Angry in the Great White North

Let's review the facts, as reported in the Globe and Mail, concerning the incident in which Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla had her purse snatched while in India.  The purse snatchers, siblings aged 9 and 5, were caught by police and allegedly beaten:

Ontario Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla said she rescued two children from an Indian jail this week after they snatched her assistant's purse at an event in a village where she was being honoured.

Indian media reported the children were "beaten black and blue" by the police "with no mercy shown to them" and said Ms. Dhalla's initial response when told what happened was: "I cannot control what the police does. ... But I hope that those young kids learn from this incident."

Dhalla's initial response when told what happened was that she "can't control" the police.

That is a statement designed to distance Dhalla from the police.  It is something you say when you know that someone has done something bad, and you want it to be clear you had nothing to do with it.

Dhalla also hoped the children "learn from this incident".

That is the statement that was termed "shockingly callous" by the India Times.

Last night, neither Ruby Dhalla nor the Liberal Party had any official comment.

Since then, the Liberal Party spin machine has ramped up, and I can only assume the fax machines started spitting out new versions of the story.

For instance, despite the fact that she had said that she "cannot control" the police and that the children "learn" from the "incident", it turns out that the nature the instructive techniques used by the police, techniques she felt needed more control, wasn't known until the next day:

Ms. Dhalla said it wasn't until the next day when the media spoke to her that she heard allegations the children had been beaten and jailed overnight.

So why did she feel the need to say that she could not control police actions if she didn't know about any police violence?  And what was that lessons learned comment about?  More faxes, and Dhalla becomes the children's sole protector:

She said she asked the authorities to release the children and said she did not want to pursue the incident any further.

Still more work from the Liberal Party, and not only was Dhalla protecting the children who needed a lesson from the police she could not control doing something she knew was bad without any knowledge whatsoever of what it was, now it turns out that nothing happened at all:

But the 33-year-old MP for Brampton, Ont., said in an interview from India yesterday the local media reports were "misconstrued" and "hyped up."

"It's blown out of proportion," she said. "... they weren't beaten black and blue."

She said she was told that they were examined by medical officials and that there were no bruises.

"The story has been exaggerated a little bit," she said.

OK, so she can't control the police who taught the kids a lesson by doing nothing to them.

Finally:

"I strongly condemn children being treated like this. Now the police commissioner has launched an inquiry," she said.

Really?  An inquiry?  Into what exactly?