Mike Duffy… you're no Mike Duffy

To paraphrase a famous American: I knew Mike Duffy, Senator, and you’re no Mike Duffy… I couldn’t help thinking that as I read Halifax Metro’s account this week of Duffy’s inane, ill-tempered and spectacularly ill-informed rant about the King’s College Journalism School. Full disclosure: I teach at King’s. “Kids who go to King’s, or the […]

The sound of one cymbal clanging

It’s difficult to comprehend how a politician seemingly in such perfect harmony with the populist political zeitgeist eight months ago could have become so cymbal-clangingly tone deaf so quickly. Darrell Dexter got himself elected premier by channeling Coffee-at-the-Tims Everyman. He was like us, only smarter. We could—and did—trust him. We forgave him for lying to […]

MLA expenses a scandal but….

Yes, the MLA expenses scandal is a scandal. Some of what some MLAs filed as legitimate expenses were not. A few claims may even be criminal. Let’s make MLAs pay back what they can’t justify, and prosecute those whose actions crossed the line. Let’s fix a screwed-up system. Then let’s move on. When it comes […]

Time for Liberals to crawl out of the muck

Pity Stephen McNeil. The NDP wants to stop his Liberals from continuing to tap a tainted $2.37-million party trust fund to pay its bills. “The motive… is political,” McNeil complained to reporters after the government introduced the bill this week, adding plaintively: “You’d have to ask them why they would specifically go after us.” Uh… […]

The lynch mob meets the expenses scandal

The morning after the big semi-reveal—the auditor general had turned over to the RCMP expense-claims files on one current and four former MLAs, but he wouldn’t say which ones to avoid compromising the criminal investigation—CBC Radio Information Morning’s political panel weighed in. The panelists—veteran freelance journalist Ralph Surrette and former newspaper editor and Tory cabinet […]