This Is Most Gratifying

I suspect that Adam Carroll, the Liberal staffer who established the Vikileaks Twitter account revealing embarrassing yet publicly-available information about Public Safety Minister Vic Toews was speaking for many of us today during his voluntary appearance before the Commons ethics committee today.

Despite the predictable bullying from member Dean Del Mastro, who insisted that Carroll must have been part of a Liberal conspiracy, Carroll said,

“I disagree with everything Mr. Del Mastro has said. To use his words ‘baseless smears’ or, in the acronym, B.S.”

You can read the entire satisfying account here.

Tim Harper on the Vic Toews Debacle

In my opinion Tim Harper, a Star columnist with whom I tend to agree more often than disagree, misses the mark with his latest piece.

Entitled A mean town just got a whole lot meaner, the article laments the ugliness that has ensued in reaction to Toews' attempt under Bill C-30 to erode our online privacy under the pretext of ferreting out child pornographers. Toews and his government's resort to ad hominems, absolutism and other acts unworthy of a democratic government against those with reservations to the bill have provoked a furious response from the Twitterverse, including revelation of the ugly details of the Public Safety Minister's messy divorce.

Tim Harper suggests that those details should have remained private, arguing that Toews has done nothing criminal, hypocritical, nor unethical in his Parliamentary position:

In other words, there was no need to pull back the curtain on a family mess that involved others who did not choose politics as a vocation.

What the columnist ignores here is that the Twitter tactics were perfectly predictable, given the debased public climate fostered and promoted by Stephen Harper since assuming office six years ago.

In the Harper world, anyone who questions or impedes his government's vision is regarded as an enemy of Canada, a Taliban sympathizer, or disloyal to our troops. In Harper's Canada, anyone with a competing vision is villified, marginalized, muzzled, mocked or otherwise neutralized. And in Harper's world, if all else fails and real democracy threatens, there is always the prorogue option.

After six years of exposure to these abuses of power and with no recourse, is it any wonder that people, not only feeling impotent rage at their marginalization but also victims themselves of this government-led warping of public morality, are resorting to measures that in normal times would have been considered beyond the pale? Indeed, haven't more and more Canadians lost hope of legitimately influencing a government that no longer even pretends to represent the best interests of the people?

Heather Mallick on Vic Toews

Heather Mallick offers an entertaining yet perceptive analysis of the Twitter woes afflicting the man who would be our Lord and Master in today's Star that is well-worth reading. Her opening reads thus:

As Public Safety Minister Vic Toews demands an investigation into how the story of his alleged infidelities, love child and subsequent divorce ended up on Twitter, I am demanding a different investigation entirely.

How did a man like Toews find not one, but possibly three women who found him attractive enough to go the distance, so to speak? I would have thought it would be just the long-suffering one, Lorraine, to whom he was married for more than three decades.

A good question indeed.

Tories Unleash Attack Dog To Divert Attention From Poor Vic

Who could have anticipated this coming?