Taking aim at the NDP

The biggest thing to come out of day two of the Liberal’s summer caucus meeting in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, is the party’s increased focus on the long-gun registry, and how they’re targeting the NDP over it. Ignatieff called Jack Layton out on it, and public safety critic Mark Holland said that he and the party’s women’s caucus would be touring the country in support of the registry – with a heavy focus on those NDP ridings that are vulnerable as a result of the issue.

Jack Layton’s attempts at getting his caucus to support a private member’s bill on reforming the long-gun registry without having to whip them has already earned him at least one MP who is still going to vote to scrap. Some are speculating that its demise could be part of his legacy.

Meanwhile, not to be forgotten, Conservative MP and avowed enemy of the gun registry Gerry Breitkreuz imports a whole lot of American rhetoric as to why he doesn’t believe in the registry. Scott Feschuk then deconstructs Breitkreuz’s entire op-ed. Breitkreuz also gets into an email fight with NDP MP Charlie Angus on the issue.

Oh, and the RCMP report on the registry also lets it be known that political meddling with the registry – specifically the successive amnesties that the Conservatives have been granting people from registering – have affected the quality of the registry’s data, and that those problems would clear up if they simply ended those amnesties – not that that bit of inconvenient fact will make it into one of Candice Hoeppner’s press releases.

Also from the Baddeck caucus, Ignatieff says that Harper is treating citizens with disdain. Well, he is the smartest man in the room and playing chess while everyone else plays checkers…

While Harper is again touting economic development in the North, municipal leaders are saying good luck with that, seeing as they have massive infrastructure problems (including reliable IT), and not enough cash to do anything about it. Not that such facts are convenient when the prime minister is up there draping himself in the flag.

Peter MacKay has decided not to waive the government’s right to solicitor-client privilege when it comes to the testimony of a former judge advocate general before the special committee on Afghanistan. Ken Watkin, the former JAG, testified before the committee last November but refused to answer several questions on the grounds of solicitor-client privilege, when it came to the matter of possible torture of Afghan detainees. MacKay had the final say on the matter and said, No, he wasn’t going to waive the right. Because this government has nothing to hide.

And something to ponder – a senior Manitoba judge’s husband put photos of her engaged in kinky sex on the internet, and now her career is threatened, whether she consented to those photos being put into the public sphere or not. Apparently it “diminishes the court’s image,” no matter that they were meant to be kept private.