Dion Goes Where Harper Can't

The Conswervative government, appealing to it's 20% of the population of the country that support the death penalty, suddenly decided we no longer appeal for Canadians who are on death row.

So, since they won't, the Leader of the Opposition has. Good on Mr. Dion for continuing a policy Canada has instituted and maintained over the past 30 years.

Jason Kenney Convicts Karlheinz Schreiber

Not once, but twice.

The mouth of the Conservative Party flew off the handle again today on Mike Duffy Live.

While in a heated discussion with Joe Comartin and Robert Thibault, the mouth of the west stated twice that Karlheinz Schreiber had been "convicted" of some crimes. After some google-searching and such, I haven't found any references to Mr. Schreiber being convicted of a crime. Charged YES. Convicted NO. Hence the need for the Germans to get him back to Germany.

Here's what run-of-the-mouth had to say:

"Maybe Joe could call up the German Ambassador and tell him why we're not going to extradite a guy who's convicted over there of various several various serious offenses"...

AND

"It's sad that the Liberal Party of Canada is reduced to putting all of its capital on a convicted fraudster....

Wow. Jason Kenney. Judge and Jury. In two countries no less. Expect another letter from Schreiber's lawyer some time soon.

"Liberals are Unreasonable People"

Yep. That's what Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said in the House of Commons today...

The same Rob Nicholson who was a Parliamentary Secretary under Brian Mulroney.

The same Rob Nicholson who stopped the investigation into the Schreiber allegations shortly after becoming Justice Minister.

The same Rob Nicholson who claimed he never received any correspondence from Mr. Schreiber, even though the PMO wrote a letter to Schreiber stating they were forwarding said letter to the Justice Minister's office.

The same Rob Nicholson who received a memo stating he never received a memo about the Schreiber letter.

That same Rob Nicholson thinks "liberals are unreasonable Canadians".

Let me ask you folks, is there anyone in the current Conservative "clean" Government that would know more about the dealings of the Mulroney Government better than Rob Nicholson? Anyone?

Imagine that 51% of Canadians surveyed by SES have stated that they think this Harper government is covering something up in this Schreiber Affair. And Rahim Jaffer stated on Politics With Don Newman today that this government is "CLEAN". They are NON-TRANSPARENT maybe, but certainly not clean.

It Seems Harper has a Little More to Hide

We learn that, over the weekend (when news is usually slow), Harper's stale government had to give a settlement to their former candidate Allan Riddell. Remember him? He was the guy that Harper said the Conservatives didn't have a deal with to let the Whistle blower guy run.

As per usual, the Conservative party released a one line response. This from a government (the first in history) that declared in a Throne Speech the "it was clean".

Remembering Our Men and Women in the Services

Oh! sleep in peace where poppies grow;
The torch your falling hands let go
Was caught by us, again held high,
A beacon light in Flanders sky
That dims the stars to those below.
You are our dead, you held the foe,
And ere the poppies cease to blow,
We'll prove our faith in you who lie
In Flanders Fields.

Oh! rest in peace, we quickly go
To you who bravely died, and know
In other fields was heard the cry,
For freedom's cause, of you who lie,
So still asleep where poppies grow,
In Flanders Fields.

As in rumbling sound, to and fro,
The lightning flashes, sky aglow,
The mighty hosts appear, and high
Above the din of battle cry,
Scarces heard amidst the guns below,
Are fearless hearts who fight the foe,
And guard the place where poppies grow.
Oh! sleep in peace, all you who lie
In Flanders Fields.

And still the poppies gently blow,
Between the crosses, row by row.
The larks, still bravely soaring high,
Are singing now their lullaby
To you who sleep where poppies grow
In Flanders Fields.

~~By John Mitchell.~~

MacKay tied to Schreiber

Oh Boy!!! What a tangled web we weave.

It just keeps getting more and more interesting. I bet you can't wait to see the action next week in the House of Commons eh!

Jane Taber continues to be an overwhelmingly good source for new, enlightening information on this soon to be bigger-than-Harper-thinks scandal.

Here's her Globe article today that links Schreiber to the MacKay's. Leads me to believe that this current Government new a lot more about this scandal - and a lot sooner - than they would be leading us all to believe. We thank the Globe for always being on top of scandalous things.

JANE TABER

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

November 10, 2007 at 12:20 AM EST

Brian Mulroney is taboo.

