"Rights" More Important Than Public Safety - Update

At the moment the victors (including these supporters and intervenors such as) of the Supreme Court decision relative to Security Certificates are hooting enthusiastically on Newsworld. Since they are victors, this presumes there are losers. And said losers are those of us who are concerned about those committed to the destruction of our society and are using OUR laws to do so. The winners include Amnesty International (who also believe that Abortion Laws are a violation of human rights), any number of UN agencies and terrorist groups with all forms of hatred of western secular society.
"Other totalitarian states such as Australia will be forced to change their laws", said Adil Charkaoui, who is suspected of being an Al Qaida supporter.
The announcement was politicized by the comment by the Civil Liberties spokesperson who explained to watchers that, "thankfully this decision cannot be challenged by the minority conservative government."
How will Canadians like Liberal appointed judges when the bomb goes off?

The Phantom Observer makes a good argument in favour of the SCOC decision.

This reporter has been a frequent critic of the Supreme Court.
Here
Now, with their God Given Wisdom and from their annointed positions, they have unanimously struck down an act of legislation determined by the people's elected representatives to be necessary to protect us from events like 9/11 or 7/7. The Star

The Supreme Court of Canada has struck down the security certificate system used by the federal government to detain and deport foreign-born terrorist suspects. In a 9-0 judgment, the court found that the system, described by government officials as a key tool for safeguarding national security, violates the Charter of Rights.

Who will rid us of these pestilent priests and protectors of the enemies of our society?

Lord Black Pipes in on Climate Liars from Jail Cell

No one has ever accused Conrad Black of being dumb, nor of being without opinion.
US courts found a way of throwing him in jail on criminal charges for what may still be determined by the US Supreme Court to be a mere tort, but he didn't get shut up.
Today in the National Post - which above all other national papers has taken on the challenge of rebutting the climate nonsense, Lord Black let everyone know that he may be jailed, but he has not been stifled:

It was at this point that I began to suffer glottal stops. Gaia is billed by its author as "a complex entity involving the Earth's biosphere, atmosphere, oceans and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system, which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet." This isn't a scientific formulation at all; it's just a cargo cult-level platitude counseling against excessive spoliation of resources.

http://www.nationalpost.com/story-printer.html?id=1758464

Lemon: Public Funding of Religious Schools

There has been a lot of rhetoric tossed to and fro since John Tory announced he would allow any parochial school to be funded publicly.
Certainly, Catholics make up the largest contiguous denomination of people of faith in Ontario. But this just means that way more money goes to Catholic school boards than would go to, say, private Baptist schools.
There was a time, when we had a competent government (under Mike Harris) that a minuscule tax cut ($500) was allowed for any child who attended private schools. So our Montessori kid provided the family with a tax cut barely adequate to pay for pizza days.
Meanwhile, every day a greater number of Ontarians pull their kids out of the "heavy on social justice and frequently on strike" school system in favour of the "I'll pay whatever it takes to not have my kids' minds twisted by socialists" preference.
The glorious and always enforceable Charter does allow for education by any citizen in either official language, but where does it say that this relates to religion? Not in the Charter.
We do have a Toronto District French School Board that operates alongside the Toronto District School Board and a Toronto Catholic District School Board. This is fine - there is a Charter responsibility for the French portion.
New Brunswick - the only bilingual province in Canada - abandoned the idea of a Catholic board a generation ago - perhaps recognizing that being Catholic and being French in NB basically amounts to the same thing. Now English schools have portables while French schools are empty, but this provision for separate boards based upon language is enshrined in the Holy Charter so exists in NB.
Why Ontario?
John Tory's mentor, Bill Davis, in 1987, put in place Bill 30 which provided full funding for Catholic Schools.
I won't comment on the politics that might have been involved in at the time (what with Bob Rae and David Peterson ganging up on him and all).
This legislation was reviewed by the Supreme Court who judged that the Province could prejudicially provide funding to Catholic as such rights were included in the 1867 Constitution Act.
So, Bill 30 results in inequity in Ontario. If you're a Catholic, your religious education is covered off. If you're of any other faith forget it. The only way to solve the problem is to make it worse - offering funding to all.
Sort of reason ignored for the sake of sanity...

