Harper in shock Liberal-patronage-charge horror!

Everyone is in hysterics over Harper musing aloud that -- shock! horror! -- the upper reaches of the government, whether the Senate, the civil service or the courts, might tilt a little Liberal after all these years. Gloria Galloway, Julie van Dusen, Craig Oliver, Greg Weston -- all quite scandalized at the suggestion, and all using remarkably similar language to express it: Harper has reverted to his judge-bashing Reform Party roots, cat's out of the bag now, etc etc
Naturally, the most scandalized of all are the Liberals. Why, the nerve of Harper: to suggest that the civil service or the courts might be tainted by politics, partisanship or patronage? It's unheard of. What planet are these people on? What country do they think we're living in? What day do they think we were born? Have you met the Liberals? Politicization is what they do. I assume we can take the Senate's patronage role as read, or indeed red. As for the civil service, what did we hear about, in excruciating detail, through week upon week of testimony at the Gomery inquiry? A civil service that, at senior levels, identified far too closely with the partisan agenda of the ruling party.
And the courts? Let's just review, shall we? 89% of all political donations made by federal judicial appointees in Ontario since 1993 went to the Liberal Party of Canada. 92% of all political donations by federal judicial appointees in Quebec went to the Liberal Party of Canada. More than 60% of all federal judicial appointees in Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba since 2000 donated exclusively to the Liberal Party of Canada in the three to five years before their appointment. Notice a pattern? (UPDATE: "Would you be surprised to find that almost all federal judges appointed from Saskatchewan are Liberal Party donors?" Why no, no I wouldn't.) That judicial appointments have been routinely politicized, that the process is in dire need of reform, is only controversial to Liberal Justice ministers. Ask Jacob Ziegler, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto Law School, who has written extensively on the subject. Ask constitutional scholar Peter Russell, ditto. Ask former Conservative Justice minister John Crosbie.
Maybe all these people are wrong. But if there's no problem, why did the Canadian Bar Association recently recommend that "politicians and their partisan operatives should be barred from applying to join the federal judiciary for at least two years after they leave the political arena" (Ottawa Citizen, Oct. 31)? Why did a Commons subcommittee, including several Liberal members, table a unanimous report shortly before the election acknowledging "that the present appointment scheme for Canada's 1,000 appellate and superior court trial judges leaves the door wide open to political patronage" (Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 29)? Why did Judge Constance Glube, on her retirement as chief justice of Nova Scotia, plead with that same subcommittee to "please take the politics out of appointing judges" (Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 19, all three stories by Cristin Schmitz)?
Maybe it was dumb of Harper to raise the subject at this exact moment. Or maybe it's part of some broader strategy, whose outlines are not yet clear. But there should be no doubt that what he says is true. EERILY SYNCHRONOUS CONFIRMATION: A politicized civil service? Liberal pols and career bureaucrats, in cahoots? Perish the thought.