Thanks but no thanks?

First we read that Conservative finance minister Jim Flaherty endorsed Toronto mayoral candidate Rob Ford and then we see that Ford's support is dropping.
Hmmm -- I wonder what would happen if MORE federal Conservatives started helping the Ford campaign?

Thin edge

This is another "thin edge of the wedge" story but its going our way for a change.
One of the unintended side-effects of cases like the Robert Dziekański tasering has been that police are increasingly hostile toward anyone near them with camera -- we saw lots of this during the G20 protests, when people had their camera memory cards wiped.
Now a circuit court judge in Maryland has dismissed the "wiretapping" charges that an ambitious prosecutor tried to bring against a motorist who posted a video on YouTube of a policeman giving him a ticket.
Not so fast, said the judge:

Judge Emory A. Pitt Jr. had to decide whether police performing their duties have an expectation of privacy in public space. Pitt ruled that police can have no such expectation in their public, on-the-job communications.
Pitt wrote: "Those of us who are public officials and are entrusted with the power of the state are ultimately accountable to the public. When we exercise that power in public fora, we should not expect our actions to be shielded from public observation. 'Sed quis custodiet ipsos cutodes' ("Who watches the watchmen?”)."
Graber was also charged with possessing a “device primarily useful for the purpose of the surreptitious interception of oral communications" -- referring to the video camera on his helmet. The judge disagreed with the prosecutor that the helmet cam was illegal, and concluded the state's argument would render illegal “almost every cell phone, Blackberry, and every similar device, not to mention dictation equipment and other types of recording devices."

Shorter

Shorter Immigration minister Jason Kenney:

Not only do I not want to be bothered with actual facts, I want my department to make up some facts that will support my opinion!

Friday afternoon news dump

So the Cons are playing musical chairs with their deputy ministers, announcing these appointments at 5 pm on Friday afternoon even though they aren't taking effect for two weeks.
Which possibly means that one or more are controversial -- any thoughts about which ones?

Great line of the day

From Dr. William F. Harrison who provided abortions at his Arkansas clinic in spite of threats:

It is not always possible for one to determine how we will die, but it is always ours to choose how we will LIVE. I choose to live unafraid.

TV week

This was the week of the new TV shows. Here are some quick takes:
I really liked Detroit 187 -- with the mild quibble that the "rogue cop with a tragic backstory and a heart of gold" scenario is getting rather tired. But Shaun Majumder is going to be pretty good in this, I think. And they actually film it in Detroit, which is an interesting city visually as well as socially.
Boardwark Empire? Eh, not so much -- the script is trying to repeat the Sopranos formula, but Steve Buscemi, as much as I love him, can't pull off Gandolfini's genial psychopath with a heart of gold.
Blue Blood also had the tired "rogue cop rescues the child by torturing the scumbag" scenario, but had a neat twist at the end with the secret society stuff.
Not sure about The Event -- likable characters, but I lost it at the third or fourth flashback within a flashback. And does anyone actually think that Blair Underwood looks Hispanic? So just do the big Kang-and-Kodos reveal already and lets move on! Now, Jimmy Smits looks Hispanic though I'm not sure whether he can singlehandedly save Outlaw when everyone else in the cast seems to be a cardboard replica of a real person.
Defenders was much more interesting than I had thought it would be -- interesting characters and a truly intriguing legal case with the involuntary manslaughter angle and gaming the judge not to properly instruct the jury. If they keep this up. they could have a real show here. We passed on Hawaii 5-0, thinking it would probably be terrible, but apparently it wasn't.
Good Guys has improved so much it is almost unrecognizable from the early shows -- particularly Colin Hanks.
Castle just gets better and better -- interesting plots, and one of the only shows on TV that shows a normal relationship between a father, teenage daughter, and grandmother. Though of course there is also Modern Family - hysterical. And I know exactly what Claire means about appreciating memories with your family -- saving sunshine in a jar.
NCIS seems to be bringing the Director into the stories more now, a good thing because the Director/Gibbs relationship is more nuanced. And I hope they're cutting down on the Crazy Abby subplots.
For a while there, NCIS was falling into the familiar pattern which we often see on TV shows written primarily by men, where the men characters are just normal people but the women are all types -- nurturing mother, sexy bitch, little girl lost, crazy comic relief.
I guess CSI and Criminal Intent are what they are -- serial killers, explosions, autopsy porn, everybody spends 20 hours a day at work. And this year's soap opera on Bones is going to be Angela's pregnancy? Oh, please!
Next week -- The Good Wife, and Human Target!
And I think Flashpoint will be back sometime, too.
Every fall we go through this -- we enjoy catching the new shows when they come out, but then we usually only watch a few over the rest of the season. Considering that there is only a couple of hours of TV watching time available for us in the evenings, if that, and considering that we also want to keep up with sports, not to mention the occasional movie or documentary or Dog Whisperer or Sell This House -- and blogging, don't forget blogging -- it means there's never any way that we could watch all the TV series that we potentially might enjoy. We now have one of those TV boxes where you can record a show anytime, and now I've got several hours of recordings that I am not sure when, if ever, I will watch.
And every fall, it seems that at least one of the shows I like dies an early death

Unique

On The National tonight the At Issue panel was talking about the relationship between the Harper government and the senior civil service. Chantal Hebert said "What do you do with a government that doesn't let the facts get in the way...that says experts are not useful?" Alan Gregg noted that Mulroney listened to the civil service, while the Harper government "is unique in not doing that."
Well, I guess Harper wanted to go down in history for SOMETHING unique.