The decision by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to ban his government members from speaking to the former prime minister goes to the heart of the significance of yesterday's announcement.

Mr. Harper has been previously proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with Mr. Mulroney, the former Conservative prime minister, declaring him “indispensable.”

At a lavish dinner in Ottawa last year, honouring Mr. Mulroney as Canada's “greenest prime minister,” Mr. Harper credited Mr. Mulroney with having worked behind the scenes to help broker the deal that led to the merger of the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservative Party.

He also said Mr. Mulroney played a “private” but “indispensable” role as a friend and political confidant, joking that it's lonely being a Conservative leader and even lonelier as a Conservative prime minister.

But that all changed yesterday: And whether their separation becomes permanent now depends on the findings of the third-party probe.

During his dramatic news conference announcing he was appointing a fact finder to look into the dealings between Airbus lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber and Mr. Mulroney, Mr. Harper cautioned his cabinet ministers and others in government from speaking to Mr. Mulroney.
“I've not discussed this course of action with Mr. Mulroney,” he said after being asked whether he had consulted with the former prime minister. “And I think it will be incumbent upon myself and also upon members of the government not to have dealings with Mr. Mulroney until this issue is resolved.”

For some in the Harper government this will be difficult. Although Mr. Harper has not surrounded himself entirely with former Mulroney-ites, there are a few key people in his government with very long and strong ties to the former prime minister.

For example, Marjory LeBreton, Government Leader in the Senate, served in senior roles in the Mulroney PMO. The 67-year-old cabinet minister was appointed to the Senate by Mr. Mulroney in 1993, shortly before he retired. It is said that as a senator she is Mr. Mulroney's eyes and ears on Parliament Hill. The two speak almost daily.

And Peter MacKay, 42, the Defence Minister, and his father, Elmer, remain close to Mr. Mulroney. The senior Mr. MacKay served in the Mulroney cabinet; he also gave up his seat so that Mr. Mulroney could have a seat in the Commons when he was elected opposition leader. The elder Mr. MacKay has also been a supporter of Mr. Schreiber, acting as a surety for the businessman's bail applications.

Meanwhile, the younger Mr. MacKay, who served as the federal Progressive Conservative leader, is a friend of Mr. Mulroney, speaks to him regularly and is also close to the Mulroney boys, Ben and Mark.

As well, Mr. MacKay was supported in his leadership by Fred Doucet. Mr. Doucet is the adviser to the former prime minister who, Mr. Schreiber alleges in his affidavit, asked him to transfer funds to Mr. Mulroney's lawyer in Geneva, Switzerland. During Mr. MacKay's leadership bid in 2003, Mr. Doucet helped to broker a deal between Mr. MacKay and his opponent, David Orchard, in return for Mr. Orchard's support. The controversial deal specified that the free-trade agreement, which the Mulroney government fought an election over, would be reviewed by a blue-ribbon party committee. Mr. Orchard was against free trade.

So, you have the Minister of Defence that knows a few things about Mr. Schreiber. How much deeper could it be? The Minister of Justice, Rob Nicholson happened to be a part of Mulroney's caucus, and later a cabinet member under Kim Campbell. Did he know anything?...we know that he received a memo saying he never received a memo.

Let me get this straight. The Minister of Defence's father is the surety for a wanted man?

Yep. Should be interesting stuff. I almost wish I was important enough to have my blog read by the thousands like say, Stephen Taylor, Steve Janke, Warren Kinsella, Jason Cherniak, Small Dead Animals, Red Tory. I'd really get this story out there. Yep. I would.

More on the Mulroney Affair

Did I mention that you should stay tuned for more trouble in the Conservative camp? Yep. I did. Over and over and over again.

Brian Mulroney has some splainin' to do.

Stephen Harper agrees his mentor is in some trouble.

Who is this Third Party that will be looking at documents that Parliament should be having a discussion about?

Rahim Jaffer just said on Duffy Live that "this has nothing to do with Parliament. This is something that happened over a decade ago." Really Mr. Jaffer?

Harper and Kenney Obviously Failed Math Class

Yesterday his royal dictatorship, Stephen Harper, once again lied to the people of Canada. In Harper's speech he said, "these crime bills were stalled for a thousand days". Kenney then insisted on Duffy Live that this was, in fact, true.

Refresh my memory. Isn't there still just 365 days in a year - 366 in leap years? Didn't the Conservatives just get elected January 2006? Weren't there a few recesses in Parliament since then - especially the recent 4 month recess Harper just gave the government.

