A few news stories from the past couple of days:

1. Harper has brought in Jenni Byrne, to help with hiring staff. Her close connections to the Reform Party (and to Pierre Poilievre, for that matter…) should certainly be taken as a sign that the old Alliance crowd will be well represented among Cabinet staffers.

2. Ezra Levant sure isn’t trying to make any friends. After the Western Standard posted the Mohammed cartoons earlier this week, we now see this about Ralph Klein’s wife:

“Once she [Colleen Klein] stops being the premier’s wife, she goes back to being just another Indian.”

I’m not a big fan of Colleen Klein and her insistence that she be called “Doctor Klein” because of her honourary degree, but Ezra should know better than to allow stuff like this to make it to press. (Update: As explained by people who obviously pay more attention to the news than I do in the comments section, the Standard was reporting these comments, not making them – read their comments for context. It does raise an interesting debate about media citing anonymous quotes though – there’s a good post on that here.).

3. There’s a Decima Poll out showing the Tories comfortably ahead:

CPC 35%
Lib 25%
NDP 24%

Now, there are very few things less popular than leaderless parties (except, perhaps, parties led by Paul Martin) so it’s likely not worth reading too much into these numbers. However…it should be clear to everyone out there that the main threat for the Liberals right now is on the left, not the right. Which means that, when it comes to picking a new leader, the Liberal Party would be well served to look to left-leaning candidates who would annoy the heck of the NDP. Bob Rae anyone? Or, what about a fan favourite of this blog’s comment section?

4. There’s talk that some of the other “big shot” Martinites in Alberta and BC are none too pleased at John Bethel’s decision to jump on the Brison bandwagon so early. So we may see some fracturing of the old “Team Martin”…