Chris Selley

MEGAPUNDIT WEEKEND ROUNDUP

Aaron Wherry proposes Rob Oliphant’s speech, in which the Liberal MP excoriated the government for misrepresenting the economy on the campaign trail, as a potential eulogy for Stephen Harper’s Tories. Said Oliphant:

Must-reads: John Ivison, Chantal Hébert, Dan Gardner, Jeffrey Simpson and Thomas Walkom, on the fiscal update.

Must-reads: Vaughn Palmer on cutting costs in Victoria; Christie Blatchford on the “S.M.” trial.

Ontario’s Premier Dad, under fire for his proposals to slap restrictions on all young drivers because one of their kind got drunk and drove off a cliff, suggests he may relent and allow teenage drivers to continue to chauffeur more than one other teenager at a time. But that’s madness, surely—the transport minister insisted just this week that the proposed legislation was based on statistics! Bosh to statistics, anyway. Everyone knows that teenage drivers reach an unacceptable distraction threshold when more than one other teenager is in the car with them, unless those teenagers are related to the driver, in which case their presence has no effect. Courage, Premier Dad! These quarrelsome child-adults know not what they do!

Chris Selley’s Megapundit

I agree with just about every word of Wesley Wark‘s piece in today’s Ottawa Citizen, in which he argues that Canada’s policy on Omar Khadr has finally run up against “a realpolitik wall.” The new administration in Washington will want the remaining detainees at Guantanamo dealt with once and for all, and that means, like it or not, that Khadr must and shall come home. So, Wark suggests, let’s get on with figuring out how best to manage that eventuality. (The government, naturally, will have none of it.)

Must-reads: John Ivison on abandoning Senate reform; Don Martin on embracing deficits; Jonathan Kay on the Bush legacy; Vaughn Palmer on the B.C. budget.

WEEKEND ROUNDUP

Margaret Wente in today’s Globe and Mail:

A close look at what used to be known as the Big Three

Must-reads: Dan Gardner on the McMurtry/Curling report; Colby Cosh on bailing out the oil patch; Don Martin on Bob Rae.