Actually, Andrew isn’t actively soliciting a name change, but his fellow blogger at Maclean’s Andrew Potter is stumping for one:

You have to admit, there are some pretty snappily-named blogs here at Blog Central…And then there’s the blog hosted by our very own National Editor Andrew Coyne, and his cleverly titled blog, Andrew Coyne’s Blog…since Andrew himself doesn’t seem to have any good ideas, it’s time for the people to choose. So here we go PG readers, fire up the brain cells. Put your suggestions in the comments here or email them to me. We’ll run this till Friday midnight, or till we get a winner, or till something else happens.

I’m sure there are lots of creative folks out here in blogworld that can come up with a better name for Andrew Coyne’s blog then…Andrew Coyne’s Blog. SO go on over to the link and submit your best one! (I’ve submitted a couple).

UPDATE@1:47pm: Due to overwhelming submissions, with most being of the pun variety, Andrew (Potter) has shut down the comments sections of this site in order to preserve peace at Macleans and keep Andrew (Coyne) from quitting blogging forever.

I see Impolitical is talking about Helena Guergis again this morning, or more specifically, Michael Ignatieff’s visit to her riding last week prior to the hotel library gala controversy where some believe the hotel library directors were warned that he shouldn’t appear, lest federal funding might suddenly dry up for the project. By the way, a big thumbs down to those hotel library directors for bowing to political pressure and/or intimidation and/or threats if this is what occurred.

I also wanted to highlight a blog just started up that was brought to my attention by a reader. The site is called blogging helena, and it’s a rather amusing spoof of Helena’s supposed thoughts on daily matters. I think I might keep my eye on that one. (Just one word of correction to the anonymous blogowner, Impolitical isn’t a gentleman).

A brief break from politics to highlight a couple of blogging tools that I’ve discovered that will make it infinitely easier and infinitely nicer for people to blog with.

The first is Windows Live Writer. Yes, it is a Microsoft product, and while I’m not exactly the biggest MS fan, I have to give credit where it’s due. Don’t let its creator prejudice you against this software, which shows that when Microsoft feels like it, it can do it right.  Better yet, its free. It integrates with and is compatible with many blogging software - Wordpress and Blogger included -  and allows you to do the usual stuff you’re used to doing, like embedding videos and pictures, but also other neat stuff, like embedding aerial maps and/or roadmaps.

Highly recommended, particularly if you’re a remote user. It works as a plugin with IE, or you can use it as a stand-alone program (UPDATE: and also with Firefox if you get the plugin for it from the Live Writer menu - H/t Jay in comments).

The other tool that is similar to this is called Scribefire, which is a Firefox extension for a user’s blogging needs. Here’s a screenshot:

read more from "Tools that make it easier to blog"

So, Christian Conservative is valiantly trying to go with the notion that somehow Elections Canada is picking on the poor Conservatives and is biased/full of Liberal moles/hates free speech, etc etc. etc.

The impression I get from his blogpiece is that apparently Pierre Poilievre under the cover of parliamentary immunity quoted out of Hansard is an authoritative source for that theory.

Let me help you out Christian Con; Pierre P. is NOT a credible source. He’s been the point man on this for the Cons. since this scandal started, and neither do the media believe him outside of the National Post editors, nor do the overwhelming majority of Canadians believe him. Elections Canada is a world-wide respected federal agency helping to observe elections everywhere and help other countries with making sure their own elections will run fairly, and now the Cons. and their Kool-Aid supporters are trying to advance the theory to the Canadian public that they’re biased and not credible? Yea, that will work.

Secondly, In-and-out isn’t about advertising, and it’s not about restricting free speech (which the Cons. are bleating all over the place on the airwaves but curiously left that argument out of their lawsuit - interesting that.) It’s about attempting to circumvent the existing election laws to spend more money then they are legally allowed.

THAT is the reason they’re charged by EC with violating elections laws; they’ve been deemed by EC to have violated the election spending limits, while the other parties have been looked over and have been ruled to be fine - not because of some wild-eyed tin-hat conspiracy theory that the federal agency is full of Liberals/NDP’ers/CBC staff members trying to screw the Conservative Party of Canada (Did I mention that the current and previous EC chief electoral officer have both been appointed by Conservative governments? Yes, I did, but here it is again in case you missed it the 1st time around).

I hope I’ve cleared up Christian Cons. confusion on this matter. Do I expect it to help? Not really; there isn’t a federal agency out there that Cons. supporters don’t think have bogeymen hiding behind their doors.

This made me chuckle.  Christian Conservative tries to defend the “In and Out” scandal in light of the RCMP/Elections Canada raid today. That isn’t the hilarious part, but this final almost afterthought notice at the bottom of the page is:

FULL DISCLOSURE: This post has not been written with any sort of talking points, assistance or prompting from the Conservative Party of Canada… this is all off the top of my head, with my layman’s examination of the Election Act.

So, does that disclaimer mean Christian Con. normally gets assistance from CPOC when he does his blogposts? That certainly appears the case to me .

Oh, and I do have a screenshot of this for posterity.. to prove it was up there if he does an edit of the post. (H/T to CDLU for tipping me off to the hilarity over there)

…who read my blog on a regular basis, though some in the progressive blogosphere might view this as a badge of shame rather then one of honour

Created by OnePlusYou

UPDATE: If you’re wondering, my percentage comes from my commenters, not me; else I’d be at 0.0% on this scale.

It appears one of my plugins was preventing people from posting. That problem has been fixed with the deactivation of the plugin.

The WYSIWYG editor I use for users to leave comments is not working in this particular theme though… so leave a message or a comment as you normally do on other WP blogs that dont have the TinyMCEComments plugin active.

Well, thanks to Marcel over at Stageleft who sent me this, I think I’ve found the new theme and frontpage look I’m going to be trying out - or at least foisting on my reader population  to see if you all think it looks ok (tho, at this point, *I* like it, so I may keep it whether you all like it or not ).

It still needs a bit of editing and playng around with from me and Mike Lacroix, the person who hosts my blog and also helps me code this stuff, but it should be up within the next couple of days.

Ok, I WAS testing a certain theme for my frontpage, but saw enough in its coding and from a couple of comments to convince me to ditch it. I’ll be testing out some others this weekend possibly, and looking for your input on whether any of these new ones are preferable over the current one.

…and other times they just plain amuse me.

This is an example of the latter. Good luck with that, Mike.