Gov Gen Gives Critical Speech on Charter and Canada

On the weekend I got into an interesting exchange with "Been Around the Block" about the possibility of Canada becoming a republic. At the end, we came to a consensus - Royals okay, hack GovGen not so good.

"But if I look at the risk of the Queen's authority being delegated to a former CBC reporter with separatist ties, and the constitutional ability for her (or another) to actually have a role in the outcome of a legislative issue (say in the event of a non-confidence vote - she could request a non-electoral alternative) I wonder."

Now - we get this in The Globe. It looks like she is positioning herself as the protector of the Charter of Rights. She even compares the risk of the Canadian Charter being diminished to the situation in Haiti.

Even as the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is upheld as an example by the world, its spirit is threatened at home by apathy and intolerance, Governor-General Michaëlle Jean said Monday.
To avoid the pitfalls of success and economic prosperity, Canadians must remain politically and civically engaged to promote the vision of a just society as it is enshrined in the Charter, Ms. Jean said.
“Now, 25 years later, we find ourselves at a crossroads,” Ms. Jean said at the University of Ottawa during celebratory events surrounding the 25th anniversary of the Charter.
“Even the very act of thinking critically, of questioning received beliefs, is being stifled as the glamour of commercial images and new sensations are bringing social fragmentation and atrophy right to our doorsteps. “More and more we are hearing alarm bells calling upon us to stay fast to our shared commitment to democracy, justice and freedom.”

Now who do you suppose that she might be pointing a finger at, in suggesting that the Charter is at risk?
Who does she think she is to even go there? A Supreme Court Justice?

Hillary: The Movie & Free Speech

This is really, really rich.

The justices' review of the slashing documentary financed by longtime critics of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton could bring more than just a thumbs up or thumbs down. It may settle the question of whether the government can regulate a politically charged film as a campaign ad.

What is sauce for the chubby goose (Michael Moore and Fahrenhite 451) ) surely should be sauce for the gander (Republican film makers). But not for the US Supreme Court (I'm too lazy to see who appointed them).

G.W. Bush faced an unprecented barrage of individual and organizational films, shorts, parodies (think SNL) and various other slanders - including a TV show dedicated to make him look ridiculous.

If this decision is passed, the precedent will be set that Free Speech applies when used aby liberals against conservatives, but not the reverse.

A Reprise of Al Gore's Lies - The Biggest Fattest Liar in History?

So we are prepared to sacrifice our economy on the basis of the efforts of this man to be famous?
Distribute this as widely as possible . . .
HT to CBL Reader:
Other CBL Posts on Gore: 1. 2. 3.

"I took the initiative of creating the internet."

From Here

Howard Glicken, a long-time fundraiser for Al Gore, is awaiting sentencing on his negotiated plea bargain for illegal fund raising. He raised $2 million for Clinton-Gore and the DNC in 1996, and owns 2 Jaguars with the vanity plates "Gore1" and "Gore2."

Haney was a generous donor. He was indicted in November 1998 for 42 counts of illegal campaign contributions to the Clinton-Gore campaign between 1992 and late 1995.

Gore claimed to have uncovered the most famous toxic waste site in the country. As a young congressman in the late 1970s, he said, "I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal."

And even more here:
"I helped to negotiate an agreement with the Internet service providers to put a parent protection page up and give parents the ability to click on all of the web sites that their children have visited lately. That’ll put a lot of bargaining leverage in the hands of parents."
**** "There was no Gore involvement. They hijacked this issue. He makes it sound like he led the project. I can’t imagine what he will invent tomorrow."

"I was the author of that proposal. I wrote that....That is something for which I have been the principal proponent for a long time." Al Gore in a Time Interview, on the EARNED INCOME TAX CREDIT (EITC).
**** the EITC became law in 1975, a year BEFORE Gore was elected to Congress.

