Never mind his communications director, Alberta Liberal Leader Dr. David Swann has now officially shaken things up in his eight-member caucus and not everyone's going to be cheering about it.

Thousands of words have been composed over the past couple of weeks to explain why Villa Caritas, which was approved by the Alberta government in 2009 for development as a 150-bed long-term care facility in West Edmonton, is now opening as a 150-bed geriatric psychiatric facility.

Plenty of literary horsepower has been harnessed to make sense of why what in April 2009 was supposed to be public-private partnership with the Catholic charity Covenant Health that would cost Alberta taxpayers $12 million had by April 2010 turned into a publicly owned geriatric mental hospital that would cost taxpayers $51.4 million.

Could it be that Dr. Raj Sherman is about to jump to the Alberta New Democratic Party after all?

Readers don't need to be particularly alert to realize that Sherman -- once the Conservative MLA for Edmonton-Meadowlark, the only physician in Premier Ed Stelmach's caucus and Parliamentary Assistant to Health Minister Gene Zwozdesky -- is now looking for a new political home.

The front page of yesterday's Edmonton Journal -- the obsolete physical newspaper version, that is, not the convenient free website -- encapsulates perfectly the state of Alberta at this moment.

The principal headline -- the one we used to refer to back in the day as "above the fold" -- states, "Emergency ward situation still critical." A subhead adds: "Admitted patients waiting up to 70 hours for beds, despite new plans to relieve pressure on over-stressed hospitals."

Where will Raj Sherman jump? And when?

Until November 22, Sherman was the Conservative MLA for Edmonton-Meadowlark, the only physician in the foundering Tory caucus and Parliamentary Assistant to Health Minister Gene Zwozdesky.

On November 22, Premier Ed Stelmach sacked the rebellious Emergency Room physician for his emotional public condemnation six days earlier of the gong show that passes for management of health care in this province.

When in doubt, stall.

There's not a politician on this planet who hasn't tried this one from time to time, for the sensible reason it often works. After all, the media and the public are like a kitten with a string -- they lose interest easily.

So the buzz at the Alberta Legislature today was that the battered and reeling Tory government of Premier Ed Stelmach, coming off a spectacularly bad 2010 and contemplating a fairly iffy 2011, is about to give itself a little extra breather by delaying the spring session of the Legislature until late February.

The campaign for vindication by Stephen Duckett, fired head of Alberta's province-wide health super board, dramatically entered a new phase New Year's Eve with the media revelation he gave a private farewell speech to 100 of his top health bureaucrats in Edmonton.

The secret speech, we are informed by the Edmonton Journal, took place December 6, just 12 days after Duckett was fired by the Alberta Health Services Board on orders of Health Minister Gene Zwozdesky. Copies conveniently found their way to the media in time to start 2011 with a bang for the increasingly shaky government of Premier Ed Stelmach.

Happy New Year! Have you had your syphilis test?

Just in case you were wondering, Alberta is the syphilis capital of Canada, a fact that crept into the news over the holiday with publication of a report called the Syphilis Outbreak in Alberta by the office of the Chief Medical Officer of Health.

If you're wondering where most of Stephen Harper's big political ideas come from, look no further than Alberta.

And so it is with this holiday season's Conservative-NDP détente, which is whipping the federal Liberals into a froth of self-righteous frustration. The prime minister has torn this particular page right out of the Ralph Klein playbook.

With likely future political challenges in mind, presumably, Alberta Finance Minister Ted Moron recently rolled out a spiffy new Website.