Free Republic

If Canada’s “green” media — especially in the Parliamentary Press Gallery — demanded the same standards of accountability of themselves as they do of politicians, they would be killing entire forests right now apologizing to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Why? Because in sidestepping the economically suicidal stampede onto the green energy bandwagon which they relentlessly shilled for, Harper was right and they — along with the Liberals, NDP, Bloc and Greens — were wrong. Today, so-called “green” energy is in retreat all over the developed world, as taxpayers and consumers in countries that blindly raced into it are in open...

<p>Fox news ran stories last night based on some of the things we were tracking right here in this post. Here is their on line story.</p> <p>As unfinished as my research is, I feel compelled to release what I've found so far as the story cannot wait any longer.  I am not looking for a scoop on anyone or anything, but at the same time I don't want anyone thinking I made this stuff up after the fact either.</p>

Dignity: Maybe it's because his father was born with a silver foot in his mouth that President Bush learned to be gracious to even his most bitter political rivals....He's been called a moron (former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien), a Beelzebub (Sean Penn, who cleverly added, "and a dumb one") and a son of a bitch (Democrat Paul Hackett, who lost his bid last year for an Ohio congressional seat)....lying bastard, evil maniac, Fuehrer (all courtesy of Cindy Sheehan), white-knuckle drunk (Martin Sheen), George bin Bush (assorted wags), terrorist (a universal invective) and fascist (both implied and claimed by a...

Plans, tapes diaries seized at Pearson airport Zaynab Khadr denies they belong to her OTTAWA—The RCMP and Canadian military believe they've discovered a vital cache of information on Al Qaeda that includes the whereabouts of wanted members and details of attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan. The information is allegedly contained in a laptop, dozens of DVDs, audiocassettes and the pages of diaries, seized by the RCMP officers who met Zaynab Khadr at Pearson airport with a search warrant as she arrived back in Canada in February, court documents state. Khadr is the eldest daughter of a family that has...

Abdullah Khadr at large: Brothers were caught in Afghanistan, father is wanted for aiding Osama bin Laden The federal government released secret intelligence documents yesterday revealing that an al-Qaeda training camp in eastern Afghanistan was under the command of a Scarborough man whose two brothers are captives in the war on terrorism. Abdullah Khadr, 22, is described in a Privy Council Office intelligence report as a suspected al-Qaeda member who is thought to have "commanded an extremist training camp in Lowgar Province in Afghanistan." He is the fourth member of the Khadr family to come to the attention of Canadian...

A federal judge proclaimed last week that in the final years of Canada's Chretien government, untold millions of dollars were channeled from the treasury into the bank accounts of the federal Liberal Party, several Liberal-friendly advertising agencies and a few senior party backroom gentry in Montreal. His report was viewed with alarm by the media, the politicians and the pundits – by everybody, it seemed, except the Canadian people. They knew that already. They had gathered it conclusively from a report of the auditor-general three years ago, and reaffirmed it in the testimony of the sordid parade of Liberal insiders...

Montreal-- Francis Fox is denying a dead man's allegation that the Prime Minister's Office was briefed on the progress of Montreal 2005, the committee organizing the World Championships of Aquatics, to be held next month at Parc Jean Drapeau. "The PMO was never briefed on that stuff," Fox said. "He [Prime Minister Paul Martin] never micromanages." Fox, now with the law firm of Fasken, Martineau, refuted a claim in a letter by Montreal 2005's late director general Yvon Desrochers that the PMO was informed that an internal audit in Feb. 2004 did not go well. In a letter to Heritage...

Zaynab Khadr claims she didn’t know that terrorist Osama bin Laden would attend her wedding in Pakistan. Now the 25-year-old says she didn’t know clips of bin Laden’s voice calling for the killing of Americans were on the laptop computer seized by the RCMP at Pearson airport when she returned to Canada last February.

Canada's Liberal Party, which since the 1970s has both harbored in its upper echelons and implanted in the federal bureaucracy a virulent anti-American bias, is in deep political trouble and could be driven from office before summer. The cause is as old as the country itself – graft and corruption in Quebec – the same affliction that defeated Canada's first government soon after the country was confederated in 1867 and has periodically beset its governments ever since. But this time the amounts involved are astronomically bigger and the misappropriation of public money far more blatant. The current case goes back...

Newly released documents from the Bush administration show that a former member of Saddam Hussein's inner circle has resurfaced inside the new Iraqi government, bringing charges of corruption, bribery and bid-rigging. As a result, millions of U.S. aid dollars and billions in Iraqi government funds have disappeared in an ongoing scandal that is poised to engulf Baghdad and Washington. Worse still, a leading candidate for the top elected post in Iraq has also been implicated in the report as having taken "payoffs" in order to rig a major government cell phone contract. According to a May 2004 U.S. Defense Department...

