Send In The Clowns

RovianBozos
NorthernBranchPlantVille

This morning on CBC's 'The House' there was , to say the least, a spirited discussion about the Afghan prisoner issue.

Ujjal Dosanjh, speaking for the party that formerly belonged to smallPaul was there and he had little to say of substance, although what he did have to say was said with considerable indignance.

Dawn Black of the NDP, on the other hand, was reasoned and kept coming back to the facts and reports from international bodies and their actual findings.

The Minister responsible, Gordon 'I am not Archie Bunker!' O'Connor, was not there.

Which is not surprising given that he was already bound and gagged by Sandee Bee prior to yesterday's Question Period.

So, instead, surrogate Russ Hiebert had his loins gird(l)ed, was prepped with talking points, and sent into the fray.

And it was a performace that would have made even Karl Rove proud.

Hiebert dissembled at every opportunity, raised the traitor card repeatedly and, while he used the Stockboy defense as his best offense, never once said that Canadian corrections officials have, and always have had, access to 'prisoners'.

Make no mistake - he said 'facilities' a number of times and he said 'prisons' even more.

But he did not say 'prisoners'.

Not that they won't use this as a fallback point, say, this afternoon, because the other word that they can dissemble tomorrow on is 'access' (vs. 'monitoring').

Host Kathleen Petty actually did a pretty good job of letting Ms. Black rebut a considerable portion of Mr. Heibert's offensive offenses.

Regardless, it should never have gotten that far, because what Mr. Hiebert had to say, specifically the demonstrable falsehoods should have been dismissed out of hand.

And don't forget, 'The House' is one of the more rigorous political affairs programs we have in this country, and still the crap was seeping through the cracks and gumming up the works.

Thus, it is clear to me that we are getting close to a very dangerous place here in Canada.

And it is the same very dangerous place that America, as Bill Moyers so adroitly demonstrated earlier this week, reached in early 2003.

What is scariest about this the place is that it is a fantasyland where a media that has the facts facts in hand can't quite bring itself to call the surrogate clowns what they really are.

Which is......

Liars.

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