Friday Morning Links

Assorted material for your end-of-week reading.

- Chris Selley points out just how odd it is that Michael Ignatieff is serving as an apologist for arbitrary security measures:

Michael Ignatieff was asked on Wednesday if he’d endured the new indignities being foisted upon air travellers, which are the subject of an ongoing backlash on both sides of the border. “I’ve long ceased worrying about these issues,” he responded. “We have to keep this country safe and the people I feel strongly in support of are the hardworking security scanners.”

In other words: Everything Transport Canada approves must be designed to keep us safe, right? Why else would they do it?

This seems an oddly credulous thing for any leader of the opposition to say — his duty being, in part, to oppose the government. It’s odder still for an ostensibly liberal leader of the opposition. And it’s downright bizarre for a leader of the opposition who was once celebrated as a human-rights brainbox. We’re talking about the needless, hideously expensive violation of basic privacies Westerners used to take for granted.

- Sometimes, the system doesn't work - and the G20 example looks to be glaring enough to raise questions about whether it was ever intended to. After all, even if it's difficult for an outsider to determine which police were responsible for which abuses, shouldn't it be possible to do so, presumably at least some of the officers at the scene would have some idea who had done what - making the lack of any answers look highly suspicious.

- Just when you thought the HST was nearly done with as an issue, it looks to be back on the front burner in Quebec. And if the Bloc indeed sides with the Quebec government (which doesn't seem like a sure thing to be given that harmonization would result in an unpopular federalist government ceding authority to Ottawa), then the NDP's efforts on the issue in Ontario and B.C. should put it in perfect position to capitalize.

- Finally, I don't entirely disagree with Norman Spector's theory that the NDP can do more to build and shape a protest movement on Afghanistan among other issues. But one would think Spector should take the time to at least check, say a simple Twitter feed to see what NDP MPs are doing across the country before pretending that they're nowhere other than in Ottawa.