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<p>Fox news ran stories last night based on some of the things we were tracking right here in this post. Here is their on line story.</p> <p>As unfinished as my research is, I feel compelled to release what I've found so far as the story cannot wait any longer.  I am not looking for a scoop on anyone or anything, but at the same time I don't want anyone thinking I made this stuff up after the fact either.</p>

Dignity: Maybe it's because his father was born with a silver foot in his mouth that President Bush learned to be gracious to even his most bitter political rivals....He's been called a moron (former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien), a Beelzebub (Sean Penn, who cleverly added, "and a dumb one") and a son of a bitch (Democrat Paul Hackett, who lost his bid last year for an Ohio congressional seat)....lying bastard, evil maniac, Fuehrer (all courtesy of Cindy Sheehan), white-knuckle drunk (Martin Sheen), George bin Bush (assorted wags), terrorist (a universal invective) and fascist (both implied and claimed by a...

Plans, tapes diaries seized at Pearson airport Zaynab Khadr denies they belong to her OTTAWA—The RCMP and Canadian military believe they've discovered a vital cache of information on Al Qaeda that includes the whereabouts of wanted members and details of attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan. The information is allegedly contained in a laptop, dozens of DVDs, audiocassettes and the pages of diaries, seized by the RCMP officers who met Zaynab Khadr at Pearson airport with a search warrant as she arrived back in Canada in February, court documents state. Khadr is the eldest daughter of a family that has...

Abdullah Khadr at large: Brothers were caught in Afghanistan, father is wanted for aiding Osama bin Laden The federal government released secret intelligence documents yesterday revealing that an al-Qaeda training camp in eastern Afghanistan was under the command of a Scarborough man whose two brothers are captives in the war on terrorism. Abdullah Khadr, 22, is described in a Privy Council Office intelligence report as a suspected al-Qaeda member who is thought to have "commanded an extremist training camp in Lowgar Province in Afghanistan." He is the fourth member of the Khadr family to come to the attention of Canadian...

A federal judge proclaimed last week that in the final years of Canada's Chretien government, untold millions of dollars were channeled from the treasury into the bank accounts of the federal Liberal Party, several Liberal-friendly advertising agencies and a few senior party backroom gentry in Montreal. His report was viewed with alarm by the media, the politicians and the pundits – by everybody, it seemed, except the Canadian people. They knew that already. They had gathered it conclusively from a report of the auditor-general three years ago, and reaffirmed it in the testimony of the sordid parade of Liberal insiders...

Montreal-- Francis Fox is denying a dead man's allegation that the Prime Minister's Office was briefed on the progress of Montreal 2005, the committee organizing the World Championships of Aquatics, to be held next month at Parc Jean Drapeau. "The PMO was never briefed on that stuff," Fox said. "He [Prime Minister Paul Martin] never micromanages." Fox, now with the law firm of Fasken, Martineau, refuted a claim in a letter by Montreal 2005's late director general Yvon Desrochers that the PMO was informed that an internal audit in Feb. 2004 did not go well. In a letter to Heritage...

Zaynab Khadr claims she didn’t know that terrorist Osama bin Laden would attend her wedding in Pakistan. Now the 25-year-old says she didn’t know clips of bin Laden’s voice calling for the killing of Americans were on the laptop computer seized by the RCMP at Pearson airport when she returned to Canada last February.

Canada's Liberal Party, which since the 1970s has both harbored in its upper echelons and implanted in the federal bureaucracy a virulent anti-American bias, is in deep political trouble and could be driven from office before summer. The cause is as old as the country itself – graft and corruption in Quebec – the same affliction that defeated Canada's first government soon after the country was confederated in 1867 and has periodically beset its governments ever since. But this time the amounts involved are astronomically bigger and the misappropriation of public money far more blatant. The current case goes back...

Newly released documents from the Bush administration show that a former member of Saddam Hussein's inner circle has resurfaced inside the new Iraqi government, bringing charges of corruption, bribery and bid-rigging. As a result, millions of U.S. aid dollars and billions in Iraqi government funds have disappeared in an ongoing scandal that is poised to engulf Baghdad and Washington. Worse still, a leading candidate for the top elected post in Iraq has also been implicated in the report as having taken "payoffs" in order to rig a major government cell phone contract. According to a May 2004 U.S. Defense Department...

