1 GOODBYE WHEAT BOARD, HELLO MORE POLITICIANS The Conservative bill to end the Wheat Board’s monopoly on marketing has been passed, and Parliament will have 30 more seats after the next election.

2 POLLING OR SABOTAGE? I completely missed this story. A market research company working for the Conservatives placed calls into a Liberal member of Parliament’s Quebec riding suggesting that he was going to retire and that there’d be a by-election. This was hooey. Now, the firm, Campaign Research Inc., might be censured. Maybe. Interesting story about politics and dirty tricks–it’s worth clicking through the article’s links.

3 HEY, QUEBEC APPEARS TO GIVE A SHIT While Conservative Canada sits around picking its bum (and having its bum picked by Russia), Quebec announces it will introduce cap and trade legislation to help fight global warming. Because unlike Conservatives and their supporters, Quebec apparently feels some shred of responsibility for the planet. I wish the rest of Canada didn’t suck so much.

4 TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN Greeks are withdrawing huge amounts of cash from banks. One economist calls it “part of the death spiral of the recession as a result of austerity measures.”

5 MORE GUTS THAN ALL OF US SOFTIES COMBINED An abducted Mexican activist is feared murdered.

6 THE GOP DEBATES WRAP UP I wonder if any American political party has ever had a group of leadership hopefuls worse than this mob of (hopefully) unelectable sleazoids and psychos.

FAREWELL FOREVER BECAUSE THERE’S NO HEAVEN AND WHEN WE DIE THAT’S IT As Paul Dechene already wrote, atheist titan, oratorical powerhouse and heart-in-the-right-place Iraq bungler Christopher Hitchens passes away after a long battle with esophageal cancer. Sucks. Let’s have a moment.