Super Late - Week 165 - June 23 - July 2

It's funny how by-elections are always pumped up as some huge deal.  But then nothing dramatic every really happens.  Except for only 12% (or something like that) of eligible voters showing up in Fort McMurray.  Don't make me open the link again.

Some details have come out in the Dean Del Mastro trial.  He backdated cheques (allegedly) so that expenses incurred during the election didn't look like they had occurred during the election.  This seems like it will be fairly easy to prove/disprove.  And this guy was a Minister!

Government departments are starting to point out that climate change is happening.  That's a pretty good way to get branded a radical bureaucrat and have your funding cut.  Meanwhile, rising sea levels.  Dropping lake levels.  Lack of water in the Great Lakes could become exceedingly expensive.  I wish they'd finally get some scientists to prove this global warming shit.  Gawd.

Washington State is concerned that our pipelines and tanker traffic might impact them negatively.  Especially their otters.  I've seen one of these little guys.  They're pretty awesome.

Peter MacKay never does anything wrong.  It wasn't his fault that he sent out sexist e-mails for Mother's Day.  It was a female staffer.  He just signed them without reading them.  His actual excuse...which is supposed to make it okay.  "I'm not sexist...I just don't give a shit about these things and I'm going to blame some poor staffer."

The Conservatives have always been up in arms about the Temporary Foreign Workers program.  I mean, until recently they were up in arms that it was too difficult to bring them in to the country...Meanwhile, Complaints about the Temporary Foreign Workers program date back to 2006.  Quick action, I tell you!  More details on how decisions about Temporary Foreign Workers are made using terribly awful data.

The Egyptian journalist jailing lays bare the absurdity of the Conservatives citizenship stripping bill (not to mention their terrible response to the whole thing).  By the letter, this guy should be a non-Canadian according to the Conservatives.  But don't worry, in their infinite wisdom and judgement he will remain a Canadian.  But this should be left to the governments judgement?

A Conservative Senator hired his girlfriend.  Twice.  But it's somehow not a conflict of interest.  She looks just his type, no?  There's some info on him bilking for expenses buried in the story as well.

Tough Talkin' Stephen Harper has inspired Putin to start flying bombers towards Canada.

Why are there so many sketchy "loans" to Conservative MP's and why is Nigel Wright in the shadows in dealing with all of them?  details on Mark Adler and his court case/"loan" repayment.

So it begins.  The CBC starts cutting back.

Come on Vice, this is weeks old news (about the request for information on any and all protests by the government).

Is this still a good thing?  Turns out Starbucks isn't actually contributing any money towards employees educations as they suggested in their employee scholarship announcement of a few weeks ago.  It looks like they just negotiated with the University to drop the prices a bit for Starbucks employees.