Will Sergeant Horton Please Take the Stand

There's a critical aspect to the Duffy trial that we're not going to get out of Harper's PMO staff or his "loyal unto death" shills in the Senate or the Conservative Party executive.

It's an aspect that goes to what appears to be a political prosecution that, it could be argued, calls justice into disrepute thereby violating Duffy's Charter rights.

It goes from then corporal, now sergeant Horton, the investigating officer straight up to the commissioner, Hank Paulson.  Did they "fix" the investigation of the Wright-Duffy scandal in the only way possible to nail Duffy and take everyone else off the hook?  Was this a setup by the state police apparatus?  Has the national police service become just another partisan political agency doing the bidding of Shifty Steve Harper?

I haven't found anyone who gets the concept of Precium Immaculata, the Immaculate Bribe, in which the person who transmitted the proceeds of a crime, the bribe, is cleared of any offence, leaving only the person to whom those proceeds of crime were transmitted to take the rap.  No one, nobody understands that.

Nobody understood that at the time it was announced Wright would face no charges and now that we've peered inside, through the masses of emails, this thing reeks of a set up.

We need to know just what sergeant Horton did as he amassed witness statements and processed the email dump.  What role did Paulson and his boss, Vic Toews, play in shaping the investigation? Who saw the evidence? Was the prime minister let in on everything? How many times did he meet with Paulson immediately before Duffy was charged and in the months afterward? Was Shifty ever treated as a possible suspect?

There's a very bad smell to this and a lot of questions that need answers.  Call sergeant Horton to the stand.

A Sensible Response to Terrorism

We North Americans are unduly susceptible to acts of terrorism if only because terrorist acts on our doorstep, while dramatic, are infrequent.

In the reign of Bush the Junior, an act of terrorism could call down All the King's Men and All the King's Horses on the perpetrators, real and imagined.

This week Der Spiegel has praise for Obama's handling of the Boston Marathon bombings.

The first official reactions heard in America after the bombings in Boston are encouraging. President Barack Obama took pains to remain calm, breaking with the deplorable tradition of the Bush years to promise revenge while invoking the rule of law. Obama knows full well that the United States needs no new anti-terrorism laws, no new government agencies, no expansion of police and intelligence operations and, most of all, no more inflammatory speeches.

The dramatic search for the two bombing suspects was undeniably a manhunt, and the social networks, especially Twitter, were filled with false accusations and hateful tirades. But none of this changes the quality of Obama's behavior, whose speech was statesmanlike in a positive sense: relaxed and filled with confidence in the president's own, broadly legitimized civil power.

Queen Elizabeth II served as a role model when she managed to set a similar tone after the London bombings in 2005. She spoke to her subjects of her sadness and sympathy for the victims, she thanked the emergency services and the people of London, and then she said, briefly and concisely: "Those who perpetrate these brutal acts against innocent people should know that they will not change our way of life."

This is what the voice of civilization sounds like, and it cannot be allowed to fall silent merely because a few cave dwellers are constantly feeling marginalized. Today and in the future, we should always reiterate the thoughts of the Queen's and Obama's calm words whenever terror happens to strike once again. In fact, the message to such murderers must always be the same: You cannot change our lives. You can blow up your bombs, but our culture, our values and our societies are stronger than your desire to destroy them. These are the best answers to terror of any stripe.

Unfortunately, Canada doesn't have political leadership of the calibre of Queen Elizabeth or Barack Obama.  We have third-raters like Harper and Toews who reflexively leap at the opportunity to exploit these incidents, inculcate fear to justify new, authoritarian powers, and, however unintentionally, make the terrorists' objectives that much more achievable.

Our leaders need to grow up.   So too do we.

Shouldn't the RCMP Mind Its Own, Long-Neglected Business?

I have found it puzzling that the Commissioner of the RCMP, the federal top cop, is writing letters to provincial chief firearms officers (CFOs) warning them not to start setting up provincial long gun registries.

First of all, isn't this a matter for the guy who oversaw the scrapping of the federal long gun registry, Vic Toews?  If Toews doesn't like what they're doing, don't we have courts to handle that sort of complaint?

I'm not sure Toews would succeed if he took it to court and I'm guessing he's got his doubts too.   When the feds chose to legislate provisions for the registration of long guns, the courts upheld the federal power concluding that the act had a valid criminal law purpose because control of firearms had traditionally been a criminal law purpose.  In that case Alberta was arguing the jurisdiction was theirs, not Ottawa's, under the "property and civil rights" power.

But what's never been tested, certainly not to my knowledge, is today's situation in which the federal government has specifically chosen not to legislate controls over ownership and registration of long guns.   In other words, those matters are no longer what could be termed an "occupied field" which might then give rise to a right on the part of provinces to maintain their own long gun registries along the same lines as the federal registry only without the same criminal law sanctions.   There are other ways to skin that cat.

Yet that's for our courts to decide if Vic Toews really believes he's right.   To me, there's something eerily politicized in the federal top cop jumping into this fray.  It's his job to enforce the law, not meddle in laws that have ceased to exist.

We've had enough politicking by the RCMP going back to Zaccardelli's apparent gambit to skew the election against Martin by smearing Ralph Goodale in mid-campaign.    The level of confidence and trust in the RCMP in my province is at rock bottom, coming in around 30%, and for very good reasons.  Maybe the Commissioner should concentrate on restoring some integrity and public respect in his own force and forget about being Vic Toews' water boy.

