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That’s wonderful and all. But if a politician can’t cobble together a coherent, skeptical position on an expanded mission that (per Tim Harperin the Toronto Star) “align[s] ourselves with Bashar al Assad, the brutal Syrian despot we have publicly repudiated”; an Iranian regime “with which we severed diplomatic ties” and that “then-foreign affairs minister John Baird call[ed] … ‘the most significant threat to global peace and security in the world'”; and Kurdish fighters who do not wish to live under the Iraqi government that invited us in, but rather in a country that includes parts of Turkey, a NATO ally; all of this in a region where every recent Western intervention, justified or otherwise, has left chaos in its wake; and all of it resting on the curious twin contentions that ISIS is uniquely, savagely evil, but hey, relax, it won’t cost too much money or too many lives to fight; then that politician should seek an alternative career forthwith.

“It’s time for Trudeau to start channelling his father,” Michael Harrisadvises at iPolitics, which means opposing Bill C-51 and generally positioning himself “on the right side of history and this country’s values,” which he thinks Canadians will rediscover once our “Niqab Fever breaks.” After all, says Harris, “Pierre Trudeau would never have supported the criminalization of dissent.” Er … well not permanently.

This has to stop

“Crime and police experts, the gun-control lobby and everyone who thinks Canada should have fewer guns shouted in horror,” The Globe and Mail‘s Jeffrey Simpson writes, hilariously — shouted! In horror! Aaaaaaaagh! — of the Prime Minister’s contention (Simpson’s words) “that people in rural areas who live far from police should have guns at hand to deal with intruders.” As we have previously mentioned, the Prime Minister objectively did not contend that, and he explicitly rejected that interpretation the next day — which is a somewhat odd thing to do if you’re pandering to the base, as Simpson believes Harper was.