The reviews are in

James Travers wonders whether the Cons are getting away with more now than they would even with a majority government thanks to the Libs' short-term focus:

What began with a padlocked Parliament is ending six months later with democracy wrapped in heavier chains. Despite Commons Speaker Peter Milliken’s acclaimed ruling reaffirming accountability, the Afghanistan detainee dispute that darkened the capital last winter still remains unresolved. Equally worrying, only the Senate now stands between Canadians and swift passage of an omnibus budget bill that effectively silences debate on issues of profound public importance.

Imagine the rage if a prime minister used his majority to frustrate the expressed will of MPs Canadians elect to protect their interests. Imagine the outcry if that prime minister arbitrarily assumed the power to sell an iconic national institution with a pioneering past, or streamline environmental safeguards just when oil spewing in the Gulf is exposing the dangers of laissez-faire regulation.

Harper is doing all that and more. He’s running roughshod over process and principle by making nonsense of Milliken’s order while advancing a budget bill that’s a legislative Trojan horse.
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Conservatives would be forced to serve Canadians better if Liberals could stop bickering long enough to rediscover their backbone. In contrast to Jack Layton’s NDP and Gilles Duceppe’s Bloc, Michael Ignatieff’s Liberals are so afraid of being led to disaster in an unwanted campaign that rolling over is now the party’s best trick.

More than feeble, that’s foolish. As Layton astutely recognizes, there’s little danger Harper would risk a snap election with Canadians mad as hell over fake lake summit spending. More damning, Liberals never seemed to grasp that breaking a 900-page budget into manageable pieces is a legitimate procedural wrangle, not a persuasive reason for the Prime Minister to ask the Governor General to dissolve Parliament.