WHO WANTS KOOL-AID?

Last week was marked by highs and lows for Stephen Harper’s Chief of Staff.

Ian Brodie, it was reveled, was to leave his position in the Prime Minster’s Office and return to private life. Brodie had been under fire for being the purported leak of “confidential” diplomatic note about the sincerity (or lack thereof) of Hillary Clinton’s commitment to renegotiate NAFTA after she was elected President. It seems both of those are a long way from happening.

Brodie told the tale to a CTV News reporter during the press lock up for this spring’s federal budget. He told them that Clinton had contacted the Canadian officials to say that the whole NAFT thing was just political posturing. When the reporter called Canada’s Ambassador to the United States, Michael Wilson, Wilson allegedly said that it was Barack Obama, and not Hillary, that had contacted Canuck government folk to assuage their fears of the potential for reopening the North American Free Trade Agreement. All of this happened right before the Ohio primary (Ohio is very much an anti-NAFTA state) where Obama was pummeled by Clinton by nearly 20 percentage points.

The PMO has been implicated by the opposition as the actual source of the leak. The reason given is that the Conservative Party of Canada is doing some dirty work for American Republicans in trying to discredit Democratic candidates and therefore pave the road a little for John McCain.

In a bid to clear his office of any wrongdoing, or even hints of wrongdoing, Stephen Harper called for an investigation by Kevin Lynch, Clerk of the Privy Council, into the allegations and just 48 hours after it revelations of Brodie’s departure started to make the rounds on Parliament Hill, Lynch delivered his findings.

Brodie and Wilson were cleared of any wrongdoing.

The Cons then sent out chief thug James Moore to once again chastise the opposition for conjuring up phantom conspiracies and demanding that the opposition apologize. Moore invoked the Clerk’s report and called it irrefutable substantiation of Brodie’s virtuousness. Moore looked a little foolish and his diatribe was way over-the-top when you consider the facts.

The man who investigated Brodie (a Harper employee), and Michael Wilson (a Harper employee) was in fact ANOTHER Harper employee.

This investigation has the distinct odour of “whitewash” of Nixon-ian proportions (How is that for being over-the-top). That the PMO would investigate itself is bad enough, but to have them attempt to make us “drink the kool-aid” and accept as “gospel” the findings of Harper bunkmates is actually quite insulting.

And while there is a possibility the resignation of Brodie followed closely by the release of the report could be purely a coincidence, but if you buy that you must find it strictly coincidental that the sun came up in the East this morning. The exact same place it came up the day before.

What are the odds of that?