BumfOnline

It is still nice to know that some conservatives have their gonads fully intact:

I'm glad a Liberal MP crossed and I hope more of them do. David Emerson's a big boy, he can face the deserved criticism from the electors. But should he become the first floor-crosser in modern Canadian history forced to run in a bi-election just to prove a point about "Conservative principle"?

Are we nuts??

Certainly, I'd have preferred he'd gone to the back benches and earned his way into cabinet - but then, I don't have the task of building a larger tent, quelling a persistant media theme on the "lack" of urban MP's, balancing regional representation, and finding the experience and talent to solve long standing international trade disputes.

I expected there would be decisions made by Harper I wasn't going to like, and I expect there to be more.

Pragmatic politics isn't always done tastefully, and sometimes you swallow when you'd rather spit - but the parliamentary rules allowed what was done today, and as has been pointed out ad nauseum, Harper has done nothing particularly novel when compared to previous administrations.

However - if there is to be any hope of the type of democratic renewal possible only under a majority government, we had better get a grip on the very real fact that the present rules are the ones everyone else is playing by, and that they lend themselves to crass political opportunism because they have been crafted and refined by crass political opportunists.

For the Conservatives not to use all legal parliamentary precedents to their advantage because of concerns over principle and optics, will only ensure the return of power to a Liberal Party proven to have no such reservations. (Emphasis hers)

With Kate in my corner, I know I'm on the right track.

If anything disappoints me about the cabinet selections, it's that Diane Ablonczy never got a position. Few MPs deserve a cabinet portfolio more.