New Governor General

I can't really bring myself to write much about our new head of state. It's much ado about nothing to me: the position is effectively powerless, and is no longer even symbolic of much. So I'll just link to people much smarter than I. Or not as the case may be.

Mark Steyn sums it up in the Western Standard:

Well, Michaëlle Jean is going to be Canada's next governor general, and there isn't a thing you or I or Buckingham Palace can do about it. So we'll all give a big Canadian shrug, and get used to it.

Andrew Coyne has taken leave of his senses:

It [her speech today] was uplifting without being Pollyannaish, tender yet tough-minded, vigorous, audacious, even bellicose in spots.

Paul Wells must have live blogged the swearing in yesterday.

That's the nub of it. Michaëlle Jean's predecessor had so much to show Canadians about their country. Mme Jean has a lot to learn. I don't suppose anyone would wish her anything but good luck and great success as her Canadian education begins.

That is unless one should think that someone representing the Queen as the head of state of a modern nation should, maybe, perhaps, know something about the country already? Have a distinguished history of service to the nation?

Oh, and David Frum reminds us that some things never change:

"I know that our planet is fragile, and that natural disasters like the one that recently assailed our American neighbours, are a brutal reminder of that fragility... Such images we have seen before – from Darfur, from Haiti, from Niger. And this time they came from New Orleans, from the margins of an affluent society."

Except of course that the New Orleans evacuees will benefit from some $200,000 in federal spending per person and are not being hacked to death by enraged jihadists."