Duffy won’t let it go

Conservative Senator Mike Duffy just won’t let it go. While the whole brouhaha was erupting over his comments, he said he was just trying to “paint a graphic picture” of the supposed power relationship between Newfoundland and Labrador, with its mighty oil money (err, have you seen the price of crude lately?), and poor, sweet Prince Edward Island, with its goodwill and good relations. For as graphic a picture that he painted, Duffy apparently hasn’t heard of what a bossy bottom is either.

But now he just won’t quit. This past weekend, he was not only justifying the “racy” metaphor as a ploy to gather attention (because nothing grabs attention like homophobia), but he took to saying that his province’s Liberal premier was acting like “Rambo,” and saying that while Robert Ghiz’s father was a smart guy, the current Premier Ghiz was – and then he left it there. That’s Senator Duffy for you – all class.

The other big federal news for the weekend was the fact that the Conservatives have dropped their lawsuit against the Liberals regarding the Chuck Cadman affair. While this isn’t a huge surprise – their case was weak and was unlikely to stand up during a little legal process called “discovery,” it was a morally dubious use of the court systems to silence a political issue during an election. Now that the election is over, they drop the suit, wasting the court’s time, and taxpayer dollars. And because their settlement seems to have neither side talking about it, it looks unlikely that the public will find out the truth about the allegations that Harper and the Conservatives tried to offer Cadman financial incentives to vote with them to try and bring down the Martin government.

Coming up this week in the Commons, the budget implementation bill begins debate on later today, and Scott Brison’s motion on Canada-US relations resumes debate on Tuesday.