Well, this was rather unexpected and big news this morning. This is a front page story in the Toronto Star, Canada's foremost liberal newspaper with the biggest subscription across the country.  As you might know, Omar Khadr is the last remaining Westerner to be held in Guantanamo. He has been held there since 15, without charge or trial - for 6 years. Khadr's lawyers are already going to be arguing this week in court whether or not they are allowed to gather evidence from the government of Canada that could help in his defence at Guantanamo, and whether or not Canadian officials who travelled to the base to interrogate him in 2003 and 2004 breached his constitutional rights.

However, the Supreme Court has gone even father then that: they have agreed to hear arguments on whether or not Gitmo is legal under international law:

How screwy is the Department of Homeland Security? They can't even figure out what landmarks are American and what aren't (or they don't care). To be fair, it isn't just the DHS responsible, but the State Department & the fine folks at Disney, who created the promo in the first place.

As you folks know, Senator Pat Leahy grilled US Atty-General Alberto Gonzales over the Maher Ahar affair - the Syrian-Canadian engineer who was renditioned to Syria and tortured and kept over there for a year on mistaken information Canadian security agents gave to the US, before it was determined that he was not an Al Queada agent and released. A Canadian hearing ruled Ahar was innocent of those charges.

Gonzales claimed to Leahy and to Public Security Minister Stockwell Day that independent information the US has still justified keeping Ahar on the US no-fly list. Day publicly disputed that, saying the info we've seen doesn't justify it. So, I guess Bush decided to order his attack dog up here, Ambassador David Wilkins to publicly tell Day to stop being so uppity about this.

Yup, thats right, folks... according to Christopher Sands of the Center For Strategic and International Studies, the majority of Canadians weren't "good" because we didn't support sending troops to the Iraq war, or supported the idea behind the US going.

Now how did we find this out? Well, Macleans magazine (our version of Time or Newsweek) had a journalist down at the Hudson Institute, who had the privilege of listening to our (in my opinion) most buffoonish Minister in the Cabinet (even some Conservatives I know think he's not that bright), Security Minister Stockwell Day.

And how did Stockwell day get introduced by Christopher Sands? In a manner described by the reporter as revealing a bit of the lingering inside-the-beltway attitudes toward Canada, Iraq war disasters notwithstanding, and she refers to this:

A rather edgy title. I'm in an edgy mood however. Warning: Some Canadian content is included in this rant. Viewer discretion is advised. This is a Canadian POV on Bush's "surge".

I've wrote about the quagmire that Bush is looking to make worse by proclaiming a final 'surge' of troops is needed to 'win' the war in Iraq. The problem is he is short on available reserves to send, and he isn't going to institute a draft, and the citizenry of America aren't going to rush to the Army's recruiting halls to volunteer, so he'll need to borrow troops from other theaters, and one of those theaters happens to be Afghanistan.

As a Canadian progressive, let me forward my congratulations to Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader-Elect Harry Reid (yes, I'm willing to say that).

I'm looking forward to you bringing some accountability back to the White House and a revitalized Congress.

As for the Kossacks here, well done. I realize there's some disappointment at Lamont losing and some other candidates you supported.. but you always get a bit of vinegar with your wine at times. What you've done is set up a lot of good candidates for 2008 and the change to expand your House Majority. I sincerely hope the Dems are able to put forward some good progressive legislation (even if Bush vetoes it, they can take it to the voters in 2008)

...but just released at TPM poll-tracker, a polling outfit named Polimetrix has just released polls on Government and Senate races today, and it says Lamont is within 4 of Lieberman 48-44%

Other Results:

So the premise here yesterday that the polls Kos had seen were turning against Ford and that he felt it was a lost cause there (other polls showing it closer notwithstanding) and that he had greater hope for Arizona.

Uh.. I'm wondering if Kos might need to switch his attention back to Tennessee using that line of thought:

SurveyUSA's new poll (released same day as Zimmerman's poll which had Kyl up by 5) shows a 13 point Kyl lead over Pederson.

