Supporters of the Harper Government's campaign to use tax laws to de-fund its opponents need to be careful what they wish for. They might just get it!

Consider Prime Minister Stephen Harper's recent reflexive attacks on the environmental charities that dared to oppose the petrochemical pipeline projects desired by the Conservative Party's energy industry financiers.

Harper spotted a momentary advantage in squawking about the fact some of these charities had received donations from abroad -- never mind that this activity is both perfectly legal and quite common -- but forgot in his enthusiasm for the first available cheap shot where a lot of his own favourite political charities' money comes from.

Tory times, as the old saying goes, are terrible times. So it should surprise no one that as we mark the first anniversary of Stephen Harper's majority victory today, the country is increasingly polarized, students are in the streets of Quebec where separatism is again rearing its head, and mean-spirited pink slips are being handed out right and left to public employees accompanied by the pitiless rah-rahs of the Online Tory Rage Machine, parts of which apparently operate out of the United States.

Other than Canadian political parties themselves, the Fraser Institute must be Canada's most intensely political organization.

Notwithstanding its pious mission statement -- "to measure, study, and communicate the impact of competitive markets and government interventions on the welfare of individuals" -- essentially 100 per cent of the Fraser Institute's activities are 100-per-cent political.