Ottawa’s controversial mayor faces new conflict controversy

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 30, 2009 at 9:52 AM - 8 Comments

Ottawa Mayor Larry O’Brien’s decision to overturn a two-decade municipal ban on arms exhibitions in city facilities was controversial enough. But now the Ottawa Citizen reports that a defence and security industry show, slated to open May 27 at the city’s Landsdowne Park, will feature exhibits by Calian Technologies—the company O’Brien founded, and of which he remains a shareholder and director. The mayor has other problems: his trial on charges he offered to secure a federal appointment for a political rival, in exchange for the rival dropping out of the 2006 municipal election, is scheduled to begin May 4.

Ottawa Citizen

Suicide attack targets Afghanistan's beleaguered police

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 30, 2009 at 9:51 AM - 0 Comments

Canadian soldiers were reportedly keeping Afghan police away from the site where a suicide bomber wearing a police uniform killed nine and wounded eight in Afghanistan today. The attack took place in a police headquarters, highlighting yet again the vulnerability of Afghan’s under-trained and under-funded police.  An Associated Press reporter and photographer was apparently prevented by Canadian troops from taking pictures. The pressing need to improve the lot of Afghan police was highlighted in mid-March, when Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon and Trade Minister Stockwell Day visited Kandahar.

Associated Press

Pakistani forces storm Lahore police academy that had been captured by militants

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 30, 2009 at 9:50 AM - 0 Comments

Pakistani security forces have recaptured a police academy in Lahore that had been seized by armed militants earlier today. The siege was ended in a gunfight that lasted between 10 and 15 minutes and freed dozens of people who were trapped inside the compound. It is as yet unclear how many people are dead, with reports varying between four and 40. Pakistan has suffered numerous attacks by Islamist militants in recent months, though no one has claimed responsibility for today’s assault.

BBC News

Would This Have Happened to Billy Mays?

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, March 30, 2009 at 9:12 AM - 6 Comments

The big news over the weekend was not the GM guy resigning or even the news that Canadian broadcasters are doing better than they’d care to admit.

No, the biggest news in the world was the report that Vince, the Shamwow! guy, was arrested in Florida last month following “a violent confrontation with a prostitute.” His mug shot is already famous. Will this hurt his career as a low-budget TV pitchman? There’s no way of knowing, but this may validate the decision by the Snuggie people not to tie themselves to one on-camera pitchman. (Sure, the voice-over narrator could get arrested for something, but it’s not the same thing.)

And does it seem to you that celebrities get in legal trouble in Florida more often than other places? I don’t have any statistical evidence of this; it’s just that when I hear a celebrity was arrested in Florida, I find myself thinking: “Florida. Of course.”

Let the games begin

By kadyomalley - Monday, March 30, 2009 at 8:00 AM - 12 Comments

After months of preparation and preemptive legal wrangling, the much-anticipated public hearings on the Mulroney/Schreiber affair are finally about to begin! And ITQ will be there, gavel to gavel, at least, for the first day — and likely a good number of subsequent days between now and the end of May when the first round of hearings are slated to wrap up.

(Although not, alas, tomorrow since we will be winging our way to the UK for a very special Outside The Queensway adventure.)

Anyway, on the witness list for today are two former ministers:

• Bill McKnight, who served under Brian Mulroney in a variety of cabinet capacities, including Defence — which is what brings him to Old City Hall today — and who defended the former prime minister after his testimony before the Ethics committee last year, calling Schreiber “scuzzy” while dismissing the allegations against Mulroney as having “nothing to it”
• Marc Lalonde, a Trudeau-era Swiss Army Knife of a minister who subsequently worked for Schreiber in the mid-90s, and who, according to CBC’s fifth estate, may have omitted some details of his work on the Airbus file from his testimony before the committee last year.

