To you, it's just a fight. To me, it's the ER social worker looking for a teddybear to console a 4 year old girl because she just witnessed her dad get a broken nose as he was trying to get his daughter out of the hotzone. Nurse on duty at St. Pauls

For your consideration, a collation of two apologies from those implicated in the riot and one emergency room nurse's refusal to accept them.

Spoiler alert: I side with the nurse.

A number of times this year I've gone looking for the federal NDP constitution on-line, with no success. During or before the last federal election the party pulled the constitution document from its website - perhaps it was never there.

The most recent copy of the document I've been able to locate dates back from the constitution as it was amended at the NDP Convention held in Winnipeg ten years ago.

Call me a geek, but I read these documents, and so should anyone who votes and especially joins parties. When signing up for NDP membership you are asked to uphold the party's constitution without having the possibility to read it first. How "democratic" is that?

Come on Jack, you are way late to the party on this. Please get the party's constitution and bylaws up on line like all the provincial NDP parties and all of the other federal parties long have done.

Attached to this document is the aforementioned out of date constitution. It'll have to do, for now.

Vancouver Police have crowd-sourced the identification of suspects. Check out: http://www.identifyrioters.com/

Must-read coverage from an individual:

In the belly of Vancouver's hockey riot Posted by Emily Elias on Thursday, June 16, 2011

I now know how long it takes for a car to become fully engulfed in flames. That's something I don't think I needed to know.

My night started simply enough: watching the game with a few friends then off to a restaurant without a television for a meal. As we paid the bill, I casually checked my Twitter feed and saw @lisasj tweet a photo of a car on fire in front of the Canada Post headquarters on Georgia Street. Being the type of person who is strangely attracted to flashing...

And from a professional journalist:

Organized anarchists were not behind the Vancouver riot Brian Hutchinson, National Post, June 16, 2011

Of this I'm certain: The riots Wednesday night had nothing to do with hockey and the home side's season-ending loss. There were no riots in Calgary in 2004. No riots in Edmonton in 2006. No riots in Ottawa in 2007. The chaos was about Vancouver, its culture and its inabilities to cope.

From CanadaCausesCancer.ca a little humour driving home a point:

Click on Read or Watch and then Sign the petition.

A message from Stephen Harper: I've got big cuts in mind for Canadians but not for me and my buddies. Suck on it Canada.

Today Prime Minister Stephen Harper illustrated very clearly his priorities: cuts for Canadians, but not for Stephen Harper, his family, and Conservative Buddies.

At 4:32pm ET the Prime Minister's office issued the following:

Not disclosed in the advisory is the fact that James Moore (Twitter), and Harper's daughter, are going along for the trip. Also not highlighted is the cost to Canadian taxpayers for this junket.

When Stephen Harper was Leader of the Official Opposition one of his M.P.s, Jason Kenney [1], calculated that it cost $11,000 an hour to run the government's Challenger jets, the same jet that will ferry Stephen Harper and his party down to Boston. That cost does not include the additional costs for security which will be incurred. Using Kenney's own figures a conservative estimate of the cost of this joy ride will run to some figure between thirty and fifty thousand dollars.

That's your government at work, closing down programs because they are deemed inessential but spending up to fifty thousand dollars to send two men and a child to a hockey game in Boston.

Ron Cannan (Twitter), a B.C. Conservative MP, is attempting to defend the indefensible on CBC's Power & Politics right now. Mr. Cannan, you are failing miserably at the task, but you know that already of course because there is nothing you can say in defense of this wasteful spending by your leader, Stephen Harper.

Every single lay off, every single program cut, every single "no" issued by the Treasury Board should now be evaluated in this light.

Great work Prime Minister, you just made the opposition's job much easier.

What you can do:

• Write a letter to your paper
• Visit the Twitter links for Cannan and Moore and let them know how you feel
• Vote in the CBC Question of the Day poll ("Is it appropriate for the Prime Minister to attend tonight's Stanley Cup game in Boston?")

PS: To the opposition, official and otherwise, you might also recall that in September 2009 Jim Flaherty used a government jet to fly him and his wife from Ottawa to Montreal to go to a party for Brian Mulroney. Please do you jobs and hold these jokers to account. Canadians of all political stripes are angered by politicians living high on the hog at our expense.

To learn more, visit the Dogwood Initiative's No Tankers campaign information pages ; to sign the petition click here.