The time limit for a majority government in a two-party system is now usually 10 to 12 years. After that, it is living on borrowed time. Neither major party in the United States has held the White House for more than 12 years since Franklin Roosevelt's time, and only the Margaret Thatcher-John Major combination made it past the 12-year mark in Britain in the past half-century. It certainly hasn't happened in Canada in the past 50 years, and it looks like this time will be no exception. Six months after Jean Chretien stepped down from 10 years as prime minister,...

EDMONTON -- What does the June 28 Canadian election mean for Americans? I'll give you one obvious answer: It's the easiest Canadian election for Americans to understand, from their vantage point, in the last 20 years. Writing about Canadian politics for an American audience is often a near-impossible exercise. When you're done enumerating the various grievances, constitutional squabbles, parliamentary niceties, and changing party identities, you've gone past your word-count limit twice over. But this time out, things are a little clearer, though maybe only a little. The ruling Liberals, who held a majority in the House of Commons at the...

Liberal support keeps sliding, poll finds CTV.ca News Staff Despite a determined effort to restore Canadians' confidence in government, support for the ruling Liberal Party continues to slide. A new poll shows support for the Liberals has fallen another four points since Thursday. In an Ipsos-Reid poll completed for CTV after Prime Minister Paul Martin's weekend public relations blitz, results show the Liberals would only be able to count on 35 per cent of decided voters across the country. The new Conservative Party of Canada appears to be the big beneficiary of the Liberals' misfortune. They gained another three points,...

OTTAWA -- Prime Minister Jean Chretien announced Tuesday that he will retire Dec. 12, clearing the way for Paul Martin to take the reins of power. Chretien, who had long said he would hang on until February, revealed the early departure date after meeting with Martin, the newly anointed Liberal leader. The move clears the way for Chretien's successor to open a fresh parliamentary session in the new year and start the clock ticking toward an expected spring election. Martin said his top priorities will be to prepare a cabinet and set up the new Prime Minister's Office. Chretien said...

OTTAWA (CP) - Prime Minister Jean Chretien appears to be setting the stage for an early exit, signalling for the first time that he may give up his determined plan to stay until February. Chretien will sit down with Paul Martin, his successor, after the Liberal leadership convention next month to plot the timetable for his retirement, said spokesman Jim Munson. "Put it this way, he'll do what's good for the party, the country and the government," Munson said. "The prime minister has always said he's leaving in February - unless he changes his mind." Chretien has long maintained that...

Ottawa — Paul Martin became the unofficial prime minister designate last night when he racked up another day of massive victories in Liberal Party voting, passing the magic number of 2,902 delegates that guarantees he will win the party leadership. Mr. Martin's resounding victory, with a margin exceeding 90 per cent of the vote, makes the November leadership convention a mere formality — and his place as the next Liberal leader and successor to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien a certainty. It also sets the clock ticking for Mr. Martin's transition team, who can now openly start planning the details of...

Bishop tells PM: You've lost your way If true to his faith, a Catholic must not support gay marriage, Gervais warns The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Ottawa has written Prime Minister Jean Chrétien a personal letter warning that he has lost his way as a Catholic if he supports same-sex marriage. Archbishop Marcel Gervais would not discuss the details of his confidential reprimand to the prime minister, the second in two months. In May, Archbishop Gervais took Mr. Chrétien to task for his pro-choice stand on abortion. Archibishop Gervais wrote his latest letter after learning that Mr. Chrétien's government intends...

SARS. The Stanley Cup playoffs. Mad Cow disease. Political uber-infighting. Holly Jones. Taking major hits for our stance on the war in Iraq. Did I miss anything? Probably, but that list is pretty enough in and of itself. I don't think I've gone much further back than about three months, but in those eventful three months, Canada's international face has taken some major bruises, not to mention morale among us ordinary citizens. None of these things, however, would be insurmountable on their own, but combined, Canada has taken such a collective blow that it may take years to fully recover....

PM defends anti-Bush remarks Why so sensitive? 'loyal ally' Chrétien asks Prime Minister Jean Chrétien fired back at the White House yesterday after it disputed his denunciation of the economic management of U.S. President George W. Bush, saying the Republican administration should not be so sensitive to constructive criticism from a loyal ally. Mr. Chrétien said he wasn't worried about a Bush backlash over his critique even though Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, took strong exception yesterday to Mr. Chrétien's disapproval of the rising U.S. deficit and its effect on the troubled global economy. Mr. Fleischer said the president...