9:08:43 AM
Okay, remember how I said that there was a surprisingly good turnout of reporters on Thursday? Well, compared to this morning, that was nothing — as you might have expected, it’s a madhouse today, comparitively – heck, even objectively speaking, although a madhouse that will run like a Swiss clock factory if the designated media handler, Barry McLoughlin, has anything to say about it. Bedlam by Ikea. Wait, that’s Swedish, not Swiss, but you know what I mean, I’m sure.

Anyway, I got here twenty minutes early and still only just managed to score a seat inside the hearing room itself; there is, of course, an overflow room with a TV feed, but that’s really not the same as being right there in the thick of it.

Come to think of it, it seems as though there are more lawyers here as well – or maybe they’re deliberately spreading out to give the right sense of drama for the eight-man strong phalanx of cameras currently shooting the all important establishing footage.

Also, I can report that, on the fashion front , pinstripe has indisputably won the day over all rivals. Someone should check the proactive disclosure filings for Justice to see if the department bought out the entire stash at Moore’s, or wherever government lawyers go to dress for litigation success.

9:19:15 AM
And there goes the camera phalanx, in pursuit of the not remotely elusive Karlheinz Schreiber, who is likely the only party who will show up today in person.

Ten minutes to go!

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GallowayWatch: Yes, that will calm things right down.

By kadyomalley - Monday, March 30, 2009 at 7:45 AM - 53 Comments

From the Toronto Star’s report on yesterday’s hearing:

Gold also said there was a possibility that if Galloway attempted to enter Canada, he could be detained and placed in custody until immigration authorities ruled on his case.

At this point, I’m thinking the best possible outcome for the government at this point is for the border officer to take one look at Galloway and wave him through, and as soon as he steps on Canadian ground, a mass wave of ultra neuron-specific short term amnesia rays blanket the entire country, leaving us unharmed, but with no memory of anything related to the debacle that has unfolded over the last ten days.  (It’s also possible I’ve been spending too much time thinking about Dollhouse.)

Literary theft

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 30, 2009 at 3:16 AM - 14 Comments

More on the very real problem of cabinet ministers encountering petty crime.

The thief who nabbed my bag will have found a copy of Mark Helprin’s novel Winter’s Tale, and Cdn poet David Manicom’s Theology of Swallows.

I hope my thief reads them. (Wagers on the chances of that?). Both are moving works in part about redemption.

Ignatieff in Victoria

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, March 29, 2009 at 10:18 PM - 30 Comments

The recording of Michael Ignatieff’s every public moment continues. Video from his Victoria town hall after the jump. More here.

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GallowayWatch: Is that a petard that I see before me?

By kadyomalley - Sunday, March 29, 2009 at 10:07 PM - 25 Comments

Oh, probably not. I’ll say it right now — I’ll be somewhat gobsmacked if the court grants the requested injunction, although I wouldn’t be surprised if his ruling includes some rather pointed commentary about the way the government has handled the file.

But the following media accounts from today’s hearing suggests that even if the outcome is all but a foregone conclusion, it wasn’t quite the open and shut case that some were predicting.

From CanWest:

Stephen Gold, a federal lawyer, told the judge that, notwithstanding the government’s letter, no one has barred Galloway from Canada yet, and therefore, the court cannot over-rule a determination that has not yet been made. Only after a border guard refused Galloway entry could he seek remedy from the court, Gold said.

“The designated power resides in the (Canada Border Services Agency) officer, notwithstanding that there was a preliminary assessment done,” Gold said.

Martineau said the government’s case in keeping Galloway out is weakened because, “I am relying on pure hearsay evidence” that Galloway in fact brought aid to Gaza. “I have no firsthand affidavit evidence on the allegations that have been levelled,” he said.

“Has there been any evidence or ruling or determination of the nature . . . which make it a concluding finding of fact that the applicant has been engaged in terrorism?” he asked Gold. “All the evidence that I have, including yours, is mostly hearsay.”

“It cannot be said that a serious issue arises when the decision hasn’t been made,” Gold replied.

