I'm not one for a straight repost, but Rick Mercer's summary of Harper's antics is outstanding and provides a nice light side to my opinion from earlier this week:

Okay we just might as well admit it and get it over with. Stephen Harper is a genius.

Here we are faced with a global economic crisis. Nations all over the world are struggling to figure out how to protect their citizens -- who are terrified. We've seen unheard of cooperation between political rivals all over the industrialized world.

But not in Canada. Not with Stephen Harper. Not on his watch. No my friends, he has one goal and one goal only and it has nothing to do with governing: how can he use this crisis to destroy the opposition?

And wouldn't you know, he almost did it.

Stephen Harper decided Canada doesn't need a stimulus package; all we needed to do was cancel the subsidy that political parties get.

Which would have saved the government about $26-million. That's about the same amount Harper spends on bodyguards every year when he visits danger zones like Thunder Bay or Nunavut.

But the real upside for Harper, of course, is that the entire opposition would have been crippled or destroyed. It gives me great faith to know that as our economy crumbles Harper is on the case trying to come up with new an innovative ways to cutback the Green Party's office budget and bankrupt the Liberals. And then the world will be a better place.

Maybe he has a point. Maybe that's why Canada keeps refusing to give the man a majority. It's not because he's a mean little man obsessed with revenge, but because we just have too many choices. We go to the voting booth and get confused. Like that first trip to Baskin Robbins.

Maybe we'd all just be better off if Conservative was the only flavour on the menu.

Well we almost found out. Because if Stephen Harper got his way on this, democracy would have changed forever. And not a single citizen will have gotten to vote on the matter.

Thanks to Buzz.

With no political recourse left to him, Stephen Harper is spinning in every direction possible in an effort to halt his own demise.

Harper, ...told the House of Commons during Tuesday's fiery question period that Dion was about to make the "worst mistake the Liberal party has ever made in its history" by agreeing to support from the sovereigntist Bloc Québécois.

Conveniently ignored in this statement is that Harper himself sought the support of the Bloc in a 2004 coalition against Paul Martin's minority Liberal Government.

But the Liberals and NDP said those arguments were undercut by Mr. Harper's 2004 letter to then-governor-general Adrienne Clarkson, which requested that she turn to him if Paul Martin's newly elected government were defeated in the Commons.

"We respectfully point out that the opposition parties, who together constitute a majority in the House, have been in close consultation. We believe that, should a request for dissolution arise this should give you cause, as constitutional practice has determined, to consult the opposition leaders and consider all of your options before exercising your constitutional authority," the 2004 letter stated.

Equally of note is that the Bloc are not formally part of the coalition. They have pledged their support but will play a formal role in that government nor hold cabinet posts - a fact being strategically ignored by the Conservatives.

The opposition is not acting 'undemocratically'. They are acting in the best tradition of democracy by forging representative government for the people of Canada in the face of the failure of the Conservative minority. Harper has understood this principle well in past years. His comments today show that both his memory and his outlook are short-term.

Meanwhile, events in the years 2004 and 2008 and are proving similar on two fronts. 1) The same democratic options were legally and rightfully pursued by our opposition parties, and 2) history will have Harper on the losing side both times.

Thanks to Kevin Grandia and The Tyee.