When Gore ran for the Senate in 1984, one TV ad proclaimed, "He wrote the bipartisan plan on arms control that US negotiators will take to the Russians."
**** "That is a vast overstatement. He had nothing to do with what we proposed to the Soviets," Kenneth Adelman, who was the director of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, said in an interview. Adelman's view is supported by the two biographies, and by contemporaneous news accounts.

Several times during the debate (1999 in NH with Bradley), Gore insisted that he has always supported both a woman's right to choose an abortion and Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that ensured that right.
**** "It is my deep personal conviction that abortion is wrong. I hope that some day we will see the current outrageously large number of abortions drop sharply. Let me assure you that I share your belief that innocent human life must be protected.

Gore called Homosexuality "abnormal" and "wrong" and in the October 28, 1984, Tennessean he was quoted "I do not believe it is simply an acceptable alternative that society should affirm...."
**** Homesexuals (and Hollywood) either do not know this, or choose to ignore it.

"Around midnight, after a three-city tour of Texas last month, the Vice President came wandering back to the press compartment of Air Force Two. Erich Segal, Gore said, used Al and Tipper as models for the uptight preppy and his free-spirited girlfriend in Love Story in the movie version of Segal's book."
**** "The author, Erich Segal, told The New York Times he was 'befuddled' by the comments in the first place. Gore said that he was misunderstood."

"And I was shot at.... I spent most of my time in the field. I carried an M-16... I pulled my turn on the perimeter at night and walked through the elephant grass, and I was fired upon."
**** Gore Had Bodyguards Assigned to Keep Him Out of Harm’s Way in Vietnam. "In Vietnam, Alan Leo, a photographer in the press brigade office where Gore worked as a reporter, said he was summoned by Brig. Gen. K.B. Cooper asked Leo, the most experienced member of the press unit, to make sure that nothing happened to Gore. ‘He requested that "Gore not get into situations that were dangerous,’" said Leo, who did what he could to carry out Cooper’s directive. He described his half-dozen or so trips into the field with Gore as situations where ‘I could have worn a tuxedo.’"

While in the Army, Al Gore wrote his parents that the U.S. Army was a "Fascist organization."
**** Gore got out of Vietnam after 4 1/2 months of a twelve month tour of duty and out of the Army early on the excuse he was going to go to Divinity School. In a couple months he flunked out but did not return to fulfill his Army obligations.

Campaigning in Iowa, Gore overstated his farming background. He claimed that he slopped hogs, drove mules, built homes and cleared land by hand with a double bladed ax. "I learned how to plow a steep hillside with mules, hose out the hog waste and take up hay all day long in the hot sun."
**** Of course this was in Washington, DC, where he lived almost his entire life.

Gore also claimed to have attended school in rural Tennessee as well in urban Washington, DC. In fact, he attended a private school St. Albins.

He has claimed to have been a "great student" but in fact, was a poor 25th out of 51 in high school receiving predominately C's. He had average SAT scores.
The political champion of the natural world received a D in Natural Sciences 6 (Man's Place in Nature) and then got a C-plus in Natural Sciences in his senior year at Harvard.
Al Gore actually flunked out of grad school at Vanderbilt University's College of Divinity. Gore biographer Bill Turque revealed: "Of the eight classes [Gore] took over three semesters, according to his Vanderbilt transcript, five ended in F's or incompletes that lapsed into F's." Shortly thereafter, Gore bailed out of divinity school and enrolled in Vanderbilt's College of Law, where he also dropped out after earning only mediocre grades.

Lemon: Prime Minister's Climate Plan "Shredded"

According to the Toronto Star:
"Stephen Harper's climate-change plan was shredded by his own government's environment watchdog just as the prime minister prepared to trumpet it at a United Nations conference next week."

Now, who is the National Round Table for the Environment and Economy? Have a look at a sample that represents a majority of members:

Chair - Glen Murray
Glen Murray is former Mayor of Winnipeg, best known for his vision to build culturally dynamic urban centres. He ran for the Liberal Party in the 2006 election.
Between 1989 and 1992, he was a partner in Envirofit Inc. an innovative environmental consulting firm.

