It's time for the rest of the CBC election roundtable to resign.

Given that, as Dr. Dawg writes over here, the CBC caved in to Kate McMillan's threat to sue for libel, I think the rest of the roundtable have an obligation, out of pure principle, to resign in protest.

After listening to right wingers yap incessantly about how their views are being "censored" or similar rubbish like that, it's the height of hypocrisy for one of their own to use legal threats to clamp down on a fellow roundtabler.

So ... Marcie, Glyn, Alan and Liam ... I realize this is your 15 minutes of fame and a wickedly appealing forum to reach a larger audience. But, really, at this point, you need to do the right thing and walk off the set. Now.

MY SYMPATHIES: It's been suggested here and in a number of other places that it's really asking a bit much for the rest of the CBC Election Roundtable to resign. After all, what would that accomplish, they'd just fill those spots with other people who would be possibly worse, this is a great opportunity for those other four columnists to get some experience and perhaps move on to bigger and better things, etc., etc.

Sorry, I don't buy any of that as a defense.

As I read it, when that round table was first established, it was going to represent a variety of voices from across the ideological spectrum -- journalistic "peers" as it were, all with something to say and being given the opportunity to say it. Well, it didn't work out that way, did it?

Far from those round table members being co-equal, we now know who's running the show -- given Kate McMillan's ability to censor one of the other members, we know that Kate is the "alpha male" of the bunch and the rest of the group is (pardon the vulgarity here) her collection of bitches.

The credibility of that entire group pretty much vanished when Kate got her way. It means that, regardless of how much one likes to read Marcie's work, one will always wonder if she's having to hold back to avoid another legal threat, and the same goes for all of the other members. And it's not just Kate that they might be worried about.

Now that Kate's proved that intimidation works, what's to stop, say, Monte Solberg from putting in a call to the CBC to put a little pressure on a piece he doesn't like? We already know that legal threats work, we just don't know who else is going to get the idea.

I sympathize with the rest of the round table in that this is something that they really want to do, and that it's a nice source of income and that it's good experience and all the rest of that. But let's face it -- the credibility is gone. It disappeared the instant Kate McMillan strong-armed the CBC, and the CBC folded.

It's over, folks. It was over the moment you saw what happened and accepted it. Time to move on, and take your dignity and credibility with you.