Lately one or two have fully paid their due...

...for working for the clampdown.

Iraq-invadin', climate change denin' John Howard is done down under. And for those who don't see a way to defeat Harper here any time soon, it should be noted that the CBC reports:

"The win marked a humiliating end to the career of outgoing Prime Minister John Howard, who became Australia's second-longest serving leader - and who had appeared almost unassailable as little as a year ago."

As recently as earlier this year, people like Mark Steyn loved to speak of the "anglosphere" as a cohesive unit - to them it must have seemed that now that a Conservative was running Canada it could join the US, UK, and Australia (though curiously New Zealand never gets mentioned) in making the world safe, for democracy or at least whatever the hell Bush thinks it is that Musharraf is doing in Pakistan.

Today one wonders if there was ever such a cohesive thing as a unified anglosphere as conservatives might have imagined it - rather than just coinciding right-wing governments.