{"id":2656,"date":"2010-05-20T23:15:00","date_gmt":"2010-05-21T03:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=2656"},"modified":"2010-05-20T23:15:00","modified_gmt":"2010-05-21T03:15:00","slug":"stephen-harper-flyers-fan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=2656","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Harper: Flyers Fan?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.montrealgazette.com\/business\/owner+named+Senate\/3052071\/story.html\">explanation <\/a>for Harper&#8217;s snap Senate appointment today:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-family:arial;\">While Harper has often waited until several vacancies accumulated before appointing a batch of new senators, his office said Keon\u2019s vacancy had to be filled immediately.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is key to pass important legislation such as the budget bill, reform to the pardon system and ensure (Liberal Leader Michael) Ignatieff doesn\u2019t use the Senate as the back door to block being tougher on drug crimes,\u201d said Soudas.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So, you know, it probably doesn&#8217;t help that one of his senators has made it abundantly clear that he values his job as a hockey commentator <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thepeterboroughexaminer.com\/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2223815\">above<\/a> his job as a senator.<\/p>\n<p>So while the Caps and Pens have been the most obvious victims of the Habs surprise run, perhaps Harper&#8217;s vaunted crime bills will also wind up as casualties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The explanation for Harper&#8217;s snap Senate appointment today: While Harper has often waited until several vacancies accumulated before appointing a batch of new senators, his office said Keon\u2019s vacancy had to be filled immediately. \u201cIt is key to pass important legislation such as the budget bill, reform to the pardon system and ensure (Liberal Leader [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2656"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2656\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}