Shove Off, Minister

It was inevitable. Make too many really stupid mistakes, call too much attention to yourself through those mistakes, alienate too many of your colleagues, present too great a target for the news media, and you've sealed your fate. Not that, in this particular case, it isn't a deserved one. We've yet to learn all the details, as it happens.

And everyone, from the opposition, to the news hounds, to the pundits, is absolutely salivating over the prospects of the 'details'.

Barely hinted at by an obviously exasperated and likely disappointed prime minister, we can be fairly certain that if the RCMP has been called in for a criminal investigation there is more, far more to the slowly unveiling story behind Helena Guergis' less-than-voluntary resignation from her Status of Women portfolio and the Conservative caucus than meets the curious eye.

Since the prime minister assured the public that no other MPs nor public servants were involved, one can be assured that someone else most certainly is. And he's brought more than enough attention to himself of late. He seemed like such a nice young fellow too, didn't he? Guess his constituents didn't think so, since they didn't renew his mandate last time around.

One doesn't suppose that handing off to one's spouse one of the four electronic devices given to all MPs as part of their normal operating equipment is that unusual. Spouses do, after all, receive some due consideration, and they do need to contact their nearest-and-dearest on a continual basis, one assumes.

But using a parliament-issued BlackBerry for lobby-related business and handing out stale-dated personal MP business cards does beg an answer. Offending the prime minister to the point of apoplexy by bruiting it about that his ear is slavishly bent your way can be a career-crusher.

Helena Guergis is harnessed to Rahim Jaffer, a spontaneously-combustible handicap. But then she proved to be rather emotionally volatile herself, perhaps too impressed with her ministerial position to hack being treated like any other air traveller.

The niggling little details about her expense accounts and campaign expenses claimed do her no credit either by the by, and isn't that always the way somehow?

And then there's the little matter that some Liberals insist must be looked into; how someone could acquire a house valued at $880,000 and end up with a mortgage to that very same amount is quite the mystery. But is it illegal?

That poor woman, hounded right out of a job. Life can be so unfair.