Wednesday digest

- Today, Bob Barker is taping his last show for the Price is Right.

Was there anything better than playing with Legos and watching the Price at 11 o'clock during the summer when you were about 8 or 9 years old, looking up from the spaceship you had under construction and silently asking yourself if two spins of $0.60 and $0.35 together would beat one of $0.90, and knowing with certainty, despite your young age, that you much preferred Barker's Beauties to the ongoing romances of Luis and Maria, Gordon and Susan, Bert and Ernie and Big Bird and Snufflupagus over on Channel 5? Or coming home from high school on a snow day, inviting all your friends over for smokes, junk food and euchre, and tuning in to see a high-intensity Range Game, Mountain Climber or Plinko? How about during university, when you'd finally leave the house at noon, determined to spend the day at the library only after you caught the Showcase Showdown?

Hammerheads, you know of what I speak.

I know it's a cliché, but truly, today marks the end of an era.

- Last night, I watched the latest Republican debate. There was a lot to like. McCain should be the Secretary of Defense, Rudy hit a home run on health care, and I loved hearing Hunter on family, Huckabee on faith, and Paul on the individual. Although I liked Tancredo's comments about assimilation, it's clear that he's a nativist. Very ugly. As for Brownback, Gilmore and Thompson, they should all just cut their losses and quit. Romney continues to impress me as well, but I'm not sure how he'd do if he were put up against an ideas man like Gingrich.

Also encouraging is how every candidate recognized the need to get back to basic principles of lower taxes and lower spending.

Click here for the transcript.

- A Nova Scotia Tory MP has been tossed out of the government caucus for voting against the 2007 Budget due to the fact that it would scale down his province's share of the federal dole given that they are about to make mad money on natural resource extraction.

Why is it that politicians from localities everywhere north and east of the Ottawa River thinks that perpetual subsidization of their economy by hardworking taxpayers in the rest of Canada is part of their birthright?

Have they no pride?

- You can always count on John Stossel to tell it like it is. Here, he explains why profit shouldn't be a dirty word, especially when it comes to the oil companies.

- Take a look at this account of Putin's Russia from a recent defectee.

Very worrying.

- The New York Islanders have bought out Alexei Yashin.

Mike Milbury could not be reached for comment.

- Larry David and his wife have split. I don't know how someone could tolerate that jerk for an hour, much less an entire marriage (and I'm talking about him, not her).