Frankly, it was only shocking in dullness. Paul Martin goes up before the nation and says to the opposition, in essence (and to quote a truly great leader), “please, don’t kill me.”

Thankfully, I doubt if the Canadian people are in a merciful mood towards the Liberal Party at this point. This stunt is only likely to worsen Liberal misfortunes, particularly since it ended up giving the opposition nearly half an hour of free time in prime-time to attack the government.

Dumb, dumb, dumb, on their part.