Friday digest

- I never actually thought I'd ever say this, but I feel sorry for Bryan McCabe. The Kool-Aid drinking partisans of Leaf Nation, with their frothing-at-the-mouth demands for complete loyalty and absolute worship of all things blue and white, have been attacking McCabe for not running to sign a deal while the truth of the matter is that his wife has been dealing with some very severe health issues.

Buds fans, you guys need to chill out. Life is not always all about the crest.

Speaking of Toronto, Jeremy Roenick says he wants to play either there or in Ottawa. Say what you want about JR, but one thing is for sure: he hates losing. That's why I think the Sens should get him. There aren't enough guys in that locker room about whom you can say the same, and at the top of that list is a certain defenceman who they just gave $13M to by the name of Wade Redden.

- Starting tomorrow, Canadians are going to receive a 1% cut in the GST and those with kids under 6 are going to receive $100 a month for each child, taxable at the salary rate of parent who earns the lowest income rate of the two, while the government cancels previously scheduled income tax reductions that were introduced by the Liberals.

How generous. Like I used to hear when getting tips as a paper boy, "Try not to spend it all in one place".

Hopefully, if he wins a majority, Harper will quit with the Joe Clark imitation and govern like a real conservative.

- Two must-reads from the Wall St. Journal: In this book review, Robert Pollock corrects the dominant narrative concerning the war on terror, and Peggy Noonan describes the sad evolution (or is that devolution?) of the NYT.

- The experience of Hamas shows that there's more to democracy than just voting.

- Now like I said yesterday, I'm not a lawyer, but upon reflection, a few more things come to mind in the wake of yesterday's Gitmo ruling.

By saying that the White House overstepped its Constitutional boundaries by ordering military tribunals, the Supreme Court has basically forced W to go to Congress with a new scheme, which he certainly will. Until then, however, the legal limbo that the Court has put the Administration in would have al-Qaeda combatants receive the same legal rights and protections as US citizens would under regular public trials, or military court-martials in the case of soldiers. (I highly doubt anyone but the most kooky lefties would suggest that situation is a desirable one.)

What is scary to me, however, is this. Some analysts have said that the judges also stated that any trial where evidence is brought forward in secret without the suspect's knowledge is contrary to the Geneva Convention. This could have huge implications because a cornerstone of building a case against terrorists is the confidentiality of intel-gathering techniques. By exposing the way intel agencies obtain information through the course of a regular trial process, you would be basically inviting terrorists over for a beer to talk shop.

(From a Canadian perspective, our own Supreme Court is ruling on the legalities of our security certificate regime, which I'm discussed before on this blog. A central issue there is the secret nature of the evidence brought forward against the subject of a certificate which, in the end, leads to deportation.)

It is absolutely essential that confidentiality is retained by law enforcement authorities if terror networks are to be combatted effectively. I hope the Justices who ruled against the use of military tribunals at Gitmo believe the same.