… and from Canadian Press:

The central issue for both Jackman and government lawyers in court Sunday was whether the letter constituted a decision on Galloway’s admissibility into Canada.

Department of Justice lawyer Stephen Gold said the letter was a matter of courtesy to Galloway, so that the five-time MP didn’t show up at a border crossing and run the risk of being detained.

“It was a courtesy letter, an information letter, although it may have been unusual,” said Gold, who at one point had to ask the judge to silence the sometimes raucous reactions from Galloway supporters in the overcrowded courtroom.

The letter did not constitute a final decision because Galloway had not yet gone to a point of entry and therefore not submitted to an examination by border officials, so there is nothing for the court to rule on, Gold said.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has said he did not ask the Canada Border Services Agency to rule on Galloway’s admissibility, but would not use his ministerial power to overturn their decision.

Jackman said the letter was in effect a final decision because border officers take into account any information from the minister, and the letter would therefore greatly bias their decision.

Gold said the decision to allow or disallow entry to a person at a point of entry lies with the border officers, and if the court decides to let Galloway in it would usurp the officer’s authority.

“May have been unusual”. May? Or was?

Continue…

Stephen Harper talks to Americans (and Canadians)

By macleans.ca - Sunday, March 29, 2009 at 5:47 PM - 7 Comments

In the United States for a quick media tour before going to Europe for meetings of the G20, Prime Minister Stephen Harper talked with Fox News’ Chris Wallace about the economy, Afghanistan and the auto industry. “Obviously, the Al Qaeda insurgency and the Al Qaeda element of this has to be—has to be eliminated. I think we agree with that,” he told Wallace, attempting to clarify his comments on the mission in Afghanistan. “I just think it would be unrealistic to suggest we’re going to eliminate every last domestic insurgent in Afghanistan. Certainly, the history of the country would indicate that’s not a very realistic objective, and I think we have to have realistic objectives.” Before leaving for D.C., Harper sat down with CTV’s Craig Oliver. Sunday afternoon, he spoke to Canwest’s Sheldon Alberts.

FOX TRANSCRIPT
CANWEST TRANSCRIPT
CTV VIDEO

If it's Sunday morning (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, March 29, 2009 at 4:57 PM - 5 Comments

A transcript of the Prime Minister’s appearance on Fox is now online. One excerpt below.

WALLACE: You said recently that Afghanistan has had an insurgency for most of its history, and then you added this, “Quite frankly, we are not going to ever defeat the insurgency.” Prime Minister, does that mean that we’re going to have to learn to live with Al Qaida and the Taliban in that part of the world?

HARPER: No, I wouldn’t — I wouldn’t put it that way. I think what Secretary Gates said is correct, that first of all, we absolutely have to see the elimination of any kind of threat to the wider world, to North America.

Obviously, the Al Qaida insurgency and the Al Qaida element of this has to be — has to be eliminated. I think we agree with that. In terms of the rest of it, you know, I don’t think it’s a case that we — we’ve got to see progress on the insurgency. We’ve got to see a state where the Afghan government can handle its own day-to-day security. I just think it would be unrealistic to suggest we’re going to eliminate every last domestic insurgent in Afghanistan. Certainly, the history of the country would indicate that’s not a very realistic objective, and I think we have to have realistic objectives.

Continue…

Crime is real, just not easy to combat

By John Geddes - Sunday, March 29, 2009 at 3:40 PM - 47 Comments

I agree with Jason Kenney’s tweeted observation about crime being for real.

But what sorts of crime are on the rise? And what’s to be done to combat it?

Continue…

If it's Sunday afternoon

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, March 29, 2009 at 3:31 PM - 13 Comments

The Prime Minister talks to Canwest.

Look, I can only say this, and I’m not saying to cast judgment on who was right or wrong — but the fact of the matter was that the Iraq war destroyed at least temporarily, or disrupted, NATO’s sense of commonality of purpose in Afghanistan. 

