It's frequently so easy to mock Americans -- especially American politicians and officials when they take the rare step of discussing Canada. The problem is, of course, their stupidity can easily cause major headaches for their most immediate neighbour to the north.Indiana Republican John Hostettler, a long-time fear-mongerer about the terrorist threat from Canada, used last week's arrest of 17 suspected al-Qaedists in Ontario as a new opportunity to beat his drum.
“We do not want to have to worry about a neighbour that has a very different attitude than we do about terrorism,” he said before taking Stephen Harper to task for his quip that he can “live with all these threats as long as they’re not from my caucus.”
Smarten up, Stephen. Your allies aren't amused by your new-found sense of humour.
We generally laugh off this nonsense from south of the border. We guess they didn't notice that law enforcement authorities actually caught these guys before something happend. We're sure residents of London, England wished they could say the same thing.
However, this sort of tripe is becoming dangerous. It drives the attempts to raise border security to the point that it could kill thousands of Canadian export-dependent businesses.
And the Conservative government will be continually pressured to cave in on both the border issue, requiring Canadians to show passports to get into the U.S., and on immigrants and refugees.
Immigrant communities should be worried that Harper could sacrifice their interests to placate the U.S. and get them to ease off on the border security issue.
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We checked out the Winnipeg Free Press's new array of blogging reporters -- part of new editor Bob Cox's attempt to update the Mountain Avenue behemoth.
Much to our horror, the sole politcs watcher is veterean reporter and knockabout boy Dan Lett. Our horror was not that Lett had a blog, but what he chose to call his blog -- "The Sausage Factory". We discovered this on the day we had used the very same term in a headline.
In the spirit of a Winnipeg corporate lawyer -- no, not Huey Duck -- David Carrick, we are considering our legal options to deal with this outrage.