[MP-Ryan]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/speaker-sides-with-toews-rules-hacker-group-anonymous-out-of-order/article2360185/

For those who want the backstory:
1.  Conservative party introduces a bill which would allow investigative agencies access to an Internet subscriber's name, address, phone number, and IP address without a warrant.  (It does not allow warrantless surveillance or wiretapping).
2.  Issue gets blown way out of proportion, in part because the reason for this provision is not purely investigative.
3.  Vic Toews, Justice Minister, gets up before Parliament and says that people can either "stand with the government or with the child pornographers."  Most decent-minded people subsequently announce that in this case they stand with the child pornographers.
4.  Common sense, or what little there is in parliamentary democracy, ceases to exist.
5.  Someone calling themselves "vikileaks" starts a Twitter account broadcasting the private-but-publicly-available details of Toews' divorce case all over Twitter, demonstrating exactly what a hypocrite he is.  The Liberals, not to be outdone, have at least one MP (Justin Trudeau) rebroadcast said details all over Twitter.  Turns out that the original account holder was a Liberal party staffer too, who promptly gets thrown under the bus of reuseable political hacks in the name of "party accountability" by leader Bob Rae.
6.  Anonymous steps in and announces that Toews must resign and the Bill must be killed or they will release private details of his life to the public (in essence, committing the criminal offense of extortion and giving the Bill's proponents ammunition on why exactly the information-gathering provisions are necessary, a spectacular piece of irony that Anonymous is collectively too stupid to realize, apparently).
7.  Much consternation in political circles ensues, including the discovery that Toews apparently never actually read the legal wording of the Bill he's been ranting on about for weeks.
8.  Speaker of the House finds that Anonymous violated Toews' parliamentary privilege, allowing the government to take measures against them like... summoning their members before committee?  WTF?!

Apparently the concept of "Anonymous" is lost on our elected politicians.  Of course, this is the same country where the media refers to these DDoS script-kiddies as "hackers," so I'm not exactly surprised.  Meanwhile, no word if the RCMP is actually investigating the criminal aspects of the issue (extortion).

Just another couple weeks in the House of Commons[tupidity], and proof positive that it doesn't matter if it's a republic, parliamentary democracy, or constitutional monarchy - democracy puts morons in power.

[Mika]

Sounds like a true political cluster****, where good guys are bad guys and bad guys are good guys. And vice versa.

Just another couple weeks in the House of Commons[tupidity], and proof positive that it doesn't matter if it's a republic, parliamentary democracy, or constitutional monarchy - democracy puts morons in power.

Amen to that. We have had our share of political stupidity as well, regarding the secret deal between Greek banks and Finnish government - members of parliament were supposed to vote yea or nay for the deal that was declared secret and available only in English... and that's only the tip of the iceberg. The whole incident leading to this was so stupid and irresponsible that I felt compelled to take some direct civilian action, complaining to the people that should be watching out for the **** like this that do they really think this is acceptable or justified? Luckily international media picked it up as well. Trust me, it takes the boneheadedness over what happens in Canada and pushes it over by ten. It's just too long to explain here completely, but trust me that it really decreased my morale of possible case of fighting on the front lines for these ****ers or to pay taxes for that matter. I haven't read this angry reader's comments for a long time, and I cannot any more rule out a violent government break up, even civil war. That's quite an achievement in Finland.

Perhaps it is representative democracy that puts morons in power? I haven't heard that much stupidity coming from Switzerland, but I could be mistaken.

However, I'm glad to hear this **** happens elsewhere as well. I was getting the feeling we were the only ones with this problem. Due to human nature, maybe a revolution per hundred years is necessary to keep the tables clean. I just hope it turns out well, but I haven't seen world this tense for a couple of decades.

[Mika]

Actually, does the fault of democracy lie on the too short period of time to do anything? Or is it because different ****ers get voted in periodically which introduces actually random decision making, nullifying all long term planning?

This whole thing is quite a bit like the description from Let's play Dwarf Fortress, Boatmurdered. If you plan to read on it, get a cup of coffee, tea or chocolate or whatever, it is going to be a long read. But psychologically, is democracy anything else than what happens there?

[Sarafan]

5.  Someone calling themselves "vikileaks" starts a Twitter account broadcasting the private-but-publicly-available details of Toews' divorce case all over Twitter, demonstrating exactly what a hypocrite he is.

Hang on, how does the guy getting a divorce makes him a hypocrite? That has nothing to do with the subject.

[LHN91]

5.  Someone calling themselves "vikileaks" starts a Twitter account broadcasting the private-but-publicly-available details of Toews' divorce case all over Twitter, demonstrating exactly what a hypocrite he is.

Hang on, how does the guy getting a divorce makes him a hypocrite? That has nothing to do with the subject.

The intention was sort of a "Really? You want our personal information to be public? Then I guess you don't mind yours being public either" kind of thing. Poorly executed and childish, but yeah. The intent was to get him angry that his info was made public, so the line "if you can be angry and not want this, then what right do you have to impose it on others" could be used to call him a hypocrite. It's a stretch, I know.

[MP-Ryan]

5.  Someone calling themselves "vikileaks" starts a Twitter account broadcasting the private-but-publicly-available details of Toews' divorce case all over Twitter, demonstrating exactly what a hypocrite he is.

Hang on, how does the guy getting a divorce makes him a hypocrite? That has nothing to do with the subject.

The intention was sort of a "Really? You want our personal information to be public? Then I guess you don't mind yours being public either" kind of thing. Poorly executed and childish, but yeah. The intent was to get him angry that his info was made public, so the line "if you can be angry and not want this, then what right do you have to impose it on others" could be used to call him a hypocrite. It's a stretch, I know.

That's not the problem.  The vikileaks account published documents that showed Toews committed adultery with several women while married and fathered a child with one of them, who gained political jobs as a result.  Ordinarily most people wouldn't care, except that Toews has been an outspoken opponent of gay marriage laws in Canada and has repeatedly campaigned on a platform of heterosexual family values, talking about the sanctity of marriage.  I should have mentioned that because you're right, the hypocrisy claim makes no sense without that background tidbit.

Normally "sex-scandals" don't figure at all into Canadian politics (unlike the US, we're pretty relaxed about these things).  This is one of the rare exceptions.  Not that it would get him booted from office, but it just goes to show the kind of hypocrisy the man is capable of, and how private-but-publicly-available information (which all court records are) - as this bill would make names, addresses, phone numbers, and IPs of all Canadians - can be routine and yet still damaging to one's reputation.