Jason Kenney is unimpressed (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, March 29, 2009 at 1:02 PM - 43 Comments

Taunting Dan Gardner, via Twitter.

My rental car was broken into, window smashed, etc., earlier today. Crime problem is for real.

If it's Sunday morning

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, March 29, 2009 at 12:45 PM - 3 Comments

Fox interview with the Prime Minister doesn’t appear to be online yet.

Interview with CTV is here.

UPDATED: GallowayWatch: The first of several moments of truth arrives … in Toronto.

By kadyomalley - Sunday, March 29, 2009 at 10:46 AM - 18 Comments

Oh, if only Team Galloway had picked an Ottawa courtroom for today’s emergency injunction-related festivities. ITQ would be there with liveblogging bells on. Fingers and toes, even, although the former would making typing a bit of a challenge. But alas, it is not.

Anyway, according to a media advisory put out by the Toronto Coalition to Stop the War, which has been acting as de facto media clearinghouse for the cottage industry that has sprung up around the government’s fateful decision to bar George Galloway from Canada, supporters of the I-bet-Jason-Kenney’s-office-wishes-he-really-was-infandous-at-this-point British MP are holding a rally as we speak outside the Toronto courthouse that will hear the injunction request. The motion, as well as the initial response from the government, which seeks to “strike out all applicants other than Galloway” as they are “not affected” by the decision, are available here.

It’s not clear how long we’ll have to wait for the judge’s ruling — it wouldn’t surprise me if it was delayed until tomorrow morning — but I’ll keep y’all posted. Feel free to use this as an open thread in the meantime.

Also, does anyone know if the other side – Team Kenney? Team Van Loan? Team CBSA? Team We Really Don’t Know Why Everyone Is Making Such A Fuss About This Galloway Cretin? – is organizing a similar pre-hearing demonstration?

UPDATE: According to CTV and Canadian Press, the decision will, indeed, be announced tomorrow. Hopefully we’ll get more details on what was said inside the courtroom soon. (And thanks to National Newswatch for so diligently scouring the wire on a Sunday afternoon in order to be able to post an update so swiftly. The price of satiated newsjunkiedom is eternal vigilance.)

Stomach-churning (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, March 28, 2009 at 1:38 PM - 45 Comments

Dan Gardner on the government’s latest crime legislation.

Is it broadly popular? Absolutely. Will it please the Conservatives’ disgruntled base? Certainly. Will it make streets safer or the justice system more just? Not in the slightest.

Stomach-churning

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, March 28, 2009 at 1:34 PM - 18 Comments

Dan Gardner on yesterday’s remarks from Ian Brodie.

Of course it’s not news to anyone that the Conservatives put politics ahead of good policy on this, but to see it stated so baldly, so flatly, so defiantly—it is quite literally stomach-churning. Remember this when we look back and ask, “so what did we [do] with all that good fortune?”

Hockey and beer

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, March 28, 2009 at 12:56 PM - 32 Comments

Jack Layton and Thomas Mulcair research upcoming hockey book at Thursday night’s Habs game.

Uncle Jason

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, March 28, 2009 at 12:26 AM - 4 Comments

Kevin Libin profiles Jason Kenney.

A few years ago, Mr. Kenney boarded an entire family newly arrived from India in his Calgary home while they settled into Canadian life. “It gave me, for the first time, a real view of the immigration experience from the eyes of a family that’s landed without any previous connections in Canada,” he says. “I benefited from it as much or more than they did.” Today, the kids call him Uncle Jason.

CBC's At Issue: Special voice appropriation edition

By Paul Wells - Friday, March 27, 2009 at 10:16 PM - 55 Comments

Andrew Coyne is away (but not for long!), and the news has given his replacement pundit the blues:

The Money and the Twitter

By Andrew Potter - Friday, March 27, 2009 at 7:56 PM - 4 Comments

50 Cent is well on his way to becoming his generation’s William Shatner —  The Master of all Celebrity:  

The rapper 50 Cent is among the legion of stars who have recently embraced Twitter to reach fans who crave near-continuous access to their lives and thoughts. On March 1, he shared this insight with the more than 200,000 people who follow him: “My ambition leads me through a tunnel that never ends.”

