Why believe a liar now?

I was shocked and stunned to hear a national radio program discussing – with some seriousness – if allegations made by Floyd Landis might tarnish the reputation of Lance Armstrong.
Now, one might be forgiven for not knowing who Landis is, but you’d have to have been living under a rock to not know that Armstrong, seven-time winner of the Tour de France, is the world’s most identifiable cyclist.
In a sport mired in more drugs than any other, Armstrong has yet to fail any test, and is largely accepted as the most tested athlete in all of sport.
OK, so here’s Landis, a former team-mate, who earlier this month decided that after years of denying use of steroids changed his tune.
So now Landis is admitting he was, all this time, doped to the gills like every other drug loser in the sport.
Hardly a surprise.
Most of those who protest a failed drug test eventually come clean.
But for years, Landis cried innocent, even raising $1 million in public money, bilking donors who believed his tale that the French authorities were out to get the good-old-Amurican boy.
So he was lying then, but now he’s coming clean?
It’s hard to suggest that Landis is suddenly being truthful when he points his fingers at Armstrong.
Meanwhile, here’s Armstrong, the man who has yet to fail a drug test in his career, saying as he always has, that he’s clean and will always be that way.
Landis is a liar and cheat. That can safely be said, because the trail of evidence is clear: he said he didn't take drugs, and now he admits he did, so he lied. He cheated - not only by racing while doped, but also when he sought donations to mount a legal defense against drug use findings he now admits were true - so he's also cheated innocent people of their hard-earned loot. (We won't even mention the money he made writing a book about his ordeal.)
Landis should be banned from cycling for life, as an example to the clowns who continue to think they can avoid being caught.
I’m not sure what I find more distressful: that Landis is clearly spinning another fanciful yarn, or that one of my media peers was dumb enough to buy the guy’s story long enough to give it air time.

What are MP's hiding?

It’s almost the end of the month, and that means it’s time for me to submit monthly expenses.
There’s not much accrued on the expense account this month, other than mileage for a few weekend trips for sporting events.
Likewise, Courier reporters will soon report expenses to me. It’s a typical corporate chain-of-command process, hardly unique to this business.
Such a process ensures that I don’t frivolously spend loot the company doesn’t have to spend.
Hence, there are several layers of checks and balances: I check reporters’ expenses and send claims to the beancounters.
My expense claims must also undergo scrutiny. It’s hardly something I worry about.
After all, I’ve got nothing to hide. I haven’t balked about submitting an expense report since I got into this business – and that was a heckuva while back.
So why, then, did MPs balk at having the chief government beancounter examine their expenses?
One has to wonder, especially in wake of obvious misuses of political spending systems in Britain and Nova Scotia.
Of course the public mounted protest. After all, like me, most everyone has to answer to someone else.
Why should our MPs be any different?
I find it most interesting that the Conservatives, who gained power largely by decrying the lack of public scrutiny of Jean Chretien regime’s utter misuse of public money, would suddenly change their “we will be transparent if you elect us” theme to the one that’s been bounced around of late.
That the Liberals and NDP would close ranks and join the Tories in protesting Auditor General Sheila Fraser’s examination of expense accounts is, frankly, troublesome.
As a former daily crime reporter had written on a poster above his desk, “News is something somebody doesn’t want people to know. Everything else is propaganda.”
The very vehemence our elected officials protest scrutiny of their expenses suggests they’re hiding something.
And really, what’s wrong with a little scrutiny?
Fraser should be able to see every last penny our MPs spend.
And voters should be hard-pressed to support any MP that opposes such a move.
After all, if I have to answer to my bosses on a regular basis, MPs should answer to their bosses on a regular basis.
And just in case those elected members of parliament forget – as they sometimes do – who they work for, that would be us, the taxpayer.