Even word that Tom Flanagan, the Icarus of Canada's neoconservative movement, had flown too close to the sun and was coming down to earth in flames was not enough to save Alberta's crisis-prone Progressive Conservative government from more pain!

One would have thought Premier Alison Redford would have been cheered when the principal architect of the Opposition Wildrose Party's brush with victory last April appeared at a seminar to defend users of child pornography and thereby assured his own political and professional demise.

After all, he was very nearly the cause of her party's destruction.

Thomas Mulcair turned in a virtually faultless performance in Edmonton last night, proving once again that the federal Opposition New Democratic Party is attracting top-quality candidates as it completes its sad duty to replace Jack Layton.

Leastways, as far as this blogger could see, the 57-year-old Member of Parliament for Outremont, Que., never made a false step, except for a stumble that didn't much matter when he left the stage.

This wasn't because he was asked no tough questions. He faced a few of those, and a couple that bordered on truculent, from NDP traditionalists unhappy at the thought their church may be on the cusp of becoming a political party that really could form the next national government.

Why did Stephen Harper's Conservatives refuse to allow Members of Parliament from the Bloc Quebecois and Green Party to pay tribute to Canada's war dead in the House of Commons?

On Nov. 2, Veterans Affairs Minister Steven Blaney rose in the House of Commons to mark the start of Veterans Week, leading up to Remembrance Day. The Conservative MP for Lévis-Bellechasse gave a good speech in French and English that remarked on how Canada's two founding nations were once enemies on the Plains of Abraham and later "united to fight for the common cause of peace and freedom."