The Ottawa Citizen published a series of longer pieces about the Chretien government a couple of weeks ago and they even called for Chretien to resign in an editorial. Last night Russell Mills, the man responsible for those pieces being published, was fired. Way back when I started this website, the concentration of media and CanWest Global were favourite subjects of mine. The situation is getting worse, much worse. Mr. Mills was interviewed on CFRA this morning... he reports that CanWest tried to get him to sign a gag order and announce his retirement, he refused and was fired. I guess CanWest has just decided to brazen it out. Why not, when you've got people like Sheila Copps acting as an apologist for Canwest in the House of Commons. When Copps was asked about media convergence last week she made some idle slur against Conrad Black and made it crystal clear that she had no interest in the topic. Oddly enough, the follow-up question, about the NHL & the French service on CBC, got the exact opposite treatment. Copps said that 'interventions were being contemplated' in order to rectify the problem of no French coverage of Hockey Night in Canada outside of Quebec. Incredible isn't it? In one breath a serious threat to freedom of the press is completely shrugged off and in the next, a paper-cut to the sacred cow of bilingualism gets the full 'concern' of the government.

You'd think that the hypocrisy would be so glaring as to embarass even these clowns. Apparently not.

I'm back... and I'm going to resist the temptation to 'correct' my predictions that are visible just below. I'll just post so much stuff that they scroll right off the page. My call on McCallum was particularly bad, why the hell would Chretien appoint anyone but John Manley to such an important position? Still, McCallum has managed to distinguish himself as something other than a drunken chipmunk by withholding not one, but two (2) recent reports. The ombudsman's 70 page report on the State of the Defence Department and the report on the Canadian investigation into the friendly-fire deaths in Afghanistan. Pretty impressive display of adaptation by McCallum. You'd think he'd been burying damaging information since birth.