1 TAKING AIM Yesterday in Question Period, NDP leader Tom Mulcair raked Prime Minister Harper over the coals of the Senate scandals, and all it took was asking direct questions with no preamble. Check out the video, where Mulcair simply stands up and asks, in a calm, level voice, “On what date and at what time was the Prime Minister informed that Nigel Wright had made a payment to Conservative Senator Mike Duffy?” There is, of course, more – Mulcair continued his line of questioning for a while, before Liberal Justin Trudeau had a chance to ask some questions and took time to find his legs – a good summary of which is over on Rabble. Anyway, Mulcair says he’ll be continuing to give Harper the business; if he stays this direct, it’s hard to picture Harper coming across as doing anything but dodging questions.
2 THE CLEANEST SOLUTION In 2011, the Tories learned that several oilsands projects would disrupt water sources if permitted to expand – so they made sure they could exempt oilsands projects from environmental reviews. The system works!
3 WE’RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT For the past week, advocacy group Women, Action & The Media has been compiling instances of memes and posts and images depicting or joking about violence against women on Facebook – which you can view here, and which are definitely worth a trigger warning for violence and rape and humans at their utter worst. Anyway, they apologized, but as Sam Biddle points out, they didn’t really do anything, they just said they’d do something. After talking with their lawyers.
4 THE WRITTEN WHAT NOW “Who even reads books anymore? Grant application DENIED.” –the City of Regina, apparently
5 SCRANTON, NORTH AFRICA I don’t know why terrorist inter-office snarking about expense reports is so fascinating to read but, like, there you go.
6 “IF THAT’S A BASSOON, I’M A BABOON!” Happy 100th anniversary to The Rite of Spring riots, in which wealthy ballet concertgoers flipped shit because of a bassoon solo. Or, well, according to the legend, they did. Usually riots don’t end with an ovation.
