Something is happening---and we don't know what it is, yet. It's like a change in the weather; your knees ache, the temperature drops suddenly, or the wind picks up and you don't know what's happening, but you know something is. There's been a change in the political weather in Manitoba. For the past two-and-a-half weeks the NDP's biggest allies at the Winnipeg Free Press have pumped out a barrage of commentary attacking the government, which individually and collectively are so flimsy they only indicate that the writers are grasping at straws. Columnist Niigaanwewidam Sinclair went full Tasmanian Devil on Education Minister Wayne Ewasko for calling Opposition leader Wab Kinew a ham. In the Legislature Ewasko said that Kinew "seems to stand in this house on a day-to-day basis pretending to be some kind of actor. He's no Adam Beach, Madam Speaker." Sinclair, who belongs to the Aboriginal Church of Perpetural Outrage, thundered that "Minister
The origin of the Usher of the Black Rod goes back to early fourteenth century England . Today, with no royal duties to perform, the Usher knocks on the doors of the House of Commons with the Black Rod at the start of Parliament to summon the members. The rod is a symbol for the authority of debate in the upper house. We of The Black Rod adopted the symbol to knock some sense and the right questions into the heads of Legislators, pundits, and other opinion makers.