Conservative backbencher Brent Rathgeber complained publicly about Bev Oda’s expenses, the use of cabinet minister limousines. “Oh noes! Harper can’t control his caucus!” We The Media, decry, when really we should be saying, “Hey, look – backbench MPs are doing their job and holding the executive to account!” It also emphasises how much of a problem Oda has become for Harper, and that she will need to be shuffled – if not out of Cabinet (and likely to a Senate seat or other patronage appointment), then certainly a major demotion to something innocuous like National Revenue.

Senator Patrick Brazeau, the youngest Senator in the Upper Chamber, has the lousiest attendance record over the past year. In fact, he was four days away from being fined for it. (Note that Senators have attendance taken and can be fined after too many absences, as compared to MPs who self-report attendance, and those reports are not made public). So what did Brazeau do? Call the journalist who wrote the story a bitch (and did, eventually, apologise). Because that’s class. You can read the Storified Twitter Machine exchange here.

In a speech at Queen’s University, former senator Lowell Murray decries the fact that PMO and PCO – the political and the civil service sides of the Prime Minister’s staff – has become one and the same, and that’s detrimental to parliamentary democracy.

John Geddes looks at the industry side of carbon pricing, where companies like Shell are spending the money on things like carbon capture and storage research rather than continuing to just emit carbon “for free” as Mulcair claims until forced otherwise because they see the writing on the wall.

What’s that? The war on drugs is unsustainable? You don’t say!

Pat Martin is going to be spending his summer fundraising to help fight RackNine’s defamation lawsuit against him.

Here’s another look at how the likely Scottish referendum on independence from the UK is being shaped by Canada’s experience.

Our military has opened a supply hub in Jamaica to support operations in the region. This is one of a planned global network.

And Kady O’Malley looks into the publicly available Access to Information records to look at topics that should have generated responses, but for which there didn’t seem to be any available, mysteriously. (Part one, part two).