I'm seeing some pundits take Jack Layton to task for claiming his NDP opposition caucus at 103 members is the "largest ... opposition in 31 years". Notwithstanding insinuations to the contrary by self-appointed fact-checkers, Layton is quite correct. His opposition caucus in the 41st Parliament is in fact the largest in decades.

Those who dispute Layton's claim hold up as evidence the 103 Liberal members elected by the 39th federal general election on January 23, 2006. 103 Liberals elected in 2006, 103 New Democrats elected in 2011. A tie? No.

The tie-breaker? David Emerson.

Elected as a sitting Liberal cabinet minister on January 23, 2006, Emerson did not sit even a single day in opposition during the 39th Parliament. Rather than fulfill his election-night commitment to constituents Emerson instead became engaged in secret negotiations with Stephen Harper less than 24 hours after ballots were counted.

Two weeks later on February 6th 2006 Emerson stepped out of a limo and entered Rideau Hall to be sworn in as a member of Stephen Harper's Conservative minority government cabinet.

The 39th Parliament itself would not reconvene until April 6 of that year, and when it did reconvene, the Liberal caucus -- now missing Emerson -- stood at 102 members. The Liberal caucus in 2007 briefly dropped to 101 members after MP Wajid Khan crossed the floor to Harper's Conservative benches, but soon added former Conservative Garth Turner turned Independent when he joined the caucus in February of that year.

The Liberal opposition never -- not even for a technical split second of a moment -- had more than 102 members during the 39th Parliament.

Jack Layton is not relying on a technical quibble to back up his claim. David Emerson never sat in opposition during the 39th Parliament thus Layton is quite right in asserting that his 103-member opposition caucus is the largest in thirty one years -- don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

(Whether or not Mr. Layton can put his large caucus to effective use won't likely be fully known until the conclusion of the next federal general election.)

With relatively little news published Sunday on the wildfires raging in northern Alberta, many Canadians will awake Monday morning to learn with surprise and shock the town of Slave Lake is literally burning to the ground. The entire town of approximately seven thousand persons has been evacuated by mandatory order of council; those refusing to leave for their own safety will be arrested.

Slave Lake is located 250km north west of Edmonton

Overnight the RCMP are reporting some 30% of the town has been destroyed; unconfirmed overnight reports state emergency personnel have also been evacuated.

Elizabeth May in a tweet just now responded to my query last week about travel expenses for a recent coast to coast trip May took to attend a memorial.

First of all, I'd like to sincerely thank May for responding to my question which was seriously put. I wasn't merely trying to be a disturber of the post-election peace nor was I attempting to besmirch her integrity.

So why ask the question? First I wanted Ms. May to be subject to the same light of scrutiny other political figures come under, and second I do have an agenda and that is to stamp out the meaningless use of the fluff-phrase do politics differently.

During the recent federal election I'd joined others in questioning why Harper government Finance Minister Jim Flaherty spent an estimated $22,000 flying with his wife on a government jet to attend a gala evening celebrating the 25th anniversary of Brian Mulroney's 1984 majority government electoral win. To my knowledge Flaherty never responded to the allegations during the election or since, and as such this apparent serious misuse of public funds remains an open issue that should be investigated.

May's trip, hot on the heels of the election, seemed like an ideal opportunity to raise the same question albeit party members should really be doing the asking, not the public. May: 1, Flaherty: 0.

Expense reporting is a pretty mundane topic the very nature of which is likely to generate a yawn at best from most, but like MP's or government spending the public's money, party members should expect a high level of transparency from party officials.

To its credit early on in its first mandate the Harper government enacted something called proactive disclosure which makes it possible to see on-line MP expenses. The system is far from perfect, but it's a start. Perhaps the Green Party could do one better and enact a similar system that leaves no details out such as Jim Flaherty's $22,000 return trip one evening from Ottawa to Montreal for an evening out with Brian Mulroney.

As I argued in my opening entry on this subject, wouldn't it be both useful and demonstrate respect to those who fund political organizations if the leaders, executive council, and other officers of ^insert your favorite political party here^ were required to document in an almost real time fashion how they are spending party funds? A party that can stand that level of scrutiny by its members is likely to be able to stand up to as much or more scrutiny by Canadians once in power. That sort of party and behavior might indeed be worth voting for.

Do politics differently, a trite phrase that holds no meaning in the minds of the electorate, can only become meaningful if those championing the objective walk the walk.

So far there is little evidence of that lofty goal being delivered by Greens or any party, but maybe Canada's first Green member of parliament might change that.