@kady and @NickKouvalis: the new Downey vs. Boulerice

Dominant story of the day, naturally, was the Auditor-General and the Harper Government's^TM  G8 spending and lying to Parliament. This is going to turn the volume up – waaaay up – on the sleaze and lack-of-transparency memes.

This is getting juicier and smellier by the minute, and best of all, it's sticking to them. And it's got legs. They're not spinning their way out of this one, no matter how many Facebook profiles they red-flag.

Amidst all the yargle-bargle, though, I'd hate to see the Kady O'Malley / Nick Kouvalis scrap totally overshadowed. Not the least because it gives me another (transparent) excuse to recycle this.



Just in case you missed it, here's @kady's smackdown:

Punching above her weight, she is. As you were, Nick.

This is what integrity looks like

It's really not that complicated. Bet she wouldn't have to wait for someone to threaten legal action, either.

Taking notes, Ezra? We can repeat this for you later if you're in shul ...

Just goes to show you

The most telling paragraph from Avaaz.org's response to the attempt to spam its petition:

It's deeply disturbing that in all Avaaz's years of campaigns against US President George Bush, Burmese, Zimbabwean and Sudanese dictators, irresponsible multinational corporations and corrupt politicians, no one has ever yet stooped to this kind of tactic to undermine our members' right to express their views. 

Yep. Of all the nasties Avaaz has taken on, only Fox News North's supporters have gotten this dirty and desperate.

Update: Susan Delacourt puts the whole mess in perspective here. If she's right, then not only did Kory Teneycke know someone was adding the names of real people (Kady O'Malley, Paul Wells, Stephen Wicary, Andrew Coyne) to the Avaaz petition without their knowledge – he wrote his piece slamming Margaret Atwood citing the fact that there were fake names on the petition in order to undermine it. And this guy's going to tell us we need a right-wing Fox Noise machine because the "lamestream media" lack journalistic credibility?

And did you *check* that source, Kory?

I'm guessing not. But didn't stop him from writing a whole column based on it, now, did it.

(Update: Kady's on the trail now. Probably not the only one, either. More here, here, here, and here. Be interesting to see what comes of this ... )