Ethics?...How Do You Spell That...?

The Globe and Mail this morning is reporting that a chunk of McGuinty's Ontario Liberal cabinet is apparently giving up their day jobs to stickhandle Michael Ignatieff's "its me or I go home" bid for the federal Liberal leadership. Quote the G&M:

Energy Minister Dwight Duncan and Public Infrastructure Renewal Minister David Caplan will be co-chairs of his Ontario campaign, while Environment Minister Laurel Broten, who shares the riding of Etobicoke-Lakeshore with Mr. Ignatieff, was appointed last week as adviser on Ontario issues.

Education Minister Sandra Pupatello is expected to announce tomorrow that she is also supporting Mr. Ignatieff.

What? They're not giving up their day jobs to chair his campaign? So, lets see if I understand this... sitting cabinet minster's are going to be using public resources (you don't think so? scheduling, rescheduling, phone calls, memos, meetings... all after hours, right? What's "after hours" for a cabinet minister...?), which just happen to be in the control of, lets see, oh, the provincial Liberals. Ahh, but that's different right? How? There is at least one nepotistic link:

Ontario Liberal MPP Tim Peterson is also supporting Mr. Ignatieff. He is the brother of David Peterson, a former Ontario premier and a national co-chair for Mr. Ignatieff's campaign.

[and chief negotiator (if you can call it that] of the Caledonia debacle].

It must be just me. I always believed, my daddy alway taught me, to physically and intellectually keep an arm's length between issues that have the slightest possibility of creating an ethical disconnect, regardless of how well I could actually keep the issues apart. It was the right thing, the correct thing, to do. People needed to know, and to feel comfortable with the idea, that the possibility of impropriety was acknowledged, and dealt with.

From adscam, through Caledonia and a huge list of other areas, the Liberals do not appear to have any trace of the integrity gene left in the party. Not a molecule. DNA test negative. All politics, all the time. Their only apparent reason to be in office, is,well, to be in office. Live the perks. Collect the entitlements. Take their rightful place on the throne.

 It must be so difficult to have to live life as royalty-in-waiting.