Any Lawyer Worth His Salt...

What keeps Stephen Harper from a decent night's sleep right now?  No, it's not Duffy.  It's not Nigel Wright so much either.

Six months ago today, just days after CTV broke the Wright-Duffy scandal, your humble scribe laid out the scenario at which we find ourselves today thanks to the latest revelations and e-mails from RCMP constable Horton.  It was brazenly entitled, "Harper Can't Talk His Way Out of This One - And He Won't, Not This Time."  Tough talk for a guy on Vancouver Island opining on an Ottawa scandal then less than a week old.

Back then I wrote:

"Here's the skinny.  Without Harper's full knowledge and consent (or direction) lawyer Wright would never have engaged lawyer Perrin and without Harper's full knowledge and approval, lawyer Perrin would never have touched this dodgy business.  No, that has collapsed under its own weight at this point.  And that means, if there was really any doubt, the web now has Stephen Harper snagged.

"To recap.  Two of Harper's most intimate aides and advisors were in on this, had ethical and legal responsibilities to the prime minister, and yet supposedly went behind Harper's back and concealed this from him.  Sorry kids, that cements it.  Wright's in, Perrin's in, and beyond any reasonable doubt, Stephen Harper is in - right up to his neck."

I have been pretty dismissive of the performance of both opposition parties over the past six months and they deserved no better. They've been lazy - and incompetent. They've acted as though whining through Question Period over whatever they gleaned from the morning papers constituted effective opposition.

The key to this whole, sordid business has never been Duffy or Wright, for that matter.  It's always been Benjamin Perrin. Sorry to say this but any young lawyer who ever got hired on by me who couldn't spot that wouldn't have been working for me for very long.