Canada: Fed politics & foreign policy: What's on Norman Spector's mind Friday AM?

Having been away from blogging, news analysis, opinion-crafting, and even news surfing - I was truly surprised now that I'm starting up again, surprised to find these three items on the hi!ly-reputed daily newsurvey of Norman the Great. I add enumeration of Mr Spector's three points and bold to held the points stand out, because of my interspersed comments, sarcasm, and word-plays - which complicates the text further.

1.) Paul Martin did not refer to his great innovation of last September--"asymmetrical federalism"--even once in his vision speech on Tuesday.

And, three days later, I've not been able to find a single analysis of the speech in English that mentions the air-brushing of the "a-word" [assymetrical - an assymetrist measures how much of an ass a public official is - Owlb].

2.) As readers of this press review know, I'm no fan of Pierre Pettigrew of Paris [Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs]. That said, Kevin Libin will be very fortunate if the Minister's chauffeur doesn't sue* him for his posting about you-can-guess-what.

* [Norman live-links the word "sue" to his own quote from Glen McGregor's article in The Ottawa Sun that makes the unanticipated remarks that follow. - Owlb]

Glen McGregor

The Ottawa Citizen

The chauffeur who accompanied Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew on government-funded trips abroad is considering legal action after an item on a conservative magazine's website questioned whether they had a romantic relationship.

Kevin Libin, editor-in-chief of the Calgary-based Western Standard, wrote in a web log entry this week that the media should have asked about the nature of Mr. Pettigrew's relationship with driver Bruno Labonte following a report that they had travelled together to Europe and South America.

If you wander over to the Western Standard website and scroll down, you can still find the posting as well as the comments it has elicited.

[Besides Pettigroom's (he's known for his dandified hair-dos) role in l'affaire pettigruesome, one can't help but note in passing that the intellectually-insipid Civil Marriage Act rammed thru by Prime Minister Paul Martin is having further consequences (recall the two heteromale friends who announced they'd marry to get the newly-available benefits now up for grabs under the generic-marriage concept of the Act), further consequences which the neo-jerkidicism never anticipated, here brawt home - rather, to Paris and other hotspots visited by the twosome Prettigruesome and his car-driver Labonte. O, the bounties of the public troff at which even Mounties must duly scoff!]

[McGregor continues quoting and commenting on the notables, making the point to which I referred in my bracketted paragraph just above. - Owlb]

"Mr. Labonte is discussing these attempts on his personal reputation with his lawyers," Mr. Pettigrew's press secretary, Sebastien Theberge, said in an e-mail.

Mr. Theberge emphatically denied there was anything improper between the two men.

"Mr. Pettigrew's relationship with his driver is and has always been strictly professional," he wrote. …

Mr. Libin said he had not heard from Mr. Labonte's lawyer.

"I cannot imagine that, in a country where same-sex partners have the same rights as heterosexual couples, that suggesting a romantic entanglement between one man and another man would qualify as any sort of slander," he wrote in the blog.

Mr. Libin has been editor-in-chief of Western Standard since it launched last year. The magazine, published by former Canadian Alliance [political party now merged with the Conservatives] strategist Ezra Levant, describes itself as "the voice of the New West."

3.) No mention of the Canadian ambassador [to the UN?, to the US?, to France?] in this report:

The United States and Europe sought support Thursday for a tough new resolution they are circulating at the International Atomic Energy Agency accusing Iran of "noncompliance" with treaties governing its nuclear program but not immediately referring the matter to the United Nations Security Council.

But the new draft proposal, which signaled that Iran's case would be sent to the Security Council eventually, was meeting the same resistance from Russia and other countries as an earlier draft that would have referred the case right away, European diplomats said….

In another development Thursday, European Union diplomats walked out on a march in Tehran marking the anniversary of the beginning of the war with Iraq in 1980 after ballistic missiles rolled past carrying anti-American and anti-Israel banners, Agence France-Presse reported.

West Presses for Nuclear Agency to Rebuke Iran, Russian Dissent (NYT)

What do you call the sequence of news-surfing from source to source, some kind of journalistic enthymeme? In any case, I want to Hat Tip all three sources in the sequence Pettigrew/Labonte. Thanks to Norman Spector's Daily Press Review, to Glen McGregor of The Ottawa Sun, and to Mr Kevin Libin's quick uptake in Western Standardon the imps of the gmarriage law for the likes of Ambassador Pettigrew and his driver Labonte who seem able to fleece the public of its tax-moneys while remaining strictly outside the bonds of gmatrimony (in which case, some jerkidical Canadian court would probably find grounds to approve the fleecing). As to the initiative against Tehran's nuclearization, so ably written up by Simon Wiesman in today's New York Times: why isn't Canada on board? This too is pretty gruesome. - Owlb