Right-wing blogger and Maclean's columnist Colby Cosh professes consternation at his discovery that running a hunger strike from a makeshift teepee in the middle of the Ottawa River involves actual out-of-pocket expenses, for which supporters of the striker might solicit actual contributions. Pressing his dudgeon pedal to the metal, Cosh waxes indignant at Chief Theresa Spence for "distort[ing] the perceived integrity" of "the most morally serious activity a protester can undertake." Oh, the humanity! Cosh concludes his thinly veiled ad hominem attack by speculating that Spence's "demands aren’t in earnest and the whole thing is no more than a publicity ploy." Well thank goodness for...

29 December, 2012

Andrew Coyne demonstrates afresh why he is my favorite conservative columnist with this attempt to fathom Harper's inexplicable vandalizing of the census. Money quote: It isn’t just that the Tories habitually ignore the expert consensus on a wide range of issues—crime, taxes, climate change—it’s that they want to be seen to be ignoring it. It’s the overt antagonism to experts, and by extension the educated classes, that marks the Tory style. In its own way, it’s a form of class war. You can see it in the sneering references to Michael Ignatieff’s Harvard tenure, in the repeated denunciations of “elites” and “intellectuals.”...

17 August, 2010