord, Mr. Harper quietly said “No.”

That meant the province could not ratify the deal before the deadline. And because Manitoba did not give its blessing to the accord, it died.

“There was no looking back,” Mr. Harper said years later in an interview with The Globe and Mail in 2003. “It wasn’t done out of being negative, or out of spite, or anything. We were just trying to be recognized for our rightful place in Canada.”

Just saw a Maclean’s commenter say that “white supremacist” media is trying to dislodge Rob Ford because he’s popular with visible minorities.

Where’s the internet self-destruct button?

jakke:

The Harper government withheld tens of thousands of documents that it was obligated to disclose as part of a human-rights case in which it is accused of discriminating against indigenous children. Now, it is using its failure to hand over the files to try to get the proceedings put on hold.

The First Nations Child and Family Caring Society filed a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in 2007 saying it is wrong for the federal government to pay 22 per cent less for child welfare on reserves than the provinces pay for non-aboriginal welfare services.

Despite many attempts by the government to have the case dismissed, the hearings before the tribunal finally began in February of this year.

But, next Tuesday, Justice Department lawyers will ask for an adjournment of many months while they gather more than 50,000 documents that were required to have already been handed over to the Caring Society’s lawyers under the human-rights commission rules.

Hey so when the federal government got caught illegally hiding 50,000 documents which it was required to turn over for what could potentially be a very large and expensive human rights case, they responded by insisting that they needed the whole proceeding adjourned for months while they collected all those documents.

That’s it. That’s exactly what happened. That’s just how things are now.

(via supersoygrrrl)

As you may have heard, Rob Ford, the mayor of Toronto, smokes crack cocaine. We’ve seen a video of him smoking crack cocaine, and the people who have the video would like to sell it. Through the miracle of crowdfunding, you can help. Please consider donating to the Rob Ford Crackstarter.

THIS IS A THING.