“This is the first Conservative majority in a very long time, and the first with a party that has originated in fiscal and social conservatism,” Professor Antonia Maioni, the director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, told Salon.

Maioni emphasized, however, that the Conservatives’ success should not be read as a Canadian shift to the right across the board. “We now have a social democratic opposition… To see the NDP become opposition; that’s a huge deal,” Maioni said, noting that NDP’s rise signifies a massive protest vote against a conservative majority (this was particularly forceful in Quebec, where the NDP went from one to 58 parliamentary seats).

“Maybe we’ve salvaged some of our progressive reputation with that,” she said.

Maoni’s colleague in the political sciences at McGill, Professor Eric Belanger, emphasized that “the right-wing Conservatives’ strength now calls for a strong counterbalancing force on the left (or at least the center-left).”

He told Salon: “It currently appears that it is now the NDP who is seen by left-leaning Canadians (including Quebecers) as this counterweight. This campaign may have marked the end of the ‘liberal consensus’ in Canada and opened a new era of left-right opposition at the national level.”

Maioni pointed out too that a Conservative parliamentary majority does not mean a majority of Canadians adopting a right-leaning bent: “This Conservative majority, it is only a majority of seats, not necessarily votes. This means that what Mr. Harper does going forward is not necessarily reflective of the body politic in Canada, and certainly not in Quebec.”

As far as U.S.-Canadian relations go, Maioni doubted the changes in Canadian government would have any major effects.

Professor Christopher Manfredi, McGill’s dean of the arts, suggested that the new makeup of the Canadian government might actually serve to strengthen relations between the U.S. and Canada, especially when it comes to negotiating border and trade issues.

“The Conservative Party is more open to the U.S. than previous Liberal policies have been,” he said, adding that Harper and Obama have a strong personal relationship, since they come from the same generation and share “similar political styles.”

And, of course, one of Canada’s strongest claims to being America’s progressive neighbor to the north has long been its healthcare system. The principle of universal healthcare in the country was at no point at issue in the election — something Canadians can continue to boast.

During a press briefing Monday afternoon, Brennan offered up an uncertain but juicy narrative about the raid that killed the al-Qaida leader: Reportedly, bin Laden used one of his wives as a human shield; it was suggested bin Laden was armed; and Brennan said that bin Laden’s son Khalid was killed in the raid.

Within hours, the White House had modified every one of these claims, reported Politico late last night:

“During a background, off-camera briefing for television reporters later Monday, a senior White House official said bin Laden was not armed when he was killed, apparently by the U.S. raid team … Another White House official familiar with the TV briefing confirmed the change to POLITICO, adding, ‘I’m not aware of him having a weapon.’”

Secondly: “A senior official also corrected what Brennan described earlier as ‘my understanding’ that the woman who acted as a shield for bin Laden was one of his wives and was killed…”A different guy’s wife was killed,’ a different official familiar with the briefing for TV reporters said Monday night. Bin Laden’s wife was ‘injured but not killed,’ the official said.”

And finally: “In another discrepancy, Brennan said during his on-the-record briefing that bin Laden’s son Khalid was killed in the attack. However, the official White House transcript had the counterterrorism adviser saying it was another son, Hamza, who perished in the raid.”

Neither Politico, nor the White House were able last night to account for the modifications to the narrative, but no doubt today much media energy will focus on “what really happened”.

SEALS seize “mother lode of intelligence”:

In another Politico scoop, Mike Allen reported Monday night that, according to a U.S. official, “the ‘mother lode of intelligence’ had been seized during Sunday’s raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound. Navy SEALs grabbed personal computers, thumb drives, and electronic equipment during the raid that killed the al-Qaeda leader. The official said ‘hundreds of people’ are exploring the data, and intelligence operatives in Washington are excited to find out what is there. ‘It is going to be great, even if only 10 percent is actionable,’ the official said.”

Eyes on Pakistan:

As of yesterday afternoon, the fulcrum of the story moved to Pakistan: how much did the authorities know about bin Laden’s whereabouts? Should they have known or done more?