Canadian Alliance foreign affairs critic Stockwell Day yesterday questioned whether Jean Chrétien's family associations had any bearing on the government's decision to stay out of the recent war against Iraq. "I do not fault the prime minister's ties with his nephew (Raymond) our ambassador to France," Mr. Day said in the Commons, "or with Paul Desmarais Sr., who is the largest individual shareholder of France's largest corporation, TotalFinaElf, which has billions of dollars of contracts with Saddam's former regime." Mr. Chrétien's only daughter, France, is married to André Desmarais, son of the controlling shareholder of Montreal-based Power Corp., one of...

A message to Americans There are many reasons why I am thankful that I am Canadian. One of those reasons, I will admit, is that I never had to suffer the embarrassment of having Bill Clinton lead my country. I have been interested in US politics for a number of years and I cringed for my American friends as scandal after scandal rocked the Clinton White House. I waited breathlessly after the 2000 election when the Presidency was literally hanging by a chad - hoping against hope that common sense would prevail, and that honour would finally be restored to...

Klein letter supports U.S. action against IraqCanadian PressUpdated: Fri. Mar. 21 2003 3:56 PM ETCALGARY — Alberta Premier Ralph Klein has put his support for the U.S. war on Iraq in writing - sending a letter to the American ambassador to Canada praising President George W. Bush for "leadership in the war on terrorism and tyranny." "The president and your nation have exemplified leadership," Klein said in a letter sent Thursday to Paul Cellucci, the U.S. ambassador to Canada. "As Americans put their lives on the line to preserve freedom and security, we feel that friendship more strongly than ever."...

PM turns hawkish on Iraq war Chrétien issues stern warning; U.S., Britain push to authorize war Prime Minister Jean Chrétien took his most hawkish stance on Iraq to date yesterday, warning that Saddam Hussein has only weeks to disarm, while at the United Nations, the U.S. and Britain pushed closer to war with a draft Security Council resolution that would authorize conflict by mid-March. Mr. Chrétien blasted the NDP for "sing-song" anti-war rhetoric, while continuing to hold open his options on whether Canada would back a U.S.-led war on Iraq. But the prime minister's remarks appear to echo the two-to-three-week...

Has Prime Minister Jean Chrétien finally taken a definitive stand on the Iraq file? On Tuesday, under questioning in the House of Commons from Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe, Mr. Chrétien insisted Canada would not join the U.S.-led "coalition of the willing" should the United States fail to win additional Security Council backing for war. "We have not been asked and we do not intend to participate in a group of the willing," Mr. Chrétien said. "The policy of the government is very clear. If there has to be military activity in Iraq, we want it to be approved by...

Prime Minister Jean Chretien's decision to ratify the Kyoto accord was based on a "gut feeling," not a detailed knowledge of the international treaty, Environment Minister David Anderson said yesterday. "His critics, who frequently denounce this, fail to realize it is one of the signs of his genius that he doesn't want to know too much about certain things," Mr. Anderson said in a year-end interview with the Citizen. "He gets the right gut feeling. And he's got the antenna, which very few people have, the political antenna. He's right on this." Mr. Chretien signed the ratification papers of the...

Internal Divisions Shake Canada Gov't.The Associated Press, Fri 6 Dec 2002 TORONTO (AP) — Canada's prime minister narrowly escaped a Parliament vote that could have forced a snap election, and the close call has highlighted how much his power has eroded since announcing his retirement. The legislative wrangling Thursday in the House of Commons, where the Liberals hold 169 of the 301 seats, showed how badly the party caucus has divided since Prime Minister Jean Chretien announced in August he would step down in February 2004. With former finance minister Paul Martin the front-runner to succeed Chretien as party leader...

Jean Chrétien, the Prime Minister, wants us all to know that we should not concern ourselves with the sky-high cost of his government's gun registry. "Yes, there were cost overruns," Mr. Chrétien said on Wednesday. "It was more than we expected, but the system is in place and it's a good system, and it's very good for Canadian citizens." The cost of that "very good" system, as we now know courtesy of this week's Auditor-General's report, will soon reach $1-billion. That is, to say the least, a far cry from the $85-million maximum the government had promised when it began...