Moscow Cat Theatre

What a video!

1.7 million views already



Here is how they did it -- only took 124 takes!
H/T

Reading the tea leaves

I expect the next few weeks will be rife with election speculation.
While John Baird perishes the thought, Flaherty is busy issuing The Usual Warnings Of Doom.
And if Harper is successful in winning a Canadian seat on the Security Council on Oct. 12, and considering how the Bastarache Inquiry in Quebec is going to echo the federal Liberal sponsorship scandal, and considering how the Harper Cons are hopeful that the long gun registry vote will jeopardize some NDP rural seats, and while the Afghanistan prisoner torture issue is in a lull, and before the Cons have to table a fall fiscal update, and before Sheila Fraser or the Parliamentary Budget Office can publish more critical reports, and before everybody's EI premiums go up, and maybe Harper can go a month or six weeks without firing some long-suffering civil servant, and . . .
Fixed election dates? What a quaint idea.

Great line of the day

Dawg:

conservatism isn't a politics. It's a diagnosis.

If Hillary Clinton was President

If Hillary Clinton was President today....
...the media would be talking about her failure to connect with ordinary voters, particularly men, because she's such a bitchy ball buster.
... there would be a Republican-financed Tea Party-type of movement, but it wouldn't be based on how Muslim-black the president is ("because he's really not one of us, you know"). Instead, it would be called the American Liberty movement (thus co-opting the "women's liberation" terminology) and it would be based on how mean and bitchy and ineffective the president is ("because that's the way women are, you know")
.... we would be seeing report after report about how everybody in the White House hates Bill, and how Bill is really running the country and telling Hillary what to do, and how they fight all the time behind the scenes. Oh, and there would be reporters on full-time 'Bill booty watch' assignment to catch him just glancing at any other woman. The tabloids would be having a field day revealing his secret love nests and linking him with every woman in Washington
... Vince Foster and the Arkansas land deals would be all the rage again. In fact, it would be a well-known fact in Republican circles that Bill and Hillary engineered the whole economic meltdown to cover up for how they and their Friends Of Bill and their Arkansas friends and their Hollywood friends made millions on the bailouts.
... Official Washington would have tut-tutted about everything connected to Chelsea's White House wedding. Sally Quinn would have been outraged at how pathetically classless the Clintons are. And how outrageous that Madame President picked an Oscar De La Renta gown-- he was born in the Dominican Republic, you know? And it showed far to much of her arms!
... self-proclaimed progressives would be pissed off at Hillary.
... and the media would be talking about how the Democrats were going to lose control of Congress at the mid-terms "just like Bill did" because of voter anger at Hillary.
In other words, business as usual.
(cross posted at Daily Kos)

Criminalization of dissent continues in Toronto

After a Toronto judge on Monday refused police and prosecutor attempts to rescind G20 protester Alex Hundert's bail, Hundert was arrested at 10:30 on Friday night for the "crime" of speaking to Ryerson students at a panel about "movement building and ongoing resistance to the G20 agenda".
Apparently, his previous bail condition about not "participating in public protest" now means that he is not supposed to say anything to anyone in public anymore.
Its getting pretty old, folks, watching Toronto police continue to justify their own violence during the G20 police riot by pretending that the G20 protesters are evil masterminds.

Great line of the day

Apropos of my previous post, John Cole says:

I will never understand Democrats. Ever. If the Democratic party was a football team, they wouldn’t need to schedule any games with other teams. They could just have their offense and defense attack each other all day.

Jane Hamsher is at it again

She just cannot stand that uppity, disrespectful Obama -- how dare he make a joke about something FireDogLake thinks is important!
As a commenter pointed out:

...on the day that FDL gets its most fervent wish that it has been bitching & moaning about for months and Elizabeth Warren is named a presidential adviser and head of the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection…Jane chooses to post about a perceived slight in a lighthearted speech by the president. It’s almost like the mission here is nurturing grievances rather than acknowledging that something that progressives wanted done by the administration, you know, GOT DONE. It’s almost like nothing that Obama does will ever be good enough for the former Hillary/Edwards/Dean/Kucinich/Nader/Any Given Backup Quarterback supporters around here who worked sooooo hard to elect Obama (ahem) because there will always be a movable goalpost to whine over or a bit of perceived disrespect to get all huffy about. Oh wait…that was the President’s point in the first place.

Oh, and how's that crusade to get Rahm Emmanuel fired working out for you and Grover?