Conservative budget passes final Commons vote

Conservative budget passes final Commons vote thanks to 30 Liberal absentees

Now there were a couple things that caught my eye when reading the story. First being this one:

"Trojan-horse bills such as this one are the last refuge of a government trying to make unpopular changes.” - Jack Layton

Really Jack? Is that really what you want to say about large omnibus bills such as this one? How about this one? And this one? Perhaps this one?

The fact is, you're absolutely right Jack, large omnibus bills such as this one are the refuge of a government that wants to make changes that might be unpopular to the rest of the Parliament. The only problem is that it's also the refuge of a government who wants to actually get things done without having to suffer through the feigned outrage of three political parties who have absolutely no intention of forcing election.

That's right Jack, I said it loud and strong. Instead of suffering the feigned outrage of two bit players like you that can't get more than 20% nationally, not to mention having every piece of legislation slowed to a snail's pace, Mr. Harper is making sure that he finally gets all of these bills passed and something done. If you don't like it, Jack, ga'head shoot him down. Oh wait, you don't have enough votes unless both of your opposition friends want to force an election too. Ooops.

The second part that caught my eye was this one:

A 49th Liberal senator, Raymond Lavigne, is fighting criminal charges related to his Senate budget and has been stripped of his voting rights.

Now I don't know which part of that disturbs me more. The fact that Mr. Lavigne is still a Liberal Senator, or the fact that it's taken this long to resolve the case... especially after the government created a special committee to investigate his conduct which then produced a 40 page report about it.