Nigel Wright = Dudley DoRight

Revulsion appears to have driven him personally, not only to make out the bank draft for Duffy but, before that, to try to make him see that whether or not what he’d done was illegal, it was improper, and that ordinary people would recognize it immediately: Duffy had been caught with his snout in the trough, and he needed to make it right.

Happily for Wright, his personal raison d’etre coincided with the needs of his job, to protect Harper and his government and to stifle scandal, wherever it bred.

He must have been as much of an anomaly in politics as he is in that courtroom, an honest witness sitting in a chair most often occupied by mooks, thugs and liars, this man with the great wide streak of hard-as-nails pragmatism and the almost ridiculous sense of propriety. christie blatchford, national post

As show trials go the Duffy trial is a bit of a damp squib. Duffy is an obvious scumball. Well, yes and it was idiotic to appoint him to the Senate. And he was a greedy scumball who got himself into a shitload of trouble for being greedy.

Nigel Wright bailed him out. In Wright’s world 90K to make a problem go away is nothing. It was his own money. He solved a problem. The media frenzy – and it seems pretty much the only people who give a rats ass about this are the media, jealous no doubt that one of their own hit the Senate – needs to prove some sort of conspiracy in the PMO/PCO to what? Bribe Duffy? (If it was a bribe it would be Wright, not Duffy, who would be charged.)

Wright wanted to make a nasty situation go away. Duffy had not done anything which was illegal (by the quaint rules of the Senate which assume, contrary to experience, that Senators can be counted upon to be gentlemen) but his troughing was extreme even for that august body. He needed to repay his crappy expenses and Nigel had the money to make it happen.

Did Wright structure the transaction to keep his name out of it? Er, no. His name was all over the thing. He did not hide the fact he gave a piece of shit 90 thousand dollars. All he asked in return was that Duffy fess up to his not terrifically major transgressions.

Losing Duffy is, all things considered, a bonus for Canada; losing Wright is a tragedy.

 

Snort!…er

Canadians owe Toronto and its Mayor Rob Ford a tremendous debt of gratitude.

It’s grey and rainy in Victoria, snowing and freezing in Saskatchewan, miserable in Manitoba but Mayor Ford and the Media Party are lighting up the Eastern sky.

Getting blind drunk with people who have crack and video cameras might, in a lesser man, suggest a want of judgement; but Mayor Ford is putting it all behind him. No resignation, no rehab, just a dogged determination to push forward.

Which will provide Canada with entertainment well through the Christmas Season. Ford himself is not the star; rather it is the lefty great and good climbing on their high horses and demanding his resignation if not his arrest. The Toronto left and their handmaidens in the Media Party hate Ford. They hate who he is, what he believes in and, worst of all, his refusal to accept their judgement as to what is appropriate. So long as Ford does not resign they will sputter and yell and explain in pious tones how a world class city like Toronto can’t possibly be taken seriously with a cracker for a mayor.

If Mayor Ford is well advised – and there is no reason to think he is – today will be the last words he says about his stumble from grace. Not another word. At that point the Media and the lefties and the self anointed great and good will be left huffing and puffing in the face of a stubborn, elected, Mayor.

And the rest of Canada will have a little comic relief to ease the rigours of a Canadian winter.