Toronto Votes to Strip Rob Ford's Powers, 39-3

Toronto's City Council voted overwhelmingly to clip Rob Ford's wings today, with the first in a series of motions designed to make him "mayor in name only," the National Post reports. The council voted 39-3 to strip Ford of the power to appoint and dismiss the deputy mayor and the rest of his senior staff—with the nay votes coming from Ford, his brother Doug, and David Shiner. And even Shiner abandoned the Fords when the council voted to strip the mayor's emergency powers, 41-2.

Those votes are preambles to a Monday vote that will give the deputy mayor all the powers not explicitly given to the mayor by law. But the Fords aren't going quietly. The people "didn't vote for the deputy mayor," Doug pointed out, according to the Globe and Mail, adding, "I don't want to call it a coup d'etat..." The mayor himself took it in stride. "I would have done the same thing. I'm not mad at anybody," he said, before lamenting that the vote would cost the city money—because he'll be fighting it in court. (More Rob Ford stories.)