With news of a death by friendly fire in Iraq, one can pretty much imagine how this is going to become the fodder of QP over the coming days – much of it likely to be condemnation about a mission where these special operations forces were never supposed to be near the front lines in the first place, and a government that will be urging patience for the outcome of the investigations into just what happened that night when our troops came under fire. To add insult, the Kurdish forces took to their local media to blame the Canadians for the incident, but there are already dissenting reports, saying that their version doesn’t fit with the facts on the ground, including the maxim that “special forces don’t freelance” – hence why the government will be urging calm until an investigation happens. Just don’t hold your breath when it comes to requests not to politicise this death, because we’ve already crossed that line.

Good reads:

• A Conservative MP said something mildly racist about the Temporary Foreign Workers programme and “whities” who would rather get EI than jobs going to brown people.
• More Canadians are radicalised than ever! How many are on the watch list? About 90. Out of 26 million. Um, okay.
• Here’s a look at how spy scandals in the seventies and eighties led to more robust oversight in the US.
• Treasury Board staff were mystified by Tony Clement’s claim that the government wasn’t releasing datasets for fear of people manipulating the data.
• The Ottawa shooter’s mother responds to the release of his video, and it’s worth a read.
• Andrew Coyne laments how vapid the conservative movement has become in Canada, as demonstrated by the Manning Networking Conference.

Odds and ends:

Manitoba premier Greg Selinger barely survived his leadership challenge. (I’ll write more about this gong show later).

One University of Saskatchewan prof laments the “intense judicial activism” of the Supreme Court. As opposed to a government that ignores constitutional advice to get votes?

Kathleen Wynne wonders who were the Mothers of Confederation. I hope we can count Luce Cuilliver – George-Étienne Cartier’s trouser-wearing, cigar-smoking mistress – as one of them.