Salman Rushdie weighed in on the Daily Beast:

In the aftermath of the raid on Abbottabad, all the big questions need to be answered by Pakistan. The old flim-flam (“Who, us? We knew nothing!”) just isn’t going to wash, must not be allowed to wash by countries such as the United States that have persisted in treating Pakistan as an ally even though they have long known about the Pakistani double game—its support, for example, for the Haqqani network that has killed hundreds of Americans in Afghanistan.

And as the BBC reported Tuesday, that “the ISI, has said it is embarrassed by its failures on al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. An ISI official told the BBC the compound in Abbottabad where Bin Laden was killed by US forces on Sunday had been raided in 2003. But the compound “was not on our radar” since then, the official said.”

It is worth recalling that the U.S. have long been skeptical about the ISI. As was revealed last week in leaked dossiers on Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. has described the Pakistani intelligence group as a “terrorist” organization.

Some context:

A number of writers are already considering bin Laden’s death in light of the Arab Spring.

“The death of the founder and spiritual leader of the global terrorist network, coming amid Arab pro-democracy uprisings that had already raised questions about Al Qaeda’s relevance, may further undercut the appeal of the violent extremism Bin Laden stood for,” write Scott Shane and Robert F. Worth in the New York Times. They speak to a former bin Laden ally, who intimates that bin Laden “had not really led the group for the last 10 years.”

“‘He was always a symbol,’ said Mr. Abdel Rahman, 38, the eldest son of an Egyptian sheik imprisoned for his role in plotting to attack New York City landmarks. ‘But as a movement, he was unable to lead and manage as he was being pursued so closely.’”

Another important point worth focussing on comes from Mona Eltahawy, writing an opinion piece in the Guardian. Eltahaway chides the “USA! USA!” chanting and the “frat boy” style celebrations witnessed at Ground Zero Sunday night (as did David Sirota on Salon Monday) and she writes:

Good riddance, Bin Laden. I long detested you and knew that when Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid last December, he was igniting a fire that would render irrelevantBin Laden the man and his inflated self-importance. When Tunisians overthrew Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 29 days and Egyptians Hosni Mubarak in 18 days it was an appropriate rebuke to dictators and Bin Laden. What had become more mesmerising to young people in the Middle East and North Africa: change via revolutionary fervour that has blown apart stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims, or the hate-filled al-Qaida message that falsely promised change through nihilistic violence?…

…The scene at Ground Zero was like a parody of Team America, the film created by the South Park team to parody Bush’s America gone wild on nationalism. Now that we’ve parodied the parody, can the frat boys go home and can we return to the revolutions of the Middle East and north Africa that symbolically killed Bin Laden months ago?

The Arab Spring illustrated the complexity and variety of situations across Muslim nations, which loosened bin Laden’s purchase as a figure representative of Islam, and broke down the pernicious “us versus them” narrative, which reared its head in the wake of 9/11. Eltahaway makes this point poignantly.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the P.A. told reporters, “Getting rid of bin Laden is good for the cause of peace worldwide but what counts is to overcome the discourse and the methods — the violent methods — that were created and encouraged by bin Laden and others in the world.”

What this split reaction will mean for the future of Palestinian unity is yet to be seen, but highlights the stark differences between the Islamist Hamas and secular Fatah factions.

Reuters noted Monday morning that Haniyeh may have had a pragmatic impetus for his response: “Political analysts in the Gaza Strip said Haniyeh was attempting through his remarks to cool tensions in the territory with al Qaeda-inspired Salafi groups. They consider Hamas too moderate and waged gun battles recently with its forces.”

Nonetheless, international acceptance of a Palestinian coalition government will no doubt be further strained following Hamas’s condemnation of the al-Qaida leader’s demise.

Reactions across the Middle East have been largely cautious, highlighting the fact that bin Laden remains a hero figure to many groups across widespread regions. Remarks from Arab leaders underscored these ongoing tensions with carefully worded responses.

“There were no scenes of jubilation in the streets, though the death obviously dominated news broadcasts in the region,” CNN reported.

In Pakistan, where the raid on bin Laden took place, the official line is positive but subdued, according to ABC News:

“Osama bin Laden’s death illustrates the resolve of the international community, including Pakistan, to fight and eliminate terrorism,” the Pakistani foreign ministry said in a statement.