I'm no mathematician but I'd say Harper and Kenney are a tad off on the 1000 day thing, wouldn't you?

Another Reason Jack Layton is Irrelevant

As you all know by now, Mr. Layton suddenly rolled out his election platform on Sunday. You know, the one with the referendum on the abolition of the Senate of Canada. That one.

Well, during Smilin' Jack's earth-shaking announcement, he states: The referendum would not be costly, Layton said, because it could be held in conjunction with the next federal election.

More proof the man has no clue about the economics of government.

Ontario just had a referendum on another ridiculous change to the way we form governments in this country. The cost of that referendum in one little ole province? $8.48 Million. That's Eight point Four Eight Million Dollars (CDN)!. Now, I'm not going to try and play mathematician, but that would be somewhere around what, 34-36 Million Dollars for the whole country to participate in a referendum...simultaneously with the election I might add.

Apparently Jack feels $33 million is "NOT COSTLY".

Base Jumping...From My Blog to the Winnipeg Press

Interestingly enough, the Winnipeg Free Press has like-minded thinking on the post I wrote last night on this little old blog.

I submit this article for your viewing pleasure and thank the Winnipeg Free Press in advance for their participation in the dialogue.

Desperate Tories reach out to their far right
Winnipeg Free Press
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Page: A15
Section: Focus
Byline: Frances Russell

CONVENTIONAL wisdom is that the Liberals are terrified of an election, the New Democrats and the Bloc Québécois would be happy with one, but it's the Conservatives who are really panting to go to the polls.

Unconventional wisdom might say the Conservatives are almost as afraid of an election as the Liberals. Ask yourself this: If Stéphane Dion's Liberals are really on the mat, why spend millions of dollars on another set of attack ads that are so crude and amateurish as to be embarrassing?

But the most telling evidence of Conservative fear is their abrupt decision last Thursday to revisit the death penalty by declaring they will no longer seek clemency for Canadians sentenced to death in other democratic countries.

The only conclusion? They're worried about their base vote, a worry Prime Minister Stephen Harper confirmed.

"The reality in this particular case (Alberta-born Ronald Allen Smith, a confessed and convicted murderer facing death by lethal injection in Montana) is that were we to intervene it would very quickly become a question of whether we are prepared to patriate a double murderer to Canada," Harper said.

"In light of this government's strong initiatives on tackling violent crime, I think that would send a wrong signal to the Canadian population."

Which segment of the Canadian population worries the prime minister?

Certainly not the 80 per cent of Canadians who now oppose the death penalty according to the government's own poll taken this summer.

The overwhelming majority of Canadians are appalled at the swelling list of the wrongfully convicted who could be dead now but for Canada's abolition of the death penalty in 1976 -- Steven Truscott, David Milgaard, Donald Marshall Jr., Romeo Phillion, Thomas Sophonow, Guy Paul Morin, James Driskell, William Mullins-Johnson and possibly many more to come, including Kyle Unger and Wilbert Coffin, hanged in the 1950s.

The population Harper is pandering to is his base of right-wing social conservatives, a base that reaches up into his cabinet. Several senior Conservative ministers support the death penalty, including Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson and Defence Minister Peter MacKay.

The death penalty gambit is even more perplexing when two more factors are considered. Harper says he trusts the U.S. legal system because it is a democracy. As Canada's own history proves, being a democracy is no protection against wrongful convictions.

The justice system is imperfect because it is human. The human element means that not even DNA and other forensic evidence is dependable. It can be wrongly interpreted or deliberately distorted, as was the case with the former Ontario medical examiner whose errors of interpretation railroaded Mullins-Johnson.

Democracy doesn't prevent the miscarriage of justice, and error is the ultimate argument against capital punishment.

Nor is it enough to say, as in Smith's case, he confessed. His lawyer says he confessed to get out of intolerable prison conditions.

Harper's faith in U.S. justice will come as a shock to the American Civil Liberties Union. It has devoted decades to documenting how poverty, racism and underpaid and incompetent public defenders have sent hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent people to their awful deaths by hanging, firing squad, electric chair, gas and now, the needle.

Documented instances that this latest "humane" form of execution can take up to half an hour to kill forced even the Republican-dominated U.S. Supreme Court to hear a challenge to it on the grounds it violates the U.S. Bill of Rights' protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

Just when the U.S., one of the last democracies still to impose the death penalty, is rethinking it, why is Canada re-engaging?

