Stephen Harper's infrangible ethics

• After campaigning for an elected Senate and against Liberal-style patronage, Harper appoints Conservative organizer Michael Fortier to the Senate.
• Harper also appoints the unelected Michael Fortier as Minister of Public Works – the ministry once linked to the sponsorship scandal.
• Harper adds five loopholes to his ethics code amendments – prompting Democracy Watch, which endorsed his ethics plan, to call him a “liar.”
• After praising the NDP ethics plan, which includes legislation to ban floor crossing, Harper lures former Liberal Industry Minister David Emerson to defect and become his International Trade Minister.
• Harper appoints his campaign-cochair John Reynolds to the Privy Council, an honour normally reserved for senior Parliamentarians. (Reynolds now advises clients on how to “access” government.)

From the NDP site.

A brilliant strategy

“The centrepiece of the current U.S. strategy is to rely on a people whose military the United States has twice humiliated on the battlefield to destory an insurgency it did not create.” —Tom Bissell, “Improvised, Explosive, Divisive: Searching in vain for a strategy in Iraq,” Harper’s, January 2006

And the total is...

“Total projected cost of the [current Iraq] war per U.S. household, based on a January estimate: $19,600.” —Joseph Stiglitz, Columbia University, as quoted in the Harper’s Index, Harper's Magazine, March 2006