Why Is This Man Smiling?

Could it be because Senator Duffy was tipped off by the man investigating him for expense improprieties?

Or could it be because once more, an errant staff member is to blame for Conservative 'irregularities'?

'Is There No Honour In This Man?'

So asks MP Charlie Angus about the subject of this video report, Mike Duffy, who, as we learn, has even less integrity than it would be thought possible for any person to have:

UPDATE: Unbelievable - now Duffy claims he repaid the money in March.

Ongoing Outrage

The host of letters appearing in today's Star attests to the ongoing public outrage over the Senate porkbarrellers. Although in many ways a mere sideshow to the endemic and systemic problems that face our governance, it nonetheless illustrates that Canadian anger, when it can be aroused, can be formidable.

I am taking the liberty of reproducing a few of the shorter missives below, and I also highly recommend Thomas Walkom's column, in which he lambastes the almost jesuitical reasoning being propounded by defenders of this Senate malfeascence:

They preach austerity but secretly practice gluttony, stealing from the poorest of the poor to pad their many mattresses. For those Senators their day is nigh.

Richard Kadziewicz, Scarborough

Always the outspoken critic of everyone else, I think it’s time that Mike Duffy and his Cheshire Cat smile disappear and head back to Blunderland.

Dave Lower, Brampton

If you have lost your job and are collecting EI, the government might send someone to your home to check if you are cheating the taxpayers.

If you are a senator, the prime minister and government House leader will defend your expenses in the House of Commons.

Why the difference? Because they know where you live, but they do not know where the senators live.

Keith Parkinson, Cambridge

Surely smart people like Ms Wallin and Mr Duffy had some question in their minds as to the validity of their expenses and residency status as they completed their expense forms and filed their residence confirmation documents. These actions from our appointed leaders are disgusting and Canadians do not deserve this treatemnt.. Let’s boot them out of the Senate now.

Doug Gameroff, Toronto

If Mike Duffy was unable to read the rules and understand them when most of the senators did, then it follows he is too dumb to be in the Senate. Shame! Resign!

Stella Watson, Toronto

This One Isn't Much of a Challenge

But apparently our Prime Minister heartily disagrees, constitutional requirements notwithstanding (BNA Act 23:5).

Does Mike Duffy Have 'Pump Head'? - UPDATED

Well, in the tried and true tradition of governments announcing embarrassing news on Fridays, 'P.E.I. Senator' Mike Duffy kinda sorta admitted to maybe an error, thanks to 'confusing senate forms' asking for his primary residence. Not that he did anything wrong, of course, but after 80 days of what Tim Harper calls a sideshow, the rotund representative of the island province told CBC that the issue has become a "major distraction" from the work he's trying to do for Prince Edward Island, the province he represents in the Senate.

"We are going to pay it back, and until the rules are clear — and they're not clear now, the forms are not clear, and I hope the Senate will redo the forms to make them clear — I will not claim the housing allowance."

The following video offers some analysis from Terry Milewski:

How complex or confusing is the form? For a person of normal intellect, not very, as The Rabble points out:

The form Duffy found so confusing asks first of all if a Senator's primary residence is within 100 kilometres or more than 100 kilometres from Parliament Hill. You don't need an advanced degree in geography to figure that out.

For instance, if you live, as Senator Duffy now admits he does, in the Ottawa suburb of Kanata you are about 20 kilometres from Parliament Hill, maybe less.

The form then asks for the address of the Senator's primary residence in the province or territory he or she represents.

Given the good senator's confusion, I also can't help but wonder if there is a story here that the media are missing out on. Mr. Duffy has made much of the fact that he had open-heart surgery in 2006, hence the need for an OHIP card, granted only to those who spend at least 153 days a year physically present in Ontario. As he told CBC,

"I had open heart surgery, ... I'm being intensively followed. The other day I counted up, I have six different doctors … so I have a lot of health problems, and the advice of my doctors was not to make a switch, to stay with them at the Heart Institute in Ottawa. And that's what I've done."

Open-heart surgery, with which I have some familiarity within my own family, entails the heart being stopped and the patient placed on a heart-lung bypass machine for varying lengths of time. An unfortunate byproduct of the procedure can be cognitive imnpairment, known colloquially as 'pump head', with a wide range of cognitive impairments and deficits that can persist and worsen for years. And while I realize that such dysfunction may go largely unnoticed for a long time in our senate as attested to by recent events, it does seem to be a legitimate question to raise in Mr. Duffy's case.

Of course, another legitimate and related question to raise is that if he indeed found the senate forms too confusing to correctly and honestly complete, can he really be competent to discharge his senatorial duties, given that one of them is exposure to excruciating legislative minutia that demands a clear mind to read, understand, and make informed decisions on?

Just wondering, is all.

UPDATE: Here is more analysis by the CBC's Terry Milewski on the issue.

"...a bombastic partisan apologist for the prime minister " UPDATED

The above is one of the descriptions offered of the much beleaguered 'PEI' Senator Mike Duffy in a trenchant assessment written by the Star's Tim Harper in today's edition.

Harper reminds us of the ease with which the Puffster abandoned whatever journalistic integrity he might have once possessed as soon as his senatorial seat on the gravy train was confirmed:

When Duffy was offered the Senate post, he told his old colleagues at CTV, he informed Harper the Senate had to be killed or cured because it was dysfunctional.

“I said, ‘I’m not much of a partisan,’ ” Duffy said. “He (Harper) said, ‘We’ve got lots of partisans, we don’t need any more partisans, what we need is people who believe in Senate reform. You believe in Senate reform and therefore that’s what I’m looking for and I said, ‘Okay.’ ”

Shortly after his appointment, that was Duffy helping to turn an economic update from the government into a game show in Cambridge, Ont., — not the House of Commons — coaxing voters through a series of adoring lob ball questions for the prime minister, a role he has reprised many times.

If you have the stomach for this sordid tale of prostitution, be sure to check out Tim Harper's entire evaluation of the man who has perhaps achieved the dubious distinction of fomenting even more public odium and cynicism about a government arm that has long ceased to be anything other than a repository for the party faithful.

UPDATE: It would seem that the people in his 'home' province also have Mr. Duffy's number.

On Porcine Behaviour, A.K.A. Mike Duffy

You can run, Mike, but given your now well-known behaviour at the trough, I doubt that you can hide.