Free Republic

Federal Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff vowed Friday night to attack the policies of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, saying the Conservative leader's four years in power gives him lots of political ammunition. .... Ignatieff said U.S. President Barack Obama is spending six times more per capita on clean energy than Canada. The Conservatives are spending less per capita on renewable energy than Alaska, he said. "You know who comes from Alaska, don't you," said Ignatieff, drawing a laugh. "So when it comes to clean energy, Stephen Harper isn't just behind Barack Obama, he's behind Sarah Palin."

.... Apparently, Michael Ignatieff messed up his talking points. He says William Hutt's performance in King Lear in 1972 was a life-changing experience. But wouldn't you know it? He got the year wrong -- by nearly a decade! .... .... I'm sorry, but who gets it wrong by eight years? Especially something that was life-shaping experience that he has referred to over and over and over again through the years. In 1964, Michael Ignatieff was an undergraduate at the University of Toronto, working part-time as a reporter for The Globe and Mail. In 1972, he was at Harvard working towards...

Late last month, near the end of a prolonged period of uncertainty in Canadian politics, the Conservative government of prime minister Stephen Harper tabled its 2009 budget, the long-awaited response to the Liberal-New Democrat coalition that had been formed late last year, a last-ditch effort by the government to remain in power. The question, though, was not so much whether the budget's economic stimulus package was good enough but, politically speaking, how the Liberals – and specifically new leader Michael Ignatieff – would respond to it. Now with the power in their hands, would they seek to bring down...

Buying into the belief that we need to spend our way out, the Conservatives presented a spending-spree work of art that would make any socialist giggle with glee. Fiscal conservatives, meanwhile, are wondering where their party went. Gone is any semblance of restraint, lost is the concept of fiscal responsibility. We now find ourselves in that darkest of places – into deficit with a growing debt. Fiscal conservatives are feeling abandoned.

During the recent parliamentary crisis, a Liberal MP's constituent proposed the governor-general appoint "a fellow aristocrat, His Highness Count Ignatieff" to form an alternative government. It was tongue-in-cheek advice. But, as in all good humour, it contained kernels of truth. If it weren't for nearly a century of history since the Bolshevik Revolution, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff would be a count today; perhaps living on the grand estate bequeathed to his ancestors by Catherine the Great, Empress of all the Russias. That's a big if, of course. In fact, the Mestchersky country palace, where his grandmother Natasha was born a...

OTTAWA (CP) - Liberal leadership candidate Michael Ignatieff's on-again, off-again ownership of the Quebec-as-nation push is definitely on again. Ignatieff, the Liberal MP with the impressive academic credentials, has been alternately embracing and distancing himself from the initiative with dizzying regularity. Early Wednesday afternoon in a round-table discussion with The Canadian Press, Ignatieff was emphatic that a controversial internal Liberal party resolution to recognize Quebec as a nation was not his idea. "Just so it's clear, for the 20th time, the (Quebec) resolution was not initiated by the Ignatieff camp," he said. "It was initiated by people who support a...

Meet Michael Ignatieff, the man some claim is the inevitable replacement for an outgoing Prime Minister Paul Martin. The departure of Martin is imminent because if Canadian voters don’t get him on Monday, frustrated Liberal powerbrokers will. On paper, intellect Ignatieff, who seems to have moved to the Liberal front lines from out of the mists, is "a well-known author, broadcaster and scholar". If he comes off a bit like royalty, he originates from royalty, Russian royalty.

The Lesser Evil is Not Good Enough A review of The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror, by Michael Ignatieff By Jeremy Rabkin Michael Ignatieff is director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University and teaches courses on human rights at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He is, in other words, a professional human rights advocate. Yet in 2002, Ignatieff broke with almost all human rights organizations when he publicly defended the Bush Administration's decision to go to war in Iraq, based on fears of what Saddam Hussein might do with weapons...