Harper Goes on the Offensive

I have been pondering la affair Cadman all weekend, trying to get my head in the right place for commenting on it. My concern was that I was quite prepared to pooh-pooh this whole thing because my team are the bad guys. That's not good enough thinking, and I tried to turn it around: if this was a Liberal scandal, how would I react?

My conclusion, there wasn't enough there yet. Legally, there is no crime committed, only hearsay evidence. Ethically, again it's one a few peoples word vs. the hearsay of what a dead man said (if Cadman was alive, we have a different story). My conclusion was going to be, until the other shoe drops, there's not much here. However, I also felt there was more to come, and it could complete this story. The question was, who was going to look worse once the story played out?

Well, Stephen Harper dropped a shoe today, a big one, by threatening to sue Stephane Dion, Ralph Goodale and Michael Ignatieff:

The prime minister served notice Monday that he plans to sue the Liberals if they don't apologize for comments they made concerning the Chuck Cadman affair.

Liberal Leader Stephane Dion, the Liberal Party of Canada and MPs Ralph Goodale and Michael Ignatieff were all served letters over statements published on the party's website.

Those statements question Stephen Harper's alleged involvement in financial "offers" made to Cadman to sway his vote in a crucial 2005 Commons showdown.

Harper's lawyer, Richard Dearden, calls the statements "false and devastatingly defamatory."

"These malicious and reckless defamatory statements impugn the reputation of Prime Minister Stephen Harper," Dearden writes in a letter of notice.

Who knows what's coming next, but one things for sure: Harper has decided he doesn't want an election over this issue. Unless the Liberals have more proof to offer (and believe me, the folks at the "Warren Kinsella coffee house and war room" are looking), they won't be inclined to bring down the government over this issue - at least not yet.