Low Earth Orbit

Grinding the wheel slowly

[source] In 1993 in Somalia, two Canadian soldiers tortured to death a civilian. The senior soldier later attempted suicide but didn't succeed, leaving himself effectively brain-dead. Of course, it's never beyond the power of a government to turn tradgedy into farce:

the death in 1992 was followed by the creation of an independent investigatory commission in 1993. That commission, incompetently run and led for the most part, dragged on through three *years* of televised hearings, had its mandate extended three times, and was demanding to be allowed to continue through to late 1998 at the earliest when the Liberal government shut it down. In all that time, amazingly, the commission had yet to hear any evidence yet about the actual death itself, or depose any of the civilian leadership involved. The government at the time stated they believed it would be 2000 at the earliest before the group would actually produce a report if left alone

GOP says "we are Big Government"

[source, source]

the [Republican] party's new chairman [Ed Gillespie], energetic and full of vigor, said in no uncertain terms that the days of Reaganesque Republican railings against the expansion of federal government are over. […] We asked him three times to explain why President Bush and the Republican Congress have increased discretionary non-defense spending at such an alarming rate, and why the party has embraced the expansion of the federal government’s roles in education, agriculture and Great Society-era entitlement programs. "Those questions have been decided," was his response. The public wants an expanded federal role in those areas, and the Republican Party at the highest levels has decided to give the public what it wants.

As Dilbert once said, "I think I preferred uncertainty".