I realize that normally on Kos, quoting Biblical Scripture on here (unless its maybe PastorDan) might get you troll-rated due to the Republicans and the religious right's efforts at totally subverting Christianity and giving all of us Christians a bad reputation. However, since Dennis Hastert, Tom Reynolds et al. appear to be floundering around speaking mealy-mouth doubletalk (also known as lying) as to who knew what, it might be a good time to throw out some Biblical references as to what the Bible says about "liars";quoting these to their normally supportive evangelical base might provide some ... 2nd thoughts on these people supporting the morally corrupt Repubs.
SO, after one provides all the evidence to a wavering Christian evangelical that the Republican House leadership knew months/years ago instead of last week.. here are some good Biblical quotes to remind them what the Bible says about liars:

Yes, yes.. I know everyone must be wondering what I've been having for breakfast today, but it appears that Bush has become an important recruitment tool for a couple different establishments up here in Canada.

Hi folks...  my apologies if I'm takin up valuable diary space.. but I received an interesting email today.

I was taken to task by one of my conservative acquaintances for daring to call one of his acquaintances in the conservative press up here plus other people in the conservative sphere of politics "wingnuts". Apparently that was an insult of the highest degree, and these folks didnt deserve that title foisted upon them, because they were "reasonable people" who one could be disagreed with but didnt deserve such an extreme framing of them.

In the wake of the arrests of 21 people for allegedly plotting to blow up airliners, I was waiting to hear from some agency of the US Government or Members of Congress or from some elements of the media chiding the British for having a terror problem and needing to do something to get these people under control before it threatens the whole of the US with imminent destruction.

One of our Prog Blog affiliates, Matthew Good, has been hosting some bloggers  from both Beirut, Lebanon and Haifa, Israel the last day or so. Both comment on the daily terror they face... and it seems both view each other as victims in this war. Its heartbreaking.. but maybe also hopeful that these 2 bloggers in the 2 affected countries express sympathy for each other.

A lot of Canadian bloggers north of the border have discovered why a lot of you Kossacks detest The New Republic: It apparently likes to publish inaccurate articles with numerous errors.

This particular piece online talks about Canada's "terrorism problems" and why the US should be worried about us...  and this was started over a successful arrest of a group before they did anything to anyone. When did good police work earn scorn?

Lets take a look at the crux of the article and a point by point rebuttal of it:

Hi folks.. some of us in the Great White North have been watching certain Republican members of your legislative and executive branch with some amusement try to revive the so-called "threat" to the very social fabric of American society. One of our affiliates posted this on the topic, and I wanted to share it with you on the Republican's manipulation of the topic:

I see McJoan wrote a front-page column on the State Departments Annual Report On Terrorism.  A good critique of it, but I'm going to add one of my own - this report is a slap in the face to Canada:

According to your folks, which is documented here by one of our affiliates Maple Leaf Politics, Canada is a 'terrorist haven':

For the benefit of those not usually prone to following Canadian politics, a full blown controversy has blown up in Canada over a couple of the Conservative government's new policies regarding our soldiers in Afghanistan when they are killed in action. It appears that the Conservatives are attempting to imitate Bush's policy (and the Pentagon's) of trying to downplay or minimize coverage of the casualty count over there.

Well folks.. it appears that our Liberal Party in Canada has decided to tap into the former Howard Dean adviser's knowlege to make better use of the internet - which folks in the blogosphere down here almost take for granted now.

The US political adviser credited with reinventing campaigning by using the Internet to raise millions for Howard Dean's presidential bid is going to teach Liberals how to do the same for their leadership campaigns. About 50 Liberals, including some of the potential leadership candidates, caucus members, volunteers and organizers, will hear from Joe Trippi, the former Vermont governor's campaign manager, at an event in Toronto next week.