No moral rightness here

Sometimes people feel so strongly about one issue that nothing else really matters.  Take the long-gun registry.  Anger over this has died hard and is apparently still ready to flame up.  So be it.  But please don't try to say that this party has any claim to moral rightness.  It galls me to hear people who should know better claim they will vote Conservative because of the party's moral values.  Moral values!  Let's look at those for a minute.

Take Bruce Carson.  This long-time PMO insider was dismissed in mid-March, and his case referred to the RCMP, after the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network revealed the relationship between this 65-year-old man and his 22-year-old escort-girlfriend, Michele McPherson.  Carson used his high-powered contacts with Indian Affairs, Environment Canada, and the Assembly of First Nations to help her and her mother in their bid to secure water filtration contracts worth millions.  Clearly APTN smelled a rat.

Turns out Carson has been dirty a long time.

Disbarred by the Law Society in Ontario in 1981 for misappropriating funds, he was charged and convicted and ultimately served jail time on two counts of fraud.   Until recently, this was the extent of the wrongdoing.  As we've learned in the last few days, Carson's criminal wrongdoings didn't end with the jail time and include another three counts of fraud.

So how did this man get so close to the Prime Minister, so close that, as Maclean's quotes from The Ottawa Citizen, Carson in 2006 was "'the ultimate troubleshooter in Tory circles, the PMO's Mr. Fixit and one of the principal authors and packagers of a wide range of Tory policies'"?  When APTN's story first broke, Harper admitted that he knew Carson had made a mistake in the past but felt he deserved a chance to rebuild his life.

With the most recent revelations, Harper reports that it's all news to him, and that had he known he would never have hired Carson (G&M).  Carson claims he disclosed fully his criminal record; and even without his assertion, it strains credulity, as the Liberals were quick to point out, to think that any party that can suss out participants at a rally with links to Liberal supporters on  Facebook would not know all about the chequered past of one of the PM's closest advisors.

And this doesn't even touch on the Tory senators who are being investigated on election money-laundering schemes.  Or the staffers found to be interfering with Access to Information requests.  Or Bev Oda and her lies to Parliament.

Moral rightness?  Say the long-gun registry if you want, but please do not try to claim any moral rectitude for the Harpercons.  The only thing that guides their moral compass is the quest for power.