I Don't Believe Anonymous Did Anything Wrong

Did Anonymous threaten Vic Toews as is being suggested?   Did Anonymous warn Toews that, if he didn't kill C-30, it would out him over his involvement with a Manitoba judge?  In other words, did they try to extort Toews?   Was he being blackmailed?

I don't think so.   This question ran through my mind when I first heard the Anonymous clip posted on YouTube a week before the substantive clip came out.   I couldn't identify any element of blackmail to it.  There was no, "if you don't do this, we'll do that," element to it.   It was, "this time next week we'll be releasing this information."  Pretty unequivocal and hard to see how that could be construed as blackmail.

Anonymous Update on Toews

Did Vic Toews reward one of his mistresses with an appointment to the Manitoba Court of Queens Bench?  That's the allegation and, it's claimed, the reason Harper removed Toews as justice minister to protect his government from scandal.

(I have removed the Anonymous youtube clip.  The video named the woman who was supposedly sleeping with Toews when he got her appointed to the Manitoba high court.   The Anonymous piece is still available on Youtube at this time)

It's an interesting, even plausible claim but if Toews was instrumental in appointing a lover to the high court bench, others had to be involved.   He would have needed the cooperation, a "favour" perhaps, from someone within the Manitoba government.  And there would have been various people within the justice department with some awareness of this sort of favouritism.

Is it a bombshell?  Possibly inasmuch as it implicates Toews and potentially others including Harper himself and the paper trail of those who would have done the leg work to get this woman appointed.   Still, this is the sort of thing Harper's people are, by now, so skilled at burying.

The allegation is out there.   The accusers have gone to ground.  The sad joke that passes for opposition today will likely avoid this like the plague.

Update - the woman named does appear on the register of the Manitoba Court of Queen's Bench.  She is shown as having been a provincial court judge from 1998 (while Toews was provincial justice minister) until her elevation to the high court in November, 2006 when Toews was federal justice minister.

This is a miserable situation.  We have an accusation and that's all.  People have been named.   Yet, so far at least, there's nothing concrete to back up any of this.   Was Vic Toews carrying on an illicit intimate relationship with a judge in his home province while he was married, serving as justice minister and, apparently, fathering a child by an Ottawa assistant?  Did he use his office to elevate this woman to a position on his province's supreme or high court?  Is that why he was shuffled out of the justice portfolio?  Did Harper move Toews to sweep this under the carpet?

If this is a malicious smear, it's about as low as they get.  If it's false then innocent people may be seriously and permanently harmed by it.  If nothing else, let's withhold any judgment about the woman named.

As for Vic Toews, he's a brawler, he can defend himself.  If he knows these allegations to be untrue, he should waste no time in coming forward to refute them.   There should be several means for Toews to convincingly disprove what is alleged.

Vic Toews or Shit On a Stick, What's the Difference?

As long as the turd is painted Conservative blue, apparently there's very little difference.  Or at least that was the message that seemed to come through from reading this assessment of Vic Toews by one of his constituents from the Red River Valley Echo:

"...Vic is in no way responsible for Bills C9 or C30. As he said, he doesn’t really know what is in them.

"Members of Harper’s cabinet don’t make decisions, they merely carry out orders. Vic was obviously chosen for this chore because his seat is safe however much flak is generated by these ineffective and meaningless bills which will really change nothing.
 
"In Provencher we don’t discuss sordid subjects like politics, we are more interested in the obituaries; and we already knew all about Vic’s peccadilloes and dismissed them. We vote Conservative because it is a time-honoured tradition. Our fathers and grandfathers voted Tory and we will continue to do so until hell freezes over."

Oh dear.  Paint it blue, pop it on a stick, and watch everyone salute.

Is Vic Toews Blowing a Smoke Screen?

Vic Toews, apparently desperate to divert attention from his lurid past, is now saying that he's been the victim of "criminal acts and threats of future criminal acts" against him.  He subsequently expanded that to include his brand new wife and his new child too, the one he sowed while still with his old wife and his old family.   Toews assured his constituents that these threats would not dissuade him from carrying out his duties as Minister of Public Surveillance and Family Values.

Threats against Vic Toews and (new) family?  I suppose anything is possible and the sanctimonious little prick does get under a lot of peoples' skin but, then again, Toews and his parliamentary companions were awfully quick to falsely claim disclosure of information from court records was "criminal" when it was nothing of the sort.   And Toews is from the government that, rightly as it turned out, assessed the Canadian public stupid enough to believe that a Liberal-NDP coalition would be an unconstitutional coup d'etat.  In other words, the HarperCons have demonstrated a deep and abiding faith that one can never go wrong by underestimating the intelligence of their supporters.

Vic Toews Weighs in on Cadman - "It's Bullshit"

Treasury Board chairman Vic Toews has dismissed claims that MP Chuck Cadman was offered bribes to vote to bring down the Martin government as "bullshit."

Vic "Taser" Toews, the former Justice Minister who saw a fledgling serial killer lurking within every 12-year old young offender and whose fondest dream was to introduce the rack, the waterboard and the guillotine as instruments of criminal rehabilitation, dismissed the widow Cadman's claims as old nonsense.

So, Vic, you're saying that Chuck was a liar and his widow is too. Pretty nice, Vic. You're all class.

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=53ee2a9c-266c-4cd7-b30f-231a9f03bd79&k=8779