The time limit for a majority government in a two-party system is now usually 10 to 12 years. After that, it is living on borrowed time. Neither major party in the United States has held the White House for more than 12 years since Franklin Roosevelt's time, and only the Margaret Thatcher-John Major combination made it past the 12-year mark in Britain in the past half-century. It certainly hasn't happened in Canada in the past 50 years, and it looks like this time will be no exception. Six months after Jean Chretien stepped down from 10 years as prime minister,...

EDMONTON -- What does the June 28 Canadian election mean for Americans? I'll give you one obvious answer: It's the easiest Canadian election for Americans to understand, from their vantage point, in the last 20 years. Writing about Canadian politics for an American audience is often a near-impossible exercise. When you're done enumerating the various grievances, constitutional squabbles, parliamentary niceties, and changing party identities, you've gone past your word-count limit twice over. But this time out, things are a little clearer, though maybe only a little. The ruling Liberals, who held a majority in the House of Commons at the...

Liberal support keeps sliding, poll finds CTV.ca News Staff Despite a determined effort to restore Canadians' confidence in government, support for the ruling Liberal Party continues to slide. A new poll shows support for the Liberals has fallen another four points since Thursday. In an Ipsos-Reid poll completed for CTV after Prime Minister Paul Martin's weekend public relations blitz, results show the Liberals would only be able to count on 35 per cent of decided voters across the country. The new Conservative Party of Canada appears to be the big beneficiary of the Liberals' misfortune. They gained another three points,...

OTTAWA -- Prime Minister Jean Chretien announced Tuesday that he will retire Dec. 12, clearing the way for Paul Martin to take the reins of power. Chretien, who had long said he would hang on until February, revealed the early departure date after meeting with Martin, the newly anointed Liberal leader. The move clears the way for Chretien's successor to open a fresh parliamentary session in the new year and start the clock ticking toward an expected spring election. Martin said his top priorities will be to prepare a cabinet and set up the new Prime Minister's Office. Chretien said...

OTTAWA (CP) - Prime Minister Jean Chretien appears to be setting the stage for an early exit, signalling for the first time that he may give up his determined plan to stay until February. Chretien will sit down with Paul Martin, his successor, after the Liberal leadership convention next month to plot the timetable for his retirement, said spokesman Jim Munson. "Put it this way, he'll do what's good for the party, the country and the government," Munson said. "The prime minister has always said he's leaving in February - unless he changes his mind." Chretien has long maintained that...

Ottawa — Paul Martin became the unofficial prime minister designate last night when he racked up another day of massive victories in Liberal Party voting, passing the magic number of 2,902 delegates that guarantees he will win the party leadership. Mr. Martin's resounding victory, with a margin exceeding 90 per cent of the vote, makes the November leadership convention a mere formality — and his place as the next Liberal leader and successor to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien a certainty. It also sets the clock ticking for Mr. Martin's transition team, who can now openly start planning the details of...

Bishop tells PM: You've lost your way If true to his faith, a Catholic must not support gay marriage, Gervais warns The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Ottawa has written Prime Minister Jean Chrétien a personal letter warning that he has lost his way as a Catholic if he supports same-sex marriage. Archbishop Marcel Gervais would not discuss the details of his confidential reprimand to the prime minister, the second in two months. In May, Archbishop Gervais took Mr. Chrétien to task for his pro-choice stand on abortion. Archibishop Gervais wrote his latest letter after learning that Mr. Chrétien's government intends...

SARS. The Stanley Cup playoffs. Mad Cow disease. Political uber-infighting. Holly Jones. Taking major hits for our stance on the war in Iraq. Did I miss anything? Probably, but that list is pretty enough in and of itself. I don't think I've gone much further back than about three months, but in those eventful three months, Canada's international face has taken some major bruises, not to mention morale among us ordinary citizens. None of these things, however, would be insurmountable on their own, but combined, Canada has taken such a collective blow that it may take years to fully recover....

PM defends anti-Bush remarks Why so sensitive? 'loyal ally' Chrétien asks Prime Minister Jean Chrétien fired back at the White House yesterday after it disputed his denunciation of the economic management of U.S. President George W. Bush, saying the Republican administration should not be so sensitive to constructive criticism from a loyal ally. Mr. Chrétien said he wasn't worried about a Bush backlash over his critique even though Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, took strong exception yesterday to Mr. Chrétien's disapproval of the rising U.S. deficit and its effect on the troubled global economy. Mr. Fleischer said the president...

Canadian Alliance foreign affairs critic Stockwell Day yesterday questioned whether Jean Chrétien's family associations had any bearing on the government's decision to stay out of the recent war against Iraq. "I do not fault the prime minister's ties with his nephew (Raymond) our ambassador to France," Mr. Day said in the Commons, "or with Paul Desmarais Sr., who is the largest individual shareholder of France's largest corporation, TotalFinaElf, which has billions of dollars of contracts with Saddam's former regime." Mr. Chrétien's only daughter, France, is married to André Desmarais, son of the controlling shareholder of Montreal-based Power Corp., one of...