Nobody destroys Toronto Mayor Rob Ford like the mayor himself — unless it is his enabling brother, Councillor ` Doug Ford .

Together, the twin devils of deception on Wednesday shredded the last remnants of power and influence they had over the affairs of the city.

As incredulous city councillors watched, gobsmacked, Mayor Ford rejected every lifeline tossed his way by friend or foe — refusing to abide by council’s non-binding censure even as he revealed even more indiscretions and misdeeds before an angry council.

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As councillors peppered Ford with questions about alcohol and drug abuse, his lies and self-delusion, the global embarrassment and harm he’s caused Toronto, Ford only poured fuel on the fire burning around him.

He revealed he has bought illicit drugs in the last two years. He said he still supports zero tolerance against drug use. He lied about activities that took place at the infamous 15 Windsor Rd., described as a “crack house” by police. Not a crack house, Ford told council, just a nice residential home that he just happened to be photographed in front of (arm in arm with characters, one murdered soon after, the other lucky to survive the gun attack, but now arrested by police). He denied his own addiction, no matter how often councillors tried to help him face the “truth.” And when Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong — author of the censure motion — pressed his case against the mayor, Ford stalked the councillor, walked over to Minnan-Wong’s seat menacingly before Councillor Maria Augimeri intervened and the mayor’s brother hurried in to thwart his advance.

It was an astonishing display, especially the tactics of intimidation from the burly mayor. Councillor Jaye Robinson said the threatening and physical violence will “change the face of municipal politics for ever. Decorum and civility are gone.”

Wednesday’s performance erased any doubt that the Fords were proponents of a thuggery unknown in Toronto’s municipal politics. And when it became clear council would have no more of his lies, Ford unveiled the last refuge of the damned. He threatened to blow them all up — offering to pay for drug testing of all city councillors by Dec. 1.

Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti, the mayor’s on-again, off-again, on-again ally, sounded genuinely concerned and effectively earnest in pleading with the mayor to take up council’s offer of time off to get himself straightened out and then return to the job.

“If the mayor refuses to get help, he will find himself alone,” Mammoliti predicted.

Ford brushed him off like dog doo-doo on his cowboy boots.

So many commentators and Ford apologists suggest that councillors were piling on Wednesday and it’s time to just move on and let the mayor be. Poppycock.

Consider this: more than three in four Torontonians want the mayor to step aside. They communicate this to their city councillors. Wednesday was council’s first opportunity to register civic concern. Of course they needed to ask the questions they did.

City council gave the mayor every chance to handle his problem with dignity. Go away till after Christmas. A little humility, please. The audacious, serial lying alone demands this. And the mayor treated them the same way he has treated the media — as if they were maggots.

And so councillors approved two actions that adequately reflected public scorn of the mayor while acknowledging that council cannot remove him from office; only the voters can. They symbolically asked him to step aside; and they asked the integrity commissioner to recommend sanctions for him breaking council’s code of conduct.

Even as council deliberated, details of the latest police court documents started filtering out.

The allegations in the document, which have not been proven in court, indicate the mayor’s own staff have told police about the mayor’s possible use of prostitutes in his office, drinking and driving, drug use including cocaine and OxyContin, the hiring of alleged drug dealers as staff aides, beside showing up to work drunk at least 15 to 20 times a year, offering jobs to women who smoked dope with him, physical and verbal abuse of staff, inappropriate behaviour with female staff.

On Friday, city council is to consider some motions that will limit the mayor’s powers so that he can do as little further damage as possible. If they can’t remove him from office at least, as Councillor Pam McConnell said, “put him in a cage over here, where the emperor has no clothes, and the rest of us will row, row away.”

Rob Ford will remain mayor in name only. He’s lost the moral authority to govern. A year from now voters will cast the final verdict on a man tragically unsuited to the office.

To re-elect him is equivalent to a dog returning to its vomit. But voters are a strange breed.

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In the lobby Wednesday, as councillors tried to wring a confession out of the mayor, Teddy Pendergrass crooned, “If you don’t know me by now ...”