Not impressive, Stephane

So instead of taking advantage of all the Canadian interest in him which was raised by his exciting come-from-behind win at the Liberal convention, and embarking on a high-profile cross-country flying tour in December, Liberal leader Stephane Dion somehow disappeared since the Christmas break -- emerging briefly to pick a shadow cabinet, big deal, ho hum, who cares other than Ottawa insiders, then evaporating again.
So now he's finally back in the news -- but its for resurrecting the sponsorship scandal by saying that one of the people Martin kicked out of the party should maybe be let back in:

"We can't sideline people who make mistakes forever," Dion told the Quebec newspaper Le Soleil.

Well, why not? Does any political party actually need these guys?
But wait. It gets worse.
In a chilling display of non-leadership, Dion then tries to shift the whole mess out of his lap by blaming the party or its constitution or something:

Dion told Le Soleil that Cote's punishment was exaggerated, that he'd recognized his error and shouldn't be penalized for life. Later in the day, Dion appeared to be more guarded, pointing out to reporters that none of the 10 expelled members has requested readmission to the party. He added that should any of them do so, there is a process the party would follow in determining whether to welcome them back.
"I have no recommendation to make.… It's not my job to make recommendation[s] to the party through the media."

Well, then, why did you?

Just shut up!

"Shut up" seems to be the new American meme.
Last weekend we had neocon William Kristol on a talk show saying war critics should shut up for a few months. Then last night we had George Bush saying that everyone should just be quiet and give his new Iraq strategy "a chance to work." Today Dick Cheney told Wolf Blitzer he was "out of line" about his daughter's pregnancy. And then we hear Ambassador Wilkins telling Stockwell Day to shut up about Maher Arar.
Next thing they'll be putting their hands over their ears and going "na-na-na-na".

Great line of the day

Following Bush's mention of a product called Baby Einstein in the State of the Union, Digby talks about the potential of selling corporate naming rights to locations like the White House ("Halliburton House"), congressional offices ("the Senator from Pfizer"), and so forth:

Product placement to fund the government is the kind of creative brainstorming that makes America great.

Maybe Tony Snow could have a Coke sitting on the press room lecturn, too.

Nothing to see here, move along, move along

Well, well.
Apparently the Justice department considered asking Mulroney for some of our $2 million back after The Fifth Estate revealed last February that German businessman Karlheinz Schreiber had paid Mulroney $300,000 in cash during the 1990s -- stated by Mulroney's spokesperson to be "compensation for help promoting Schreiber's pasta business as well arranging introductions and meetings with international business executives" but by Schreiber to "help [Mulroney] ease back into private life".
Certainly. Of course.
The payment had nothing to do with the 1988 Air Canada purchase of the Airbus planes.
And the Justice department decision not to reopen the libel case settlement last year had nothing to do with the Harper election.

A senior government official said there was no political input into the decision to drop the matter.
"Absolutely not, because there's a clear distinction between political and judicial (decisions) and there can be no interference."

Well, that's a relief!
I'm sure that will settle it once and for all.

Great line of the day

Following his discussion of the attempt by Fox News and Insight Magazine to smear Barack Obama with the accusation that he attended a "madrasah" (which actually just means "school" in Arabic), Juan Cole says:

The real question is why foreign billionaire cultists own so much of America's media . . . This smear was brought to us by the media owned by the Reverend Moon (who did jail time for tax evasion) and by Rupert Murdoch (which picked it up shamelessly). Americans will never get back their purloined liberty until they stop letting the super-rich tell them what to think.

Emphasis mine.

It's my body, so it's my decision

It's "blogging for choice" day on the web and there are a lot of great posts everywhere today, from the Ninjas blogging for choice to a powerful description of how "choice" is really women's right to self-determination. And here are some more.
What we are supposed to blog about today is the reason why we are pro-choice. For me, its pretty simple -- its my body, so its my decision.
And if I have the right to control my own body, then so does everybody else.
Now, this doesn't mean I would necessarily have ever had an abortion myself, nor does it mean that I wouldn't try to convince another woman not to have one. But I don't have to explain my decisions to anyone else, nor do they have to explain themselves to me. Its not up to me to judge whether some other woman's reasons for having an abortion are "worthy" or "right" or "good enough" -- in the end, its her decision.
Anyone under 30 won't remember the Abortion Wars of the 60s to 80s, from 1969, when Trudeau said Canadian hospitals could perform abortions if a committee of doctors agreed, to 1988, when the Supreme Court threw out the abortion law. Though the hospital committee approach was better than a back street, it was a shameful system which encouraged everyone to lie, doctors as much as anyone else, and it was ripe for corruption. Pro-lifers tried to take over the hospital boards so they could get "their" doctors onto the committees, and the hospital board elections were nightmares. I hope society never has to go through this again.
Here is Wikipedia's map of abortion access in Canada:

Great line of the day

Roy at Alicublog, after quoting from a right-wing back-to-the-50s screed about how great life was when women just wanted to get married:

This is the sort of thing that makes me sorry I learned how to read.

Sunday talk

LiberalOasis' Sunday Talk Show Breakdown is my "don't miss" weekly feature and one of the reasons I admire Bill Scher and Liberal Oasis so much.
Scher is one of the clearest-thinking writers on the web, and his analysis of the political "tilt" in the US Sunday talk-shows provides a frame for the stories of the previous week and for the upcoming spin.
On Democrat motions to try to stop the Iraq war, Scher writes:

Bush will ignore whatever Democrats do. That's not the point. He's going to keep us in Iraq come 2008 no matter what, so long as he's President.
The point is to make it clear to the public that Democrats are trying to change the course, have a plan to change the course, and if the course isn't changed, that's all on the shoulders of Bush and his supporters.
Then the public knows what it has to do to change the course. Change the occupant in the Oval Office.

There's the message for the next two years.

Blog for Choice

Tomorrow is blog for choice day.

Where is Matt?

This has been viewed something like 4 million times. See why. (h/t Americablog.)

Great line of the day

From Glenn Greenwald:

The reason [U.S.] foreign policy has been so incoherent, amoral and bloodthirsty is because the people behind it are.

Denny Doherty died

Ve must see your papers, old man!

Yes, I know -- its this man's own fault that he let his passport expire.
And its his own fault that he lost his proof of citizenship card, without which he cannot get a new passport.
And he should have known better because he knew his mother in England was getting old and he knew that he might need to get over there fast to see her if she got sick.
But after reading his story, I was still left with a bad taste in my mouth. I think it was the line about how "the application process is necessary to guard against fraud". Yes, indeed -- but the man is 74 years old, and he only wanted to see his mother before she died.
So, like the lead said, couldn't we show a little compassion?

I don't get it

I don't understand the point of this story: Canadian snowbirds without passports won't get stuck in U.S., says Chertoff
Well, of course not. It's not up to Chertoff to decide whether a Canadian can come home to Canada without a passport -- that's up to Canada Customs.
But no snowbird should expect to be exempt from the US rules -- the excuse that they were just flying home briefly and now want to fly back to the US isn't going to cut it.

I read the news today...

Well, I had a positively brilliant post just about ready to go, including environmental stuff with a seque to Abu Gonzales, when my browser died and took my post with it.
So just go read Saskboy instead -- his post is better than what I wrote anyway...