Vice-Chair - David Kerr
David Kerr, from Toronto, Ontario, is a former Vice-chair of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

Vice-Chair - Robert Page
Dr. Page is known nationally and internationally for his work on energy and the environment in areas such as climate change, emissions trading, biodiversity and protected spaces, environmental impact assessment, and policy and regulation.
He is Chair of the Board of Directors of BIOCAP Canada, a national research partnership on biological carbon capture and bio-energy, and a past Chair of the Board of the International Emissions Trading Association (Geneva).

Janet L.R. Benjamin - North Vancouver, British Columbia
Janet Benjamin, from British Columbia, a senior management consultant with close to 20 years of experience and a specialty in "green" projects, is a co-founder of BC Hydro's Power Smart program. An engineer by profession, in 2003 Ms. Benjamin also co-founded H2Leader Inc., a company involved in the leasing of vehicles using hydrogen internal combustion engines.

David Chernushenko President Gold and Green Inc. Ottawa, Ontario
Mr. Chernushenko is an expert on sustainable development, clean air, and active living. As owner of Green & Gold Inc. and an associate of Arborus Consulting, he advises organizations on achieving sustainability and energy efficiency. He is Past Leader of the Green Party of Canada.

Richard Drouin
Richard Drouin is a former counsel to McCarthy Tetrault. Drouin rents working space in McCarthy Tetrault's Montreal office suite. McCarthy Tetrault was the second largest contributor to Paul Martin's Liberal leadership campaign ($178,000).

Timothy R. Haig President and CEO, BIOX Corporation Canadian Renewable Fuels Assoc
He was a principal in CMA Associates which promoted, developed and financed several major wind farms across Europe.

Christopher Hilkene President Clean Water Foundation Toronto, Ontario
Christopher Hilkene is the President of the Clean Water Foundation, a Canadian non-profit organization dedicated to engaging individuals in actions that preserve, protect and improve our water.

Mark Jaccard Professor, School of Resource and Environmental Management Simon Fraser
Dr. Jaccard has served on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development.

Stephen Kakfwi Yellowknife, Northwest Territories
Stephen Kakfwi (Liberal), from Yellowknife, Northwest Territories was elected as Premier of the 14th Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories on January 17, 2000.

Wishart Robson - Climate Change Advisor Nexen Inc. Calgary, Alberta
Wishart Robson is Climate Change Advisor to the CEO and President of Nexen Inc. where he is responsible for providing strategic analysis and advice to the Board and Senior Executives and otherwise preparing the company for a future carbon economy.

Robert Slater Senior Fellow, International Institute for Sustainable Development Ottawa
Dr. Robert Slater is currently the President of Coleman, Bright and Associates, a multi-national consulting firm specializing in Sustainable Development issues. He is also a Senior Fellow with the International Institute for Sustainable Development, and an adjunct Professor in Environmental Policy at Carleton University.

Looks like the Prime Minister doesn't only have to deal with an opposition Senate, an opposition Supreme Court and an opposition bureaucracy, but also an opposition Environmental Round Table.

No Democratic Epiphany on the Road to Des Moines

One would think that with 7 complete years of hammering away at the Presidency of GW Bush, that the Democratic Party would be able to come up with someone who could be perceived as a capable, competent and charismatic candidate to be President of the United States. But Nooooooo.

Burt Prelutsky gets it right:

I honestly don’t understand why liberals are always so anxious to settle for the likes of Obama, Edwards, Clinton and Gore. After all, what do they offer us? John Edwards has pretty much promised that no working man will ever lose his job. All that means is that 25 million of us will be flipping burgers if he’s elected. Obama has vowed to bring us all together, although he hasn’t explained how he’ll pull off that trick, seeing how far apart we are when it comes to abortion, capital punishment, the war in Iraq, same-sex marriage, raising taxes, gun ownership, Iran’s nuclear plans, school vouchers, the Palestinians, Supreme Court appointments, Islamic terrorism and whether Brad Pitt was right to leave Jennifer for Angelina.

For her part, Hillary offers us universal health care, a chicken in every pot and four more years of Bill back in the White House chasing chicks.