It might be that Harper's Conservatives are running Liberal attack ads -- and revisiting the death penalty by proxy -- because their poll numbers are stagnant, if not slipping.

They know that, historically, governments lose, not gain, support during election campaigns.

And they're already below the 36.3 per cent that won them 124 seats in 2006.

Since mid-October, there have been eight polls: two by Harris-Decima Research, one by Angus Reid Strategies, one by Environics Research, one by The Strategic Counsel and three by IpsosReid.

All but Ipsos-Reid have almost identical numbers showing Conservatives and Liberals in a margin of error tie: 32 per cent to 34 per cent to 28 per cent to 29 per cent. Only IpsosReid has the Conservatives at or near the majority territory of 39 per cent to 40 per cent.

IpsosReid was the outlier in the 2006 election. Its pre-election poll projected Conservative support at 38 per cent, yielding a clear majority of 157 seats.

Sad, really, for Harper's Conservatives. They have all this cash -- in party coffers and in tax cuts. But it isn't buying them a majority -- yet.

© 2007 The Winnipeg Free Press. All rights reserved.

Harper's 20% Policy...Another Embarrassment

Stephen Harper continues to embarrass this country on the world stage. His recent hiccup? The abolishment of Canada's long-standing commitment to the UN's anti-death penalty resolution for a global moratorium on the issue.

The Conservatives must firmly believe that the 20% of Canadians who agreed with the implementation of the death penalty in a recent survey must know more than the other 80% of us that disagree.

Let me ask you a question. Do you think that our Canadian in Montana's family has a possible lawsuit over the government's inaction on an appeal for him? Shouldn't the rest of Canada been notified that we now believe in the death penalty being applied to our citizens convicted abroad?

A few names come to mind when I think of what might have been if we supported the death penalty. Milgard. Truscott. Hurricane Carter. All three convicted of crimes they didn't commit. All three may have been wrongfully put to death. Of course, there is a much longer list of names of wrongfully convicted people, but I'd be hear all night typing the names.

I think we should have been notified of the apparent shift to the total right-wing agenda. An agenda 80% of us don't support. My point is that this is a backassward direction that the CONS are taking this country and they are reversing decades of great diplomacy we have enjoyed in the eyes of the world.

Hang 'em High

As I've warned for quite some time and wrote about over the past few days, this government has a hidden agenda. The death penalty may never get tabled in the House, but you can bet that they thought about it.

You have the security guy, Stock Day, that voted for the death penalty in 1994. And, you have Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, then in the Mulroney caucus, that voted for it in 1987.

Just what did you think they would be doing?

Jack Layton...Mr. Irrelevant

Yes Jack. We'll all just hurry for a referendum on the Senate. While we're at it we'll just throw away the entire Constitution.

Justice Minister Supports Death Penalty

I wrote about this almost a year ago. At that time Rob Nicholson was just becoming the Justice Minister. The Niagara Falls Review asked Mr. Nicholson then and there "would this Conservative government be trying to bring back the death penalty?" In 1987, the Justice Minister, then with the Mulroney Government, voted FOR the death penalty.

This week the true Alliance/Reform/Conservative reared its ugly head when they decided not to appeal for a Canadian citizen on death row in Montana. Strangely, the Justice Minister wasn't allowed to talk to the media.

Anyone see the writing on the wall here?

Liberals Now Ready for An Election

With Conservative Scandals mounting daily and the Old Stale Conservative Harper Group refusing to expose Mulroney any further, it is clearly time for us to go to the polls the next opportunity we get.

Harper's new TV ads targeting the Dion leadership is his last grasp at goading our great leader on. Harper knows full well the momentum is swinging fast. Not only that, he realizes he's got to call four by-elections soon that will give the Liberals further momentum after they sweep all four ridings.

Bye bye Stevie boy. We're ready, willing and able to fight now. I read Kinsella's book you know. He's right. Elections are won on issues like this.

Imagine Getting a 2.1 Million Dollar Apology from your Friends

As I've been saying over and over and over again. Stay tuned for more CONservative scandals. Mulroney was not so forthright it appears. As I've said before, he'll never have an airport named after him.

As for my friend the Justice Minister, Mr. Nicholson? I seem to remember he was a member of that Mulroney caucus waaaaay back then in the 80's and 90's. I think he's gonna have some splainin' to do.