You didn't think I was going to do this every day, did you? I couldn't imagine pretending there was something of interest in every day of the campaign. But yesterday there was.

The Conservative's call for a public prosecutor is very interesting. It places the accountability argument into the procedural realm which ought to be a yawner but it makes the issue of scandal not about what occurred but how it was treated. Nova Scotia has had a public prosecutor since the need to keep the Progressive Conservative Buchanan government in line became so obvious after so many of them were charged for this crime or that while in office. One wonders if the Saskatchwan Tories of Grant Devine might have better kept their hands out of the cookie jar had a public prosecutor been in place.

The idea also need not be limited to alleged crimes by those in office. In Scotland an office exists called the Procurator Fiscal which I understand is independent of both the police and the prosecutors and which determines if a criminal charge is warranted or not. They also handle complaints against the police. Similarly in the US there are grand juries, consisting of members of the public, who have to be told by the prosecutors of the charges and convinced that a proceeding should go on.

So Harper's idea of an intermediary between the police investigation and a bringing of an accused to trial is both useful, tried and true and essentially neutral. Politically it is inordinately astute. How can you argue against it?