Starting the week.....

A few quick responses to items making the news....

Bob Rae using Brian Mulroney's Playbook? -- There have been a few items, including Lawrence Martin's this morning, over the past few weeks speculating that Bob Rae is undermining Michael Ignatieff even while he professes the opposite to be true. Reminds me of Brian Mulroney, after he lost the leadership to Joe Clark in 1976, publicly supporting the leader while his organization actively undermined him. That timeline took nine years, but both Mulroney and Clark were much younger men when they fought their battles. Mr. Ignatieff has, I suspect, a relatively short-time frame within which he is prepared to stomach the unpleasantries of leadership politics and at 61, Bob Rae can't play this game too long either if he still hopes to have a chance at the Prime Ministership. Stay tuned.

Crime Stats - Both David Asper and Greg Weston have columns this morning with variations on the theme that being tough on crime plays well as a retail politics strategy, but may not be borne out by the current numbers. I concede their point that sometimes the issues are over-simplified and simply advocating longer sentences and a tougher approach will not in itself serve as a magic bullet. However, I would caution about taking all of the statistics which suggest things are not as bad as they seem with a grain of salt. There is a significant difference in the number and nature of crimes reported these days, as many of the "minor crimes" which were reported as such even a decade ago are no longer even reported to the police, since it seems a waste of time. Crime stats over time are hardly an apples to apples comparisons.

Law Enforcement Silliness - In Calgary, there is a bit of a hub-bub over zealous by-law officers issuing tickets at the Transit lots because cars were parked facing out rather than in. These tickets have since been rescinded. In Windsor, a trucker is fined under a law that prevents smoking in the workplace, even though he is the only one in his cab. We rightly rail against our lawmakers for the silliness that often characterizes our politics, but their job is hardly made any easier when those we empower to enforce the law do so without any semblance of common sense.