I believe Colin Horgan said it best, so I’ll start off by quoting him: “Yes, never miss a chance for partisan shots. With senseless human tragedy comes political opportunity! Well done, everybody.” He is, of course, referring to the release put out by the government in the wake of the shootings in Scarborough, to which the government gave two lines of condolences and twelve lines of partisan salesmanship about how the opposition needs to support their tough-on-crime agenda. Because we all know that if the mandatory minimums that already exist on the books didn’t prevent this, well, then we need even tougher penalties for deterrence! It also didn’t help that Vic Toews took shots at those judges who struck down the mandatory minimums as arbitrary and inappropriate in some cases – and it was both in the cases in which they were struck down. And then Julian Fantino is the one to sound reasonable? How did that happen? (And just to note that Liberal MP John McKay, whose riding the shooting happened in, was also eminently reasonable, while NDP MP Rathika Sitsabaiesan, from the neighbouring riding, took to Power and Politics to suggest they talk to the critic another day. Oops).

The Federal Court shot down a challenge to the government’s decision to pull out of the Kyoto Protocol because, well, it’s actually the government’s right to do so. That’s the way executive powers work, even if you don’t agree with them – not that it seems to stop the civically illiterate from taking to the courts to try and change the foundations of parliamentary democracy on a whim because they lost a political battle.

Uh oh – DND is scrambling to deal with fire safety upgrades at its facilities across the country before a scathing audit gets published. Apparently people were ordered to deal with the situation and didn’t follow through.

Citizenship and Immigration is putting through 165 long-delayed applications after a Federal Court ruling, but the other 670 cases involved in said ruling are being “deleted” from the backlog as part of the omnibus budget bill’s provisions.

Colby Cosh takes a closer look at the findings of the Enbridge 6B pipeline leak in Michigan, where the systems broke down, and what the implications are for the Northern Gateway pipeline.

The government used the homecoming of double lung transplant recipient Hélène Campbell to announce $10 million in transplant research.

Here is more about the election at the Assembly of First Nations for the position of National Chief, which takes place today with eight contenders, four of them women.

Oh noes! A Liberal MP mentioned a carbon tax! You know, like Stephen Harper used to.

And retiring Conservative Senator David Angus talks to PostMedia about conservatism in Quebec, and says that while the government may have a point about Senate “reform,” they should use the amending formula to the constitution, because if they think they can do it through the back door and the Supreme Court won’t strike it down, then they’re kidding themselves. Imagine!