There is lots of talk about what Prime Minister Harper may or may not have known about the $90,000 his chief of staff gave Mike Duffy.

Although it is an open secret that the Prime Minister runs a pretty tightly controlled operation, it is always plausible that his chief of staff might have decided to get involved in the affairs of one Senator without telling the boss.

But it doesn't ring true, especially when one considers Duffy's comment about keeping quiet on the "orders of the Prime Minister's Office."

We will likely never get at the bottom of what role the Prime Minister and his office played in this affair.

The documentary that bears the lurid title 'Gypsy Child Thieves' -- originally commissioned by the BBC -- was written and directed by Liviu Tipurita, and released in 2009.

From its title you would think it was a piece of extreme right, racist propaganda.

The filmmaker did not have racist intentions, however.

Tipurita insists he intended to give a fair account of the lives of Romanian Roma (or Gypsy) children who are exploited as thieves and beggars in such cities as Milan and Madrid.

In his mind, the writer-director cared about these children, even as he showed them harassing people at bank machines and lifting wallets from the pockets of commuters and tourists.

When the Prime Minister appointed longtime journalist and broadcaster Mike Duffy to the Senate it was to represent Prince Edward Island (PEI), not the province where Duffy actually lived, Ontario. 

Duffy was born and raised in PEI and still has, we are told, deep connections there.

The original Canadian Constitution, the British North America (BNA) Act, says a Senator must "reside" in the province she/he represents. But the notion of "residence" is, apparently, "undefined."

The Conservative Leader in the Senate, Marjorie LeBreton, and Prime Minister Harper have argued that Duffy's intimate connections to the Island qualify him to represent it in the Senate, even if he is not a resident in the "normal" sense of the word.

The 19th century British schoolteacher, social reformer and mathematician George Boole was not what you would call a 'market-oriented' kind of guy.

His life and work had little connection to the worlds of business and entrepreneurship, and the profit motive was almost entirely alien to his central preoccupations.

And yet, nearly 160 years after his death, Boole is viewed as one of the fathers of computer science -- the scientific foundation of the hugely profitable, multi-trillion dollar business of digital electronics.

Apple, Microsoft, Blackberry, IBM, Intel -- they all owe their existence to an obscure mathematician who died in 1864.

You can't get more market-oriented than that.

A lot happens in Parliament, aside from the theatre of Question Period and the now ritualized scrums that follow in the lobby of the House.

Some of it is sublime; some, ridiculous.

Some of it is enlightening; some, mind-numbing.

And most of it happens far from the gaze of the media or the public.

On April 25, for instance, the House Finance Committee heard from a number of expert witnesses on -- believe it or not -- the subject of inequality.

How and why -- in this time, and with the current Conservative Party in power -- a House of Commons committee decided to even talk about such a subject is a bit of a mystery.

It happened, however, and it was an exercise that might have merited a bit more attention.

On Saturday, the former chief executive of the Canadian Jewish Congress, Bernie Farber, tweeted: "Large anti-Semitic rally in Hungary by Fascist, Jobbik Party. Same Hungary that Immigration Min Kenny says is a safe country."

Hungary's rising and increasingly powerful extreme right Jobbik Party organized the rally to coincide with the World Jewish Congress (WJC) holding its plenary assembly in Budapest.

 The Conservative Hungarian governing Party, Fidesz, headed by Prime Minister Victor Orban, formally disassociates itself from Jobbik's extremism.

Are the Conservatives interfering with the CBC in a dangerous way -- or just seeing to it that salaries at crown corporations fall in line with those in the private sector?

One thing is certain: this government is definitely inserting itself into collective bargaining at the CBC, and at other crown corporations -- entities which, historically, have operated at arm's length from government.

The Conservatives are quite unabashed about this, and they are not fazed by the argument that this sort of interference has never happened before.

Predictably, Parliamentary Secretary (and Harper's current chief purveyor of anger), Pierre Poilievre, characterizes this Conservative initiative as taking on the "union bosses."

The story about the Yukon Conservative MP Ryan Leef's letter to a constituent saying that the polar bears of Canada are doing just fine thank you very much is now widely known.

Leef quoted so-called "research" by a marketing expert, an astronomer and an economist -- none of them Canadian, and climate change deniers all -- that showed there is nothing in the status of polar bears today to worry "decision-makers."

In addition, the Yukon MP claimed, without citing any scientific evidence, that the polar bear population has quadrupled over forty years.

Sometimes Immigration Minister Jason Kenney can get a bit too enthusiastic.

It happened, for instance, on Monday afternoon, when he was explaining one of the hastily-concocted changes to the government's temporary foreign worker program.

The change in question was the new rule obliging employers who use temporary foreign workers to provide a plan showing how they will transition to full time Canadian workers.

As he was elaborating on this reform, Kenney got carried away and exulted that even farmers who bring in help from other countries will have to abide by this new rule.

Oops!

A moment later, Kenney had to correct himself and admit that farmers are, in fact, excluded.

For the Conservatives, the gloves are off when it comes to Kevin Page, the very recently departed Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO).

While Page still had the job, the Conservatives held themselves back, a bit. They didn't openly say the PBO was a partisan and favoured the opposition.

That's their line now.

The Prime Minister used that line on Wednesday, when asked about the Federal Court decision on the PBO's request for information the government refused to share with him.

Prime Minister Harper yoked Page and the NDP together and claimed that the Federal Court case was entirely partisan.

An ominous promise to find someone 'non-partisan'