The safety of the dominions

In what is perhaps a reflection of the need to be well away from the Leader's orbit when making awkward statements, Condi Rice and the Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, seem to have felt a bit freer to make awkward comments away from home:

1. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said it was too early to say who might have been behind the [Damascus US Embassy] attack. But she praised Syria for responding quickly. “The Syrians reacted to this attack in a way that helped to secure our people, and we very much appreciate that,” Ms. Rice said Tuesday during a visit to Canada.

2. The Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, is expected to make the strongest attack of US terror policy by a senior British minister, in a speech in Sydney. He will make the comments in the Magna Carta Lecture, delivered annually in Australia by senior British legal figures, to an audience of senators, MPs, judges and academics at the Supreme Court of New South Wales.

He will accuse the US of "deliberately seeking to put the detainees beyond the reach of the law in Guantanamo Bay" ... In his latest speech, Lord Falconer is due to say: "It is a part of the acceptance of the rule of law that the courts will be able to exercise jurisdiction over the executive. "Otherwise the conduct of the executive is not defined and restrained by law.

"It is because of that principle, that the USA, deliberately seeking to put the detainees beyond the reach of the law in Guantanamo Bay, is so shocking an affront to the principles of democracy. Without independent judicial control, we cannot give effect to the essential values of our society."

UPDATE: The need to acknowledge that Syria successfully battled terrorism is sufficiently galling for the right that they're forced into entertaining the theory that the attack was faked. And Condi may have a 2nd agenda, in the post Jack Straw era, for being in Canada! Is Peter MacKay the next Belinda Stronach? In fact it's such a small world that Stronach is not only MacKay's ex-girlfriend, but also a side-player in the Clinton scandal-mongering by Republicans, who sought to link romantically link Bill to her.