Back in mid-'90s, when it was almost impossible to find an American newspaper that wasn't brimming with licentious details of Bill Clinton's intern-boinking, it could be just as difficult to find a Canadian journalist who wasn't brimming with contempt for this supposedly most American of obsessions.

So the President had an extramarital affair, so...

I don't know why the pollsters were so spectacularly, utterly wrong in predicting an NDP landslide in last night's B.C. election. I can only suspect the same reason they were wrong about the recent Quebec and Albertan elections, too --  crappy sample sizes, outdated technology, stagnant polling...

By this time tomorrow, British Columbians will have begun casting ballots in their province's 40th general election. Despite the historic milestone, the prevailing mood has been resignation, not celebration.

Savvy readers will probably have some vague sense that BC is a lovely place in the midst of a perilous decline, though appreciating its...

There is a guy collecting a paycheque (and presumably a pension) from the Government of Canada known as the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod. His sole function, near as I can tell, is to wear a frock coat and knock on the door of the House of Commons a...

One of the weirder symptoms of the extreme partisan polarization of the Harper years is the fact that the prime minister's critics seem to exert far more effort and energy blasting the man's theoretical policies and hidden agendas than his any of his actual, open ones.

You don't hear Harper critics griping much about...

The worst thing about the Canadian political system is the amount of power held by party bosses. The worst thing about Canadian political journalism is its obsession with quoting people out of context to discredit their careers. Whenever these two odious traditions unite -- as they are uniting right now in British Columbia --...

I moved recently, and as a result I'm no longer sure which provincial electoral district I live in. But it's probably just as well -- I wasn't planning on voting, anyway.

The 40th British Columbia General Election is a dreary race between dreadful choices. That's an easy thing to...

If truth is the first casualty of war, logic is often the first casualty of terrorism. Especially in the Canadian editorial pages.

A few days ago, National Post columnist Andrew Coyne tweeted a couple of fine columns he wrote in the aftermath of 9/11, highlighting certain smug voices in Canada's left-wing punditsphere who were a...

With one suspect dead, the other caught, and their week of bloody madness finally concluded, the story of the 2013 Boston bombing is at last approaching its dénouement.

The plot points and characters, which seemed so creepily mysterious on Monday, are now fairly clear: it was two young men...

Tragedies present a unique challenge for the opinion columnist.

On the one hand, there's little in life that isn't political and contentious, no matter how tragic or gruesome. September 11, 2001, was an act of psychotic mass-murder by members of a fundamentalist death cult, but it was also a deeply...

Nationalization, the belief that the government should occasionally seize control of private enterprise to better serve the "public good," isn't an idea with much traction in Canadian politics these days -- despite the NDP's best efforts. Though the party may have officially ditched socialism this weekend (or at least...

There are some folks out there -- for simplicity's sake, let's call them "Sun News" -- who cling religiously to this idea that the entire Canadian journalistic establishment is hopelessly biased in favour of Justin Trudeau. Their latest piece of evidence? In a recent interview J-Tru used the word "decibel" instead of...

I didn't know what a "Liberal Party of Canada Leadership National Showcase" was then, and I don't know now...

If there's an original sin present in the Canadian political system -- a single spot of darkness from which everything that makes our politics distasteful, disillusioning, and disgusting originates -- it's probably the confidence vote.

A thousand years ago, in medieval England or whatever, there was once a sharp separation...

It seems to me the world could use a single, unified theory of Elizabeth May. She's been part of this country's political scene for nearly a decade, after all, and yet her longevity continues to baffle. She's very much the Stonehenge of Canadian politics: pointless, yet cryptic.

Certainly there's...

Barbara Amiel is a clever lady. She wrote a fine memoir and spouted what is probably my all-time favourite one-liner about US-Canada relations: "If America was trying to keep the bubonic plague out of its hemisphere, Canadians would import it just to show their independence of American foreign policy." That's pretty funny,...

Trivia time! Finance Minister Jim Flaherty released Canada's 2013-2014 budget on Thursday. What was the most important thing it contained?

Program cuts? Boutique tax credits? Lowered tariffs on imported hockey sticks?

Well, whatever you said, you're wrong. The correct answer, at least in the eyes of the Canadian editorial page...

In his much-maligned and oft-misquoted "Malaise Speech" of 1979, Jimmy Carter opened with what was intended to be a withering bout of self-criticism.

"Mr. President," he said, repeating the supposedly damning words of a disappointed fellow politician, "you are not leading this nation -- you're just managing the government."

With so much talk of a Justin Trudeau-led Liberal revival in the news lately, it's easy to forget that Canada already has a reasonably successful left-of-centre political party. You know, the one with 100 seats in the House of Commons. N-D-something? Led by what's-his-face?

Though we're now almost a...

This analogy's been done to death, but it's worth repeating anyway: when it comes to competitive leadership elections, the Church of Rome now officially beats the Liberal Party.

It took two days and five rounds of voting for the cardinals to elect Pope Francis; it will probably take about...