Harper to Parliament: Go Home And Leave Me Alone

A follow-up to yesterday's post about Canada's constitutional crisis.

The Governor-General has, at the request of the Prime Minister, prorogued Canada's Parliament until January 26, 2009. PM Harper will govern without a Parliament and without any substantial claim to political legitimacy until that time, since it looks like he's running away from a no-confidence vote.

Which is what he's doing, of course. The whole thing gets explained quite concisely in this piece custom-written for the navel-gazing US Americans south of the forty-ninth parallel.

If this sort of thing had happened in, say, Angloa or Laos or Uruguay, no one would have been particularly surprised. Canada, though, I would have held to a higher standard. Canadians of all political beliefs have got to be pretty pissed off right now.