Buried in last week’s KPMG audit of the F-35 programme was the revelation that the government planned to contract out air-to-air refuelling of the jets, seeing as the systems we have in place are currently incompatible. When this was pointed out two years ago, the government said, “Oh don’t worry, we’ll adapt our systems.” By adapt, apparently they meant subcontract. And nothing says asserting sovereignty over our airspace than getting the Americans or some other private companies to do our air-to-air refuelling for us. Great job, guys!

The Supreme Court handed down a split 4-2-1 decision on witnesses wearing niquabs – basically saying sure, but only some of the time, and here’s some guidelines to think about. Emmett Macfarlane examines the split and comes down on Team Abella – the single dissent that said while we’d like to see more of a person’s face than less, on the whole it’s not as big of a deal as it would be to have people to choose to not testify at all.

Assembly of First Nations Grand Chief Shawn Atleo says the #IdleNoMore protests are stemming from frustration, and that there needs to be action on treaty rights and title rights by the government. Meanwhile, here’s a pretty awesome parsing of the online comments about the protests.

NDP MP Pat Martin launched another profanity-laced tirade over the Twitter Machine on Wednesday night, launched primarily at Vic Toews and referred to the Conservatives as “rat-faced whores” because they didn’t invite him to a local funding announcement (which, seeing as he’s not a minister of the Crown, he has little actual need to be there since it’s not the job of an MP to show largesse). Vic Toews did respond, and got a dig in of his own, while adult supervision prevailed, and Pat Martin has agreed to leave Twitter.

Paul Wells takes note that Stephen Harper claims that no Prime Minister has done more for French in Canada than any other, and debunks it entirely out of hand, leading to the question of why Harper would make such a ridiculous claim to begin with.

Over in the Liberal leadership race, Chrétien-era justice minister Martin Cauchon is poised to throw his hat into the ring. There are currently seven official, paid-up entrants into the race.

Here is your recap of the political shows last night’s political shows, featuring interviews with Grand Chief Shawn Atleo and Justin Trudeau, plus a segment on Canadian wines with MP Michelle Rempel.

And Aaron Wherry rounds up some more MP holiday greetings on YouTube.