Just when you think the Harpercrits can't get any worse...

Not only do they act like a bunch of scuzzballs, Harper's federal (neo)Conservative government members (one synonym for a rather cruder description) have a playbook describing how they should act.

Why doesn't that surprise me?

[T]he handbook, obtained by National Post columnist Don Martin, reportedly advises chairs on how to promote the government's agenda, select witnesses friendly to the Conservative party and coach them to give favourable testimony. It also reportedly instructs them on how to filibuster and otherwise disrupt committee proceedings and, if all else fails, how to shut committees down entirely.

...[G]oodale said the manual also demonstrates that the government is in the grip of an "obsessive, manipulative mania," run by a prime minister who has "a kind of control fetish" in which there can't be "one comma or one sentence or one word uttered without his personal approval."

I think another way of saying that is that Harper is an anal-retentive control freak. Mr. Goodale is much more polite that I would have been.