Former Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf praised bin Laden’s death as a “victory for all the peace loving people of the world,” but he condemned the U.S. raid:

“There is another aspect… which is Pakistan’s sovereignty. No one has the right to come into Pakistan and launch an attack. And this will not be accepted by the people of Pakistan,” he told Headlines Today, a leading Indian news channel.

A Pew Research Center survey released may help explain the mixture of responses across Arab nations:

In the months leading up to Osama bin Laden’s death, a survey of Muslim publics around the world found little support for the al Qaeda leader. Among the six predominantly Muslim nations recently surveyed by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project, bin Laden received his highest level of support among Muslims in the Palestinian territories – although even there only 34% said they had confidence in the terrorist leader to do the right thing in world affairs.

Furthermore, the widespread unpopularity of U.S. presence in the Middle East adds another layer of complexity tempering responses from the Arab world today.

Update (13:07): It is not only Fox affiliates struggling with their “Obama”s and “Osama”s. Virginia-based NBC 12 reported on “Obama’s death”, as this screenshot (another Twitter hit) illustrates:

Update (12:41): As far as reporting flubs go, mixing up “Obama” with “Osama” is pretty much as fatal as it can get on a day like today. Two separate Fox affiliates made this very mistake.

Fox 40, the Sacremento-based local station made the gaffe in the text scroll at the bottom of the screen which broke the news: “Obama Bin Laden dead”. The below image spread across Twitter like wild fire.

And, following President Obama’s announcement of the Al-Qaida leader’s death, an anchor for New York-based Fox 5 said “President Obama is in fact dead” before correcting himself after some prompting.

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have both congratulated President Obama on hearing the news of Osama Bin Laden’s death. But Fox News seems unwilling to let the glory linger on the president for even a moment. The cable network’s website homepage chose to feature former president Bush predominantly, with the only mentions of Obama in small type under a large picture and headline devoted to his predecessor.

Fighting fire with fire seems a sensible enough move to make. But in the details lies the controversy: One of these groups will not have to disclose its donors (like Karl Rove’s dark money group, Crossroads GPS). Receiving money from anonymous donors is “a practice Obama hammered during last year’s election cycle as undermining the democratic process” Politico’s Jeanne Cummings notes.

Indeed, a 2008 Politico story even quotes Bill Burton — a co-founder of these Priorities groups and then-Obama spokesman – voicing Obama’s objections to going through independent fundraisers:

From the beginning of this race Obama has told supporters that if they want to help his effort, they should do so through his campaign… And he means what he says.

As the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent notes, critics from both sides were quick to emerge. In a moment of unbridled hypocrisy, Crossroads GPS released the following statement:

The Obama White House has completely walked away from the mantle of “change” in order to embrace the type of politics they once relentlessly attacked. Just as when he reneged on his promise to campaign within the public finance system, this President is all too happy to embrace and discard “principles” according to what is most politically expedient for him.

There is much room to criticize these Democrats’ apparent about-face on anonymous donations, but given that Crossroads GPS quite literally threw the first stone (it is only in response to GOP big money groups that the Priorities groups were formed), this specific criticism carries little force. In fact, another Priorities co-founder, Paul Begala, told Sargent, “Taking a lecture on hypocrisy from Karl Rove is like turning to Donald Trump for advice on hairstyle.”

Former Senator Russ Fengold may have stronger ground to stand on when he says, as Ben Smith reported Friday, “Democrats who mirror the right-wing tactics of Karl Rove and David Koch do our nation no favors. Our democracy is best served by rejecting the fundamentally corrupt strategy of embracing unlimited corporate influence.”

Supporters of the Democratic money group, and the co-founders themselves, are arguing from pragmatism, not idealism: They say they would like a more transparent donor system, but that they refuse to lose to Republicans who use the current, opaque system to their advantage.

As Begala told Sargent:

We strongly support reform. We support new laws to require transparency of all donations. We support repealing the wrongheaded Citizens United ruling. But, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you go to war with the laws you have, not the laws you wish you had.

Mr. Rove, the billionaire Koch brothers, the Chamber of Commerce, the NRA, the American Action Network, FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity, the Club for Growth, and other right-wing groups are projected to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to advance an extreme agenda which would hammer the middle class. We will not let their attacks go unanswered.

So an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth and fire with fire it is, then.