The chief spokesgal for Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien offered to resign today after being caught calling President Bush a "moron," but Chretien would not accept the resignation. Fitting reaction for a country in which polls show many citizens blame the U.S. for being attacked on 9/11. She's French and Canadian A reporter overheard Canuck peacenik Francoise DuCros at the NATO summit meeting in Prague calling President Bush a "moron" because she didn't like his policy on Iraq. DuCros claimed she didn't remember making the insult but said she used the term often. "If I made comments in the context...

Canada: Base for Terrorists By Stephen Brown FrontPageMagazine.com | November 19, 2002 Documents recently released by CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service), Canada's CIA, have confirmed that, for more than a decade, Canada has served as a financial and logistical base for Hezbollah’s operations in the Middle East. Hezbollah is the Lebanon-based terrorist organization responsible for myriad massacres, including the attack on the US embassy in Beirut in the early '80s that killed 240 US Marines. These documents came to light after they were sent to North Carolina for use in a cigarette-smuggling case there involving Hezbollah supporters. Once again,...

What David Hasselhoff is to Germans, I am the opposite to Canadians. OK, maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. But in the last week, yours truly has become one of the most reviled Americans north of the 49th Parallel. It's all because of a cover story for the current issue of National Review in which I argue for the strategic bombing of Canada. Let me recap. Five decades ago, historian Frank Underhill wrote that the Canadian is "the first anti-American, the model anti-American, the archetypal anti-American, the ideal anti-American as he exists in the mind of G-d." It's a rather...

<p>CALLER: Hello. I have a question for Mr. Jennings. I'd like to ask him what his reaction is to the prime minister of Canada's remark today that we brought these attacks on ourselves in America.</p> <p>JENNINGS: I don't believe the prime minister of Canada would have said that.</p>

Prime Minister Jean Chrétien has ended months of furious speculation and a fierce leadership struggle with his former finance minister in one fell swoop by announcing he will retire as Liberal party leader in February, 2004. "I will not run again," Jean Chrétien said in a speech following a meeting of the party's national caucus in Saguenay, Que. "I will fulfill my mandate and I will commit my life up until February, 2004." Mr. Chrétien's announcement will likely mend some of the deep wounds in the party caused by the intense and public leadership struggle between himself and his former...

In the spirit of the 30th anniversary of the Watergate break-in I've put together a list Jean Chretien's enemies. If you have some names I missed and/or would like to add your own name, send me an email. Here's the link: http://ca.geocities.com/ipberg

Martin dropped from cabinet Last Updated Sun, 02 Jun 2002 17:39:15 OTTAWA - Prime Minister Jean Chrétien is expected to kick Finance Minister Paul Martin out of his cabinet Sunday in the second shuffle in a week. This one is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. eastern time at Rideau Hall. The swearing-in ceremony was announced after the longstanding rivalry between Chrétien and Martin became a bitter rift three days ago. On Friday, Martin hinted he may leave his post, shortly after Chrétien said he may get rid of cabinet ministers who continue with unofficial leadership campaigns. Chrétien may now be beating...

Martin considers quitting 'I obviously have to reflect on my options': Finance Minister balks as Chrétien orders him to cease pursuit of leadership Robert Fife, Ottawa Bureau Chief and Michael Friscolanti National Post Glenn Lowson, National Post TORONTO - In a move that could send the governing Liberals into crisis and affect the Canadian economy, Paul Martin said last night he is reconsidering his future within the government. The Finance Minister's surprise announcement came after supporters of Jean Chrétien accused him of being "a destabilizing force" and the Prime Minister ordered him to stop all leadership campaigning. "I must say...

Chrétien says not having a priest at Sept. 11 memorial is his 'best decision': 'Rant' to caucus claimed OTTAWA - Jean Chrétien told Liberal MPs and Senators yesterday that the "best decision" he made after Sept. 11 was not to have a priest speak at the memorial service on Parliament Hill for the victims of the terrorist attacks. Insiders say the Prime Minister spoke for almost 10 minutes at the weekly national caucus meeting about the dangers of mixing religion and politics and about the Catholic Church. "It was a rant," one MP said. Dan McTeague, a Liberal MP from...