While I'm praising the CBC ("cats and dogs, living together..."), last night's National had a very strong package on the big-picture issues raised by Adscam. Brian Stewart's leadoff piece comparing the experience of other democracies was particularly good, dispensing with the lazy "everybody does it" copout you see so often to give a blunt, honest assessment: Everybody does not do it. It would be inconceivable for this sort of thing to happen in the US or Britain or Australia, because they have much better systems of checks and balances, more vigilant legislatures, more professional civil services, etc. It's a systemic, structural issue -- which is to say our system is in need of deep structural repair. But then Leslie MacKinnon came on and the whole thing went to Hell...