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Today's Big Story

LieSpace(.com)

Mock MySpace site dedicated to Liberal leader blocked.

Richard Warnica 19 Jan 2007TheTyee.ca

Richard Warnica is a senior editor at The Tyee.

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The Liberals new shadow cabinet was the big news in Canadian politics yesterday. And by big, I mean really big. Liberal leader Stephan Dion named 53 critics to his team at a press conference in Ottawa.

Shadow cabinet, in fact, may not even be the right term. When Parliament resumes, there will be almost 20 more Liberal critics in the House than there are Conservative ministers to criticize. Ken Boshcoff, Liberal critic for the Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario, will be among many shadow ministers with no minister to shadow.

But even as the giant team Liberal was being born, another story was breaking, a story with infinitely less news value but considerably more reader appeal. 

The Ottawa Sun reported this morning that Dion’s office has tried to block a site on the popular peer-to-peer portal MySpace.com. The site is operated by an 18-year-old student at Carleton University and is written as if by Dion himself. 

From the Sun:

The site, which includes a small disclaimer, contains several semi-nude photos of women. It also offers a short blurb on Dion's leadership run.

"I decided to run for leader of the Liberal party, and won -- against the war-loving Iggy and the nude-diving Bob! I won because of 'my homies' (as they say en anglais) Gerard Kennedy and Martha Hall-Findlay helped me defeat Bob and Iggy (sic)," writes the faux Dion.

Dion’s office has succeeded in blocking the site from public view. But as of this morning a similar site dedicated to Liberal deputy leader Michael Ignatieff remained up. 

Myspace.com/michaelignatieff features a series of photos from the Abu Ghraib prison over top famous Ignatieff quotes. The comments section of the site displays a number of semi-nude women and at least one classy reference to Vancouver-Centre MP Hedy Fry as “a sexy piece of ass.”

For more political shenanigans, of both the Internet and idiocy variety, there’s this story on a Facebook site dedicated to Bob Rae killing puppies and this one on Norman Spector going off on Belinda Stronach and the female press conspiracy. [Tyee]

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