Declaring interim victory

NDP interim leader Nycole Turmel gave her
farewell press conference yesterday and declared victory. Um, okay – except you
know that getting the government to vote on a bunch of feel-good symbolic,
non-binding motions isn’t holding them to account and not really something to
crow about, right? Just checking.

In advance of this week’s NDP leadership
convention, here is a look at how the voting systems (plural) work. Here is a
look at some of the dynamics at play during that process. Maclean’s has an interview with Brian Topp here.

Post-convention, the New Democrats are planning to
send the new leader out on tour, while they conduct a media blitz to help
define him or her to the public. But does that mean that they’re not showing up
for work and therefore shouldn’t be looking for a promotion?

Today in Robocon news, there’s a new twist,
in that Speaker Scheer’s riding association transferred $3,000 to the Guelph
riding association during the election – the only other riding organization to
do so. While it’s not unusual and Scheer has been pretty circumspect, I do wonder
how much this will turn into baseless attacks against Scheer whenever he makes a
ruling that opposition parties don’t like, no matter how correct it is.

Vic Toews’ office was flagging “contentious
tweets
” in response to the VikiLeaks and #TellVicEverything phenomena. Examples
of “contentious” were tweets from Justin Trudeau, or someone saying “good
heavens.” Seriously.

Here’s a look at the history of failed Senate reform attempts, with bonus boneheaded things said by Senator Bert
Brown.

And Steve Murray at the National Post mocks up some possible
future attack ads against Bob Rae. Just because.

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