Those were 50 Cent’s words, but it was not exactly him tweeting. Rather, it was Chris Romero, known as Broadway, the director of the rapper’s Web empire, who typed in those words after reading them in an interview.

“He doesn’t actually use Twitter,” Mr. Romero said of 50 Cent, whose real name is Curtis Jackson III, “but the energy of it is all him.”

link

(thanks to the Handcaper)

Weekend Viewing: BATTLE OF THE NETWORK STARS

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, March 27, 2009 at 7:42 PM - 2 Comments

Hearing that poor Willie “Buddy Lembeck” Aames is having a garage sale to stay afloat, I went looking on YouTube to see if they had a clip from the episode of “Battle of the Network Stars” where Aames (then on Eight is Enough) inexplicably slowed down in the middle of the relay race, leading Howard Cosell to comment on how he seemed to be “relaxing” in the middle of the race. Not only did I find that clip, but I found that someone had posted a new batch of clips from Battle of the Network Stars, including Aames’s relay race slowdown. There are also other clips that were posted a year ago by other people.

“Battle of the Network Stars” was like “Dancing With the Stars,” only cheaper, more fun, and with more people you’d actually heard of. It was a bi-annual series of two-hour ABC specials in the late ’70s (it continued into the next decade, but it was very much a ’70s thing) where actors from shows on all three networks would be organized into teams, representing each network, and they would compete in sporting events to see which network’s team would come out on top. Howard Cosell, ABC’s star sportscaster, hosted these shows, and the insane brilliance of the concept was that Cosell called the swimming and running and jumping of second-tier television stars in exactly the same style he used for professional sports: if he had acknowledged that this was silly, it wouldn’t have worked.

The whole thing was covered by ABC as if it were a real sporting event, and in the best episodes, there were arguments over rules and calls and everything, as if the stars were such egomaniacs that they really wanted to win. One of the most famous examples was the early episode where Robert Conrad could not accept losing to Gabe “Kotter” Kaplan, and got genuinely angry about the whole thing (“Like hell! Like hell!), finally winding up in a memorable runoff against Gabe “Kotter” Kaplan. This is probably the most famous BOTNS segment, and ESPN’s Bill Simmons wrote a tribute to it a while ago.

Since this was the height of the “jiggle” era on TV, and especially on ABC — the network where brassieres were unknown — the show was partly an excuse to display Lynda Carter or Farrah or whoever else was available for a particular special. Saturday Night Live, you may recall, parodied this as “Battle of the Network T&As.” I refer you to the Victoria Principal/Cheryl Tiegs obstacle course competition:
Continue…

Obama and the confusion in the GOP

By John Parisella - Friday, March 27, 2009 at 6:27 PM - 9 Comments

One thing is apparent these days in Washington: The Republicans are lost and confused, and Obama is baiting them into making strategic mistakes. Rather than face off against a popular president coming off a decisive electoral victory, the GOP should be in a constructive mode. To oppose is a legitimate course, but it must be done on the basis of principle. Instead, the Republicans have come up with a document they tout as an alternative to the Obama budget. And they did this after the president used the oldest trick in the book—challenge your opponent to present an alternative. The GOP took the bait and the results have been disastrous.

John Boehner and Eric Cantor have to be the least-appealing spokespersons in recent memory for their party. Newt Gingrich may have been controversial, but at least he was thoughtful and smart. These two only add to the impression the Republican party is not playing its role as a loyal opposition. At the same time, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Steele, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Fred Thompson, Dick Cheney, and others are sending mixed signals, which will only ensure that Barack Obama gets his way. The Obama budget was an opportunity to debate the direction of the country. Such a debate is healthy for democracy. But the GOP failed to take a constructive and principled approach to it. Continue…