My latest contributions at Full Comment concern the Speaker of the House of Commons finally being pushed passed his breaking point for buffoonish behaviour, and what I’ll call, for controversy’s sake, a defence of hazing.

As it turns out there is, in fact, behaviour that House of Commons Speaker Peter Milliken won’t tolerate.

From a straight-ahead Guardian news report on downtown Belfast’s reaction to the Continuity IRA’s efforts to drag Northern Ireland back into hell:

Nowhere is Belfast’s self-styled reinvention from sorry, fire-damaged shell to glamour destination more apparent than at Victoria Square, the enormous monument to retail glee that opened less than a year ago in the city centre. Belfast residents who remember the dark old days still blink that they live in a city flashy enough for this kind of place—or that anyone would ever build a structure here using so much glass.

I really wish the hard news I read every day was written like that.

On the off chance there’s anybody out there who hasn’t figured this out yet—

—Mitchel Raphael’s photo illustrates it rather nicely: it’s all a game. All the bluster, all the outrage, all the threatened lawsuits, all the election brinksmanship. all the accusations of Taliban-love, all of it. All fake. I’m not sure there’s a single member of parliament who would decline to shake any other member of parliament’s hand or share a drink with him, which is exactly as it should be. They’ve got off-the-clock behaviour nailed. On-the-clock behaviour, unfortunately, remains an ongoing national disgrace.

(Just to be clear, I have nothing against Justin Trudeau… in this narrow instance. Being friendly to John Baird is an act of wholly undeserved charity, for which the member for Papineau should be applauded.)

(Insta-update: And while I’m in a conciliatory mood, this is about as charming as Baird’s ever been. The Ontario Tories can only hope this isn’t part of some kind of initiative to succeed John Tory, because that is truly one of history’s most terrible ideas.)

Ian Mulgrew in today’s Vancouver Sun:

Walter Kosteckyj, the lawyer representing Dziekanski’s mother, Zofia Cisowski, accused [Const. Kwesi] Millington of panicking. He said the Mountie abdicated his responsibilities in his handling of the Taser and in his failure to provide first aid to Dziekanski after he fell unconscious.

“What does abdicate mean?” Millington asked.

FYI, I’ll be on Charles Adler’s program to discuss my latest at the Post, at 2 p.m. EST.

Here’s a trivia question I would not have answered correctly, had it been put to me, until I read an article in today’s New York Times: On what television network did SCTV debut?

And I call myself Canadian…

-ouch!” says Christie Blatchford.

The creepiest possible depiction of Hampstead Heath, courtesy of Google Maps:

Islamophobic nutbar wants to memorialize Canadian “honour killing” victim Aqsa Parvez; what could go wrong? That’s the subject of my latest at the Post. Coincidentally, an article in today’s Guelph Mercury confirms my theory: the reason she’s having so much trouble is because, well, she’s an Islamophobic nutbar. Duh.