Harry Neale: “How do you call a diving penalty after the whistle?”

Jim Hughson: “Feeling guilty because they didn’t call the high stick earlier.”

Neale: “Absolutely.”

An inexact transcript, I’m sure, but this is great stuff. Neale can still be a very good colour man, it says here, but in combination with Bob Cole or Joe Bowen he becomes far too obviously comfortable. Hughson’s play-by-play is unique and impressively clinical, but it has never quite done it for me. In combination, however, Hughson and Neale are putting on a damn fine show tonight - a nice, professional cadence without the obvious complacency.

My daily duties at Macleans.ca will henceforth include a daily roundup of columns, blogging and any other form of comment from Canada’s foremost opinionistas. From Bagnall to Yaffe, from Cosh to Worthington - they’ll all be there, five days a week at Macleans.ca, under Exclusives. Today’s edition is here.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
APRIL 24, 2007

NDP MPs CALL FOR REMOVAL OF DAIRY QUEEN COMMERCIAL

OTTAWA – Brian Masse (Windsor West) and Joe Comartin (Windsor-Tecumseh) will be holding a press conference tomorrow to discuss Dairy Queen Canada’s refusal to pull its recent TV ad for Kit Kat Blizzards.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25 PARLIAMENT HILL

Time: 11:00
Place: Charles Lynch Press Room
130-S Centre Block

Given the rather amazing number of non-calls, is there any conclusion to be drawn from these NHL playoffs other than that officials have consciously decided to stop penalizing dangerous hits from behind? Especially in these hand-wringing days, why on earth would the league sanction such a thing? The only theory I can concoct is that they feel honour-bound both to “let ‘em play” and to keep calling a certain number of absolute bullcrap holding and hooking penalties per game - and thus, that the… you know, actual penalties have to fall by the wayside.

Round one:

Mr. Baird painted an apocalyptic portrait of a country economically hobbled by the wrenching changes Kyoto would require.

Home heating costs would spiral; joblessness would soar; and Canada’s economy would slow by 4.2%, equal to the worst recession since the Second World War.

Liberals and other opponents immediately accused the government of scaremongering.

Round two:

Suzuki on Thursday blasted the federal report, saying the government is ignoring the cost of failing to address climate change.

“First of all, let’s stop listening to the goddamn economists,” he said.

“Twenty per cent of the economy will disappear. It will cost more than World War I and World War II put together. We’ll go into a kind of depression we’ve never, ever had in all of history.”

Round three:

Most economists reviewing Kyoto analyze the cost of doing something and the cost of doing nothing. Drummond only examined one side of the equation.

This week, we witnessed the perverse effects of climate change when a hundred sealing boats were trapped in an early ice breakup off the cost of Newfoundland. Who pays for those losses?

It’s mighty unfortunate if the future of the planet really is at stake, because both the Kyoto types and the skeptics deserve to lose - and in as humiliating a fashion as possible.

…goes to Jock Finlayson, executive v-p of the Business Council of British Columbia, on the subject of the proposed rail link between Siberia and Fort Nelson, BC by way of a 102-freakin’-kilometre tunnel under the Bering Strait: “Do you think they know the challenges of getting this by B.C. first nations?”

Nobody from Newfoundland has ever won the Stanley Cup?! That just sounds wrong.

Oh, and this Nashville-San Jose series is crack.

UPDATE: Like I said, crack. That little punk Tootoo sucker-punches Ryane Clowe and gets his punk ass handed to him. I don’t care who wins this thing. It’s magically delicious.

My initial reaction to this is, first and foremost, that it’s wholly unbecoming of what is ostensibly the natural governing party, totally devoid of upside for the party in question, and fundamentally pathetic.

My latest at Macleans.ca is on the topic of Dalton McGuinty’s aforementioned strategic weirdness on the LCBO file.

Let us bask in the absurd magnificence of Dalton McGuinty’s latest argument against selling beer and wine - just wine and microbrews produced in-province, mind you - in Ontario convenience stores. He says, no word of a lie, that because some convenience store owners have been known to steal lottery tickets from unsuspecting punters, they can’t be entrusted with alcohol.

A catalogue of the stupidity:
1. Dude… the lottery scandal? That’s yours.
2. Not all convenience stores are lottery retailers, and vice versa.
3. Even if they were, as a work colleague suggested to me this afternoon, it’s rather like taking away someone’s bus pass for getting into a car accident.
4. Convenience store employees are currently entrusted with keeping cigarettes - which are considerably more harmful than booze - out of the hands of the under-19 set. Can we expect a change to this policy?
5. Hundreds of convenience store employees in Ontario have undergone LCBO training so that they can serve (and refuse) customers at the province’s many rural agency stores at the same standard they’d get at a real live LCBO outlet. Many of said employees also sell lottery tickets. Can we expect a change to this policy?