“The Liberal Party has been caught using a doctored tape to make serious criminal accusations against the Prime Minister of Canada on the eve of an expected election campaign,” said Tory MP James Moore.

Woah. Did anyone else just have a weird flashback to the Gurmant Grewal incident which, I might add, happened the exact same time as the stuff being mentioned above. Weird.

Kady O’Malley offers a delightfully cynical run-down of the Tory tape tampering allegations here. It’s a little curious that Moore and friends aren’t willing to explain in what way or by who (whom? any grammar nazis out there who can clarify?) the tapes were edited. Moore was also surprisingly silent, even by Conservative backbencher standards, when asked if Harper actually said the big “financial considerations” line. Actually no, I don’t find that surprising at all, because if Harper hadn’t spoken those words, his immediate reaction when the tape surfaced would have been “what the hell? I never said that!”.

I imagine this is related to the libel suit against Dion but, even then, I don’t really see why the Tories would want to resurrect this beast given that no one has really cared about this ever since the RCMP said they wouldn’t press any charges. They’ve pretty much invited a few days of questions on what specifically was altered – and once they make that known, they’ll be de facto admitting that the rest of the tape’s content is genuine.