Mike Duffy's Ethical Charter

Mike Duffy's Monday's speech to Senate was a real eye-popper. Mr Duffy informed the chamber that he had hailed from a hospital where was undergoing cardiac tests. "My doctors say the stress of this proceeding is toxic to my heart", he said in his update on the particulars of the conspiracy aganst him by his former friends. 

Hmmm.....  Just exactly who do you think you are kidding, Senator ? 

      I assume Mr Duffy suffers from a common problem among politicians which can be defined as the inability to gauge how far one can go with utter bunk before he or she can be called out on it.  That will-to-blindness prevents him from seeing that blaming his heart condition on an attempt to defame him is just too bizzare given the convincing evidence of immodesty in his lifestyle.  And how can one call  the PMO solution to one's reading of Senate trough rules "a monstrous consipracy", if one is a willing participant in it ?  How can Mike Duffy triumphantly wave a second cheque as proof of Harper government's fraudulent duplicity if the cheque is made out to him (again) ?   Does that make Mike Duffy a victim ? 

     No, it doesn't. He has blindly blown the whistle on himself !  The Nigel Wright's faux pas belongs to the low level, tolerable corruption, found in any government, and in my reading of the Senate mini-scandals, it has preoccupied the media simply because the established outlets are desperate to find something comparable in size with Harper to the sponsorship swill that sank the Liberals.  To that end, Mike Duffy's claiming his PEI house while staying in Ottawa, Pamela Wallin's charging the Senate on questionable travel, and Bev Oeda's orange juice expense, will have to do, given that Mr Clean from Alberta has been notoriously unwilling to get mixed up in the bigger schemes. So, Mike Duffy can help in upsizing the scandal he himself wrought. 

     Assuming he is telling the truth,  had Senator Duffy had a sense of integrity , he would have refused point blank to be implicated in a pathetic coverup concocted by the PMO. If he had evidence that what he claimed was ok by the Senate rules, he would have said 'no' to Nigel Wright.  He did not have anything to hide. So why to repay anything ?  Why would he have agreed to a stupid, self-incriminating ploy, if his claims sheet was clean ?  The tale just simply does not make any sense. By accepting the PMO hush money, Mike Duffy more or less agreed to stain his senatorial reputation. He pleaded guilty to a crime he did not commit to get his partners to pay for it.  And that is about all there is to the affair.  He could not keep his nose clean. He has become a part of the conspiracy he himself called "monstrous" and should be kicked out of the Senate.