Tie My Kangaroo Down Coyne
Just a head’s-up: I’ll be live blogging the case of Mohamed Elmasry vs. Mark Steyn/Maclean’s before (sigh) the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, direct from kangaroo-courtroom 105 of the Robson Square Provincial Court building in Vancouver, starting sometime after 9:30 Pacific/12:30 Eastern Monday morning and going on for, I don’t know, days. Just hit refresh.All the dense legalese, with twice the politically correct jargon! andrew coyne
I don’t know if work is going to let me get across the Strait - but Coyne should be droll on the lunacy before the BC Tribunal.
Coyne is the “A” Team. Between this and the putative Parliamentary Inquiry things are looking rather dim for the s. 13 mongers. Once Coyne gets dug in, MSM will have very little choice but to take an interest.
Meanwhile, the blogging Army of Davids will get to work. The poor staffers of the MPs on the Justice Committee are going to be so well briefed it will scare them.
The fact is that the free speech blogosphere has developed a fair degree of expertise as to the assorted corruptions of the CHRC and its investigators. We know the lies under oath and the witnesses who have never actually been called - think Stacey’s guide girl.
The “there were no rules to break” culture of the pseudo-Nazi hunters at the CHRC needs to be exposed for the fascist enterprise which it has degenerated into. The bloggers who have been following the cases in detail will give the staffers and the MPs all the material they need. The problem, of course, is that these folks will find it hard to believe that senior managers lied under oath or that investigators, without even a pale colour of right, flat out refused to answer questions on cross-examination. They need to be schooled.
While we are indeed winning, we have not won. The rule of law is not complicated; but an agency which can “redact” just because it feels like it will fight back hard. For free speech to win we have to build an air tight case, with examples, of the fundamental corruption of the CHRC. And, beyond that, we have to build the case that the statute itself leads to this corruption. This is not something that a bit of staff training (”No Dean, really, you do have to take notes and answer questions….No, really Dean, that’s the law.”) will fix.
This is a war which can be won but it will be won by a combination of MSM coverage, political pressure, ridicule and hard core fact-finding. The facts fit into an argument and that argument is that the nature of s. 13 virtually ensures that it is impossible to obtain justice before the CHRT or in an investigation by the CHRC.
If there is no possibility of justice, if innocence is not an option, it is the law rather than the accused which is at fault.
Which is what we must teach the good Members of the Justice Committee.
Written by jay on May 31st, 2008 with
21 comments.
Read more articles on Canadian Politics and free speech.
- [+] Digg: Feature this article
- [+] Del.icio.us: Bookmark this article
- [+] Furl: Bookmark this article
#1. May 31st, 2008, at 9:40 PM.
If they ever meet. They’ve been deadlocked since April.