Did Ford's campaign use dirty tricks to keep John Tory out of the race?

You may recall that John Tory was originally considered a front runner for the Toronto mayoral race, until he declared that he wasn't going to run and thus handed the race to Rob Ford. So it's rather interesting to see a report that one of Ford's top campaign staff went to great lengths to keep Tory from running:

The Rob Ford campaign had one of its members anonymously call John Tory’s radio show and bait him about his integrity in a strategy to keep Tory out of Toronto’s mayoral race.

Nick Kouvalis, Ford’s deputy campaign manager and now the mayor-elect’s chief of staff, told a forum Friday that his success in keeping Tory out of the race was a “huge victory” and “Rob won because of it.”

And now that Ford is elected, he added, the transition team is talking to Tory, the Newstalk 1010 host and chair of the Toronto Summit City Alliance, about playing a possible role in the Ford administration.

Kouvalis disclosed the election tactics less than a week after admitting the Ford campaign set up a fake Twitter account for “queensquaykaren” (aka Karen Philby) — a supposed Smitherman supporter, complete with photo and profile — to covertly obtain a recording of a potentially damaging phone conversation between Ford and an OxyContin drug user.

From the Star (h/t pogge). And are Ford's people trying to deny this? No, just denying that there's anything wrong with doing that:

Kouvalis denied the anonymous call and fake Twitter account were “dirty tricks,” portraying them as a normal part of campaigns done by all sides.

Hmm. Deception is a normal part of campaigning? I guess...

Assange vows to fight remaining charges

Although the rape charge against him was dropped, the WikiLeaks founder still faces charges of the lesser offense of molestation. Assange says he will fight those charges if Sweden decides to proceed (so far they seem not to have made a decision). Assange also makes an interesting allegation:

He said that he had been forewarned by Australian intelligence on August 11 to expect a campaign against him, though it was unclear who was behind it.

"It is clearly a smear campaign ... the only question is who was involved," Assange, who is an Australian national, said.

"We can have some suspicions about who would benefit, but without direct evidence I would not be willing to make a direct allegation."

From Al Jazeera. The prosecutor says that she'll be deciding what to do later this week; my money's on the remaining charges being dropped, but we'll have to see.