Since the budget was tabled on Jan. 27, there have been 679 press releases issued by the federal government, announcing projects which have a combined value $33.87 billion.

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OK, so for most of last year, the Conservatives had us chuckling with some witty and irreverent Web ads. Now here's Liberal blogger BC'er In Toronto, scoring one for the red team:    more »

On the issue of timely: This document was tabled on January 27, 2009. That would be 120 days ago. Conservatives hve already tried to convince me that they really meant 120 days from April 1, the beginning of the budget year, but I see no such qualifier in the budget document.

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Saskatchewan MP Garry Breitkreuz says he is happy to let his legislation to kill the controversial long-gun registry die a quiet death as he gets behind the bill of another Conservative MP who he believes has a better shot at abolishing the rule that would force rifle owners to be certified. Breitkreuz had introduced a private member's bill in February that would have forced only owners of restricted and prohibited weapons to obtain a gun registry certificate. But his bill went further than that, with, for example, changes to restrictions on the transportation of weapons and a call that the auditor general periodically review the operation of the gun registry.

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There were some who thought that, when the notice went out that Human Resources Minister Diane Finley was to be in Oshawa this morning for an announcement on employment insurance, the government was about to cave to opposition demands to enrich the program. Not so. Finley was in Oshawa to re-announce, describe, or otherwise call attention to what Finance Minister Jim Flaherty had announced on Jan. 27 in the federal budget, namely a $500-million fund to help older workers who had been on the job for a long time get set up for new career.. . .

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Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) provides the following update of activities related to the unplanned shutdown of NRU at Chalk River Laboratories: The remaining Moly-99 available for isotope supply has now been removed from the NRU reactor and will be processed today . . .

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Canwest News Service has learned that some current and former nuclear engineers are quietly pushing a plan to reactivate a backup project for the NRU, a project shelved last year by AECL with the backing of Raitt's predecessor Gary Lunn.

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Doing what good journalists are supposed to do: Though we've had this letter since yesterday, we did our due diligence today, checking its bona fides which, as it turns out, are both bona and fide. As a result, my colleague Juliet O'Neill is able to update an earlier post here and report a rather sad story about a hyper-ambitious MP and an sad and scared 81-year-old Filipina.    more »

It seems clear that Liberals (I assume they are Liberals) are having a certain amount of fun riffing off of the Conservative "Just Visiting" attack ads. Here's one from the Libs that accuses Mahatma Gandhi of being a mere arriviste for Indian independence.    more »

After aiming frequently and often over the last year at the impuissance of Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc Quebecois when speaking to Quebec voters, Prime MInister Stephen Harper this evening warns Quebeckers against Michael Ignatieff and the Liberals, La Presse reports. In fact, La Presse says Harper hardly talked about the BQ and accused Ignatieff of being the most -- and forgive my French here -- centralizing leader the Liberals have ever had, a contrast to Harper and his (often vague and undefined but sometimes popular) open federalism:

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