Labor lawyer Ron Stockton, who is also president of the Lunenburg NDP Association, protests that the insulated lunch bags distributed to Grade Primary students in Nova Scotia  the Annapolis, Cape Breton-Victoria, South Shore, and Strait regional school boards this month and next (and pictured here) do not appear to be NDP orange, but rather, red with orange trim. If the government were Liberal would you have levelled the same criticism?  If a PC government put out materials that were blue (admittedly a much more commonly used colour) would you have criticized them?  At my age I like things to be as colourful as...

24 February, 2012
What's up with AllNovaScotia's curious blind spot for Cape Breton Regional Municipality Mayor John Morgan? Like many others, AllNS's editorialists took umbrage when the Nova Scotia Barristers' Society charged lawyer Morgan with professional misconduct for accusing Supreme Justice John Murphy, and Nova Scotia judges in general, of political bias in the performance of their duties. An AllNS editorial argued that it was dangerous and wrong to muzzle political speech by a politician who also happens to be a lawyer. So far, so reasonable. The odd thing is that the usually reliable news service seems to be letting its editorial passion slop over into its news columns. AllNS news stories have persistently misrepresented the comments that got Morgan in trouble. Instead of quoting or characterizing Morgan's original words, AllNS quotes only the sanitized version Morgan came up with after he got in hot water. The background is here, but in short, Morgan pretends he merely said Nova Scotia judges were not tree-shakers; in reality, he went on for paragraphs alleging political bias by the judge who first rejected his grandstanding constitutional claim for higher equalization payments — a lawsuit that was ultimately rejected by every judge who reviewed it, up to and including the Supreme Court of Canada.
13 February, 2010

Extortion. That's how the Liberal Party of Nova Scotia obtained the money it would be blocked from using by a government bill introduced in the legislature Tuesday. Liberal leader Stephen McNeil should think hard before crying victim. Justice Minister Ross Landry, who introduced the bill, suggested the Liberals give the tainted funds to charity. A better idea would be to give it back to the provincial treasury, because that's who they stole it from. McNeil may think voters' memories are too short to remember the details, but a few of us old coots are still around to remind them. The money in question came...

20 October, 2009