Innocents Abroad

Your humble scribe was chastised this weekend by one of his regular American readers for the frequency of postings here on the column. As an ex-pat, he enjoys the news and commentary the Nine Inch Column provides about his native land. So, with that in mind, let's look at some Canadian political minutia.

Many faithful readers will have noticed how regularly I use Wikipedia to provide background information. It's an ingenious creation, and quite wide-ranging and democratic, if not always accurate. I enjoy the fact that with a minimum of extraneous navigation, I can jump from Simpsons hero the Inanimate Carbon Rod to astronaut Buzz Aldrin to Freemasonry to Halifax brewmeister Alexander Keith. I even found an article on the Cambridge Latin Course, and its hero Quintus Caecilius Iucundus, which I took in high school.

Now it turns out that Wikipedia is the handicapper of choice in the federal Liberal leadership race. According to the Toronto Star, the Wikipedia page tracking the leadership campaigns is a reasonably accurate way to guage the support each of the candidates have, particularly by the number of endorsements from Liberal MPs and Senators (including themselves).

Currently the breakdown is as follows:

Carolyn Bennet: 1 MP, 0 Senators
Maurizio Bevilacqua : 3 MPs, 0 Senators
Scott Brison: 3 MPs, 5 Senators
Stephane Dion: 7 MPs, 4 Senators
Ken Dryden: 3 MPs, 7 Senators
Martha Hall Findlay: 0 MPs, 0 Senators
Hedy Fry: 1 MP, 0 Senators
Michael Ignatieff: 31 MPs, 8 Senators
Gerard Kennedy: 14 MPs, 6 Senators
Bob Rae: 4 MPs, 9 Senators
Joe Volpe: 5 MPs, 0 Senators

Strange, nobody has asked for the Nine Inch Column's endorsement. What could that mean?