Contrast: "Bringing up George Bush is a pretty sad straw man, so please skip it." VS "I know Canada is all-too-willing to imprison people for speech violations,

Contrast: "Bringing up George Bush is a pretty sad straw man, so please skip it." VS "I know Canada is all-too-willing to imprison people for speech violations, and I'm quite happy it hasn't come to that here yet." Doing exactly what you just scorned me for is definitely bad style. And you'll have to prove Canada imprisons people for "speech violations" a lot while the US doesn't.