QUARTERED:

A Blog Written From Minneapolis Rattles Canada's Liberal Party (CLIFFORD KRAUSS, 4/07/05, NY Times)

An American blogger has suddenly emerged as a force in Canadian politics.

Edward Morrissey, a 42-year-old Minneapolis area call-center manager who runs a Web log, or blog, called Captain's Quarters as a hobby, last Saturday began posting allegations of corruption that reached the highest levels of the Canadian Liberal Party. The postings violate a publication ban instituted a few days earlier by a federal judge, Justice John Gomery, who is leading an investigation into accusations of money laundering and kickbacks in a government program from the 1990's that was aimed at undermining Quebec separatists.

The scandal, which involves government payments of up to $85 million to a handful of Montreal advertising firms for little or no work, has dominated national politics for a year and led to the Liberals losing their majority in the House of Commons last June.

But Justice Gomery moved to limit dissemination of information from the otherwise public hearing in Montreal so as not to influence potential jurors for coming trials in which a government bureaucrat and two advertising executives face criminal charges.

According to Mr. Morrissey's blog, recent testimony for the first time links people who have been close to Prime Minister Paul Martin to the scandal.

Mr. Martin has long insisted that he knew nothing of the workings of the program, which was intended to promote the federal government's presence at cultural and sporting events, even though he was finance minister at the time. The prime minister then was Jean Chrétien, who left office in December 2003.

Journalists and anyone else can attend the so-called Gomery commission hearings, and Mr. Morrissey said one of them, whom he would not identify, had approached him and had been passing him information for his blog.

Shouldn't the scandal itself be the bigger story?

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 7, 2005 12:00 AM