Day 395 of the endless Mike Duffy trial

Christie Blatchford: "At the Mike Duffy trial, it’s hard to tell who is really the accused"

First, watch Christie's video ... 

... this freaking trial, where a passerby, sitting in, would assume that Wright, the witness, is the alleged perpetrator, or perhaps the PM, and where ... every thundered question ... echoes across the land and into the campaign buses where it is parsed to shreds as though the question was the evidence, not the answer. ...

 Father Raymond de Souza: "The Duffy scandal is not worth the attention, or the cost" 

... a very strange scandal that leaves everyone looking bad, but Canada looking relatively good. 

... The criminal law is a blunt instrument, and this criminal trial, drenched in political showmanship, is a blunt instrument put to ill use.

... The problem Senate expenses does not justify the tens of millions of taxpayer dollars, hundreds of hours of court time and the huge quantity of public attention given to it ...

Why does Steven Fletcher champion assisted suicide?

I've always been a little puzzled by Steven Fletcher's championing of doctor-assisted suicide.  He would actually make an excellent poster-boy for the other side of the argument.  Despite what must have been huge challenges after becoming quadriplegic early in life, he forged an exceptionally successful political career and a productive life.  However, had assisted suicide been available at the time of his accident it is highly likely that, in the depths of suffering and depression, he'd have requested it.  And he'd have missed the experience of overcoming his challenges and achieving the success that followed.

So, why does he favour doctor-assisted suicide?  Does he regret having lived his life?  It's hard to imagine, but maybe we'll see a year from now whether or not he exercises his new right.  Another, more likely possibility is that he's contemplating that eventually, perhaps many years from now, he'll want to exercise his right.  But, has he considered whether it's worth it given that from now on it is far less likely that there will be any more Steven Fletchers?  Not to mention all the other down-side risks:

Barbara Kay: Euthanasia so accepted, doctors must now justify prolonging a life
Barbara Kay: Suffering people just want an end to their pain
Father Raymond de Souza: Our euthanasia point of no return
Andrew Coyne: Crossing the Rubicon, Supreme Court seems eerily complacent

Ezra Levant:

Christopher Hitchens - mixed feelings

John Derbyshire

... Hitch was a court jester for the liberal elites. He took care never to violate their most sacred taboos. Like Stephen Jay Gould, who also died too young, also of cancer, Hitch carried the banner of soft Marxism forward into the post-Soviet era. ...

Raymond De Souza

... For many of Hitchens’ fellow journalists, the virtuosity of his brilliant writing and bracing conversation earned him a pass on the hatred. But hatred it remained. His commercial genius was to harbour hatreds sufficiently vast and varied that a lucrative constituency could be found to relish all of them....

Jonah Goldberg

... He was no conservative. You can’t really be a conservative in the Anglo-American tradition and hate religion. You can be a non-believer, I think. But you have to at least have respect for the role of religion and maybe a little reverence for the role of transcendence in people’s lives. Hitch had nothing but contempt. It was one of the last truly asinine Marxist things about him.

... I’m not inclined to sugarcoat my take on the man given how he could be absolutely cruel when spouting off about the deaths of others. He could be mean, pigheaded, and insensitive (though never dull!). He could also be generous and kind. He was a brilliant and gifted polemicist who sometimes took the easiest way out by going after his opponents’ weakest arguments rather than their strongest. He defied easy categorization while having a gift for categorizing others. He’ll be missed because he was so damn good at being Christopher Hitchens.