True to form, the Conservatives have been unable to sit on a strong lead in the polls for long without bad news.  Party logos and MP names on cheques, so-called "stimulus" funds being spent more-often-than-not in government held ridings and a refusal to open up Access to Information laws have produced a waft of foul air about the current occupants of Ottawa's big offices.  

The Liberals have been trying - albiet quite unsucessfully - to pillar the government for these mounting sins.  The very thought of the party of Alfonso Gagliano, Chuck Guite & Jean Pelletier trying to take the moral high ground is laughable in the extreme, but that is no excuse for the creeping tendency of the government to let it's previously shinny armour of accountability rust so quickly.  

The current smell of foul play creeping over the government is not a symptom of Tory governance, but of big spending and what it does to the sense of fiscal restraint that the government should have.  When a party that sprang from roots that resembled fiscal sanity throws those roots to the fire and "stimulates" that fire with gasoline, it is little wonder that said party begins to loose its ethical bearings.  

The arguement that the Conservatives are no worse ethically than Jean Chretien's Liberals may be accurate, but it is hardly a high bar to judge a government by.  

Pork barrel spending and acting as if taxpayers money belongs to a party or MP is not necessarily a reflection of a party or MP's personally, but a direct result of what happens when any government - Liberal, or Conservative - engages in the kind of spending that we see today. 

Liberal attacks on the current "stimulus" fiasco may be hypocritical, but they are half legitimate. The Conservatives should take action on this not by retorting that they will be more ethical managers of out-of-control spending, but that they will get this spending under control.