John Lennon

I miss the music he never got the chance to write.

A bail hearing lasting a week?

G20 protester Alex Hundert's bail hearing apparently might last for a week.
Well, would we expect anything less of the crown prosecutor for Canada's scariest criminal mastermind™ ?

The Rulez are now in effect

Dave asks is just one complaint a reason to change government policy?
Yes, depending on who the "one" is.

Bail hearing for G20 protester Alex Hundert

Canada's scariest criminal mastermind Alex Hundert -- shown here washing dishes -- is finally starting a three-day bail hearing tomorrow in Scarborough.
Krystalline Kraus reports:

He has been behind bars since September 17th for an alleged breach of his existing bail condition to not participate in any public demonstration. The police and Crown have made the preposterous claim that Alex's two public speaking events on university campuses in Kitchener and Toronto are public demonstrations. The Crown is also seeking to revoke Alex's bail entirely and keep him behind bars until trial.

If you want to find out a little more about Alex Hundert, read this.

My new favorite song

The new rulez

Balbulican summarizes:

In Harper's Neues Kanada, you can now be barred by the diktat of a Federal Minister from speaking to an organization you've been invited to address - not because of something you've said, and not because of something your employer said, but because of something that someone who once worked with your employer said six years ago.

So I guess the rule is that we're all got to watch what everybody we are associated with has ever said at all times.
Or else we can just do everything Charles McVety wants -- yeah, that's a lot easier. Why make our own decisions when McVety can make them for us.
H/T Dave

Out of control

Are Toronto police out of control?
They're not just criminalizing dissent, now they're criminalizing being a student.
A couple of weeks ago, it was Alex Hundert.
Yesterday it was Jaroslava Avila.
These people are just trying to do student stuff, like living a normal life and participating in discussion panels. Toronto police act like these people are violent "most wanted" fugitives -- stalking them, targeting them, tracking them down late at night and arresting them for violating their G20 bail conditions.
I'm waiting for the Canadian judicial system to put a stop to this, because when people get arrested the impact on their lives can be terrible. (HT Chet)
I expect police chief Bill Blair will asked WTF is going on in Toronto, during his interview on Monday with Steve Paikin. Yes, that Steve Paikin.
"I keep on speaking because that's all I have" says one of the protesters in this video --

Get real

Maybe its because I don't live there, but I don’t really care how disdainful everyone feels toward Obama or how disappointed everyone is with him or how Obama's minions have hurt the delicate fee-fees of the progressive left.
I attribute a lot of the crap dished out at Obama to racism - I'm not saying some criticism isn't deserved, but a lot of it is not.
However, be that as it may, we still need to get real. Here's my point -- the present Democratic party in the US may not be particularly progressive, but the Republicans and their nutcase hangers-on and acolytes and lobbyists and appointees are stupid or evil or both.
Anyone who thinks the United States is better off with the Republicans in power rather than the Democrats does not have the best interests of the American people at heart, nor of the world. Over just eight years, Bush and Cheney and the Republicans almost destroyed the US economy, and they almost took the rest of us down with them.
If they get into power again, they will run the United States into the ground.
No country in the world — particularly Canada — should want to see another Republican administration take power in the United States.

The tabloid formerly known as Macleans

I was glad to see Parliament condemn Macleans magazine for their smear-article about Quebec.
When the American tabloids blared that aliens endorsed Clinton, they at least had a photo! Macleans had nothing, except ancient prejudice.
Warren Kinsella points out that the Macleans is printing a tired old retread of a decade-old smear

Patriquin’s “story” declines to provide the reader with a study – any study – that proves that Quebec is “the most corrupt province in Canada.” They won’t, either, because no such study exists. Patriquin just made it up, and someone at the magazine went along with it because they thought they’d dazzle a few more dentist waiting rooms with their wit. Personally, I hope every person in Canadian public life kicks the living shit of Matrin Patriquin and his magazine this week. They richly deserve it.

And Montreal Simon adds:

while Patriquin's article was shabby and ridiculous, Andrew Coyne's stinky little sidebar was far more grotesque. A hideous mixture of selective facts, gross generalizations, and psycho-social babble that should, if there was any justice, shame him FOREVER.

I wonder if Chantal Hebert will be continuing to appear with Coyne on the National's At Issue panel? She doesn't particularly like Quebec-bashers.

The other shoe just dropped

The feds announced several deputy minister appointments at 5 pm last Friday and now we know why -- sounds like they didn't want anyone to notice that their Throne Speech announcement to review government operations and find millions in "government-wide efficiencies" is finished.
Wow, that was quick!
So I think we can all anticipate the conclusion which such a superficial review is going to reach: privatize!
And now do we also have an explanation for some inexplicable decisions -- like, for example, ordering Statistics Canada not to do the long-form census anymore? If corporations and agencies want the kind of data that they used to get from the long-form census, they're now going to have to hire someone's private company to get it for them.

Explaining the Tea Party

I've been trying hard for the last few months to wrap my head around the Tea Party in the States, trying to understand what their problem is. Now, thanks to Matt Tabbi, I can just stop trying:

"Let me get this straight," I say to David. "You've been picking up a check from the government for decades, as a tax assessor, and your wife is on Medicare. How can you complain about the welfare state?"
"Well," he says, "there's a lot of people on welfare who don't deserve it. Too many people are living off the government."
"But," I protest, "you live off the government. And have been your whole life!"
"Yeah," he says, "but I don't make very much." Vast forests have already been sacrificed to the public debate about the Tea Party: what it is, what it means, where it's going. But after lengthy study of the phenomenon, I've concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They're full of shit.

And their name is stupid, too.

Thanks but no thanks?

First we read that Conservative finance minister Jim Flaherty endorsed Toronto mayoral candidate Rob Ford and then we see that Ford's support is dropping.
Hmmm -- I wonder what would happen if MORE federal Conservatives started helping the Ford campaign?

Thin edge

This is another "thin edge of the wedge" story but its going our way for a change.
One of the unintended side-effects of cases like the Robert Dziekański tasering has been that police are increasingly hostile toward anyone near them with camera -- we saw lots of this during the G20 protests, when people had their camera memory cards wiped.
Now a circuit court judge in Maryland has dismissed the "wiretapping" charges that an ambitious prosecutor tried to bring against a motorist who posted a video on YouTube of a policeman giving him a ticket.
Not so fast, said the judge:

Judge Emory A. Pitt Jr. had to decide whether police performing their duties have an expectation of privacy in public space. Pitt ruled that police can have no such expectation in their public, on-the-job communications.
Pitt wrote: "Those of us who are public officials and are entrusted with the power of the state are ultimately accountable to the public. When we exercise that power in public fora, we should not expect our actions to be shielded from public observation. 'Sed quis custodiet ipsos cutodes' ("Who watches the watchmen?”)."
Graber was also charged with possessing a “device primarily useful for the purpose of the surreptitious interception of oral communications" -- referring to the video camera on his helmet. The judge disagreed with the prosecutor that the helmet cam was illegal, and concluded the state's argument would render illegal “almost every cell phone, Blackberry, and every similar device, not to mention dictation equipment and other types of recording devices."

Shorter

Shorter Immigration minister Jason Kenney:

Not only do I not want to be bothered with actual facts, I want my department to make up some facts that will support my opinion!

Friday afternoon news dump

So the Cons are playing musical chairs with their deputy ministers, announcing these appointments at 5 pm on Friday afternoon even though they aren't taking effect for two weeks.
Which possibly means that one or more are controversial -- any thoughts about which ones?