Liberal Purge, Liberal Integrity

Paul Martin expelled and banned ten people from the Liberal Party of Canada in order to preserve the integrity of the party, the state newspaper reported yesterday.

“To do something like that is not easy but I have a responsibility for the integrity of our party,” he said, receiving another round of applause.

Notice how the State organ emphasises first the painful nature of the deed for the leader, and then draws attention to the depth of support in more than one applause for the PM’s bravery in the purge. Is it just me, or does that read like a passage in Pravda?

He did not say preserve or keep the integrity, for that would require having some. He did not say integrity in the party but integrity of the party. Martin could not earnestly mean “integrity” as a moral quality, he means keeping the party physically together in the civil war that he started a decade ago–as a captain tries to protect the integrity of his ship’s haul. The ship’s clearly in distress, and the Chretienistas are drilling holes in the haul below deck as Hedy Fry speaks.

Crossposted from Civitatensis

Queen Elizabeth Denounced as Enemy of Islam

Ayman al-Zawahiri, an al-Qaeda commander, says that our Head of State, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, is responsible for what he terms Britain’s “crusader laws.â€? Al-Zawahiri says that the Queen is an enemy of Islam. Unable to understand both the realities of secular western states and the subtleties of British constitutional tradition, he warns Muslims against making themselves subjects to the Head of the Church of England.

In its report, the Globe and Mail did not seek comment from anyone in authority in Canada as though Her Majesty were a foreign Monarch. Surely, when someone threatens our Head of State, the threat involves Canada and Canadians?

Iran’s Terrorism Ties

The Weekly Standard takes a look at the German magazine Cicero’s exposé of Iran’s relationship with al-Qaeda terrorists. I don’t know how the German journalist who wrote the original article got a hold of German classified documents. However, the German gov’t certainly didn’t want that information made public.

Iraq’s WMD: Bush Didn’t Lie

One of the great untruths of contemporary affairs is that the Bush administration lied about Iraq having WMDs. Usually, people who promote this falsity say he “misled”. Misleading differs from lying because one lies knowingly, while the blind can lead the blind. Let’s consider the term, “misled,” a case of accusers hedging their bets and they want us to think Bush lied.

Norman Podhoretz dismantles the “lie” claim by tracing the steps that led to the invasion. For instance, it’s hard to claim that Bush lied when, not only all the intelligence agencies claimed the existence of WMDs (remember George Tenet telling him it was a “slam dunk”?), but also the intelligence agencies of Germany, France, Britain, and even Russia.

Have your Cake and Eat it Too - Opposition Picks Election Date

In what likely go down as one of the more stupid schemes/manoeuvres leveled in parliament, the NDP wants to pick the date of the next election. Apparentely, the Liberal party is corrupt; just not corrupt enough to have a election over the christmas holidays.

Constitutional specialists acknowledged they were scratching their heads over the idea of opposition MPs rallying around a motion that indirectly suggests they have lost confidence in the government, and yet they are willing to let the Liberals govern for another month or two.

“There’s something lacking in it,” said Ned Franks, professor emeritus at Queen’s University in Kingston. “It’s not the first time in Canadian politics that obfuscation has been a substitute for action,” he said.

Lacking? I’d say it was more that just lacking - it’s closer to limp. Which is about as much as I can say for most of the federal leaders in Ottawa. I cannot fathom why being scared of the voters had become a trait of our leaders. It’s utterly pathetic.

Cotler’s Swindle: A Toothless Tiger

Jacob Ziegel, Emeritus in Law at U of T, is critical of Irwin Cotler’s contrived dance to reform the way in which Supreme Court Justices are selected in Canada. Cotler’s proposals fall short of effective reform, and amount, by most standards, to window-dressing.

At issue is Cotler’s disappointing response to the House of Commons Justice Committee’s recommendations regarding the choice and appointment of Justices to the Supreme Court. Cotler’s new scheme will be put to use in replacing Justice Major: A 9-member advisory appointment committee has been established to participate in the process. It includes a member from each party represented in the Commons, so from a distance it looks like an opening of the process, seeking more input openly. But the Committee, says Ziegler, is a “toothless tiger.”

The committee, writes Ziegel in today’s Post (A16),

“…is not free to compile its own list of nominees; instead, the Justice Minister has presented it with a list of six names from which it asked to choose three. The Prime Minister will then [choose] one of the three. “

According to Cotler, the committee needs to be given a list because it has no capability to draw a list on its own. But the excuse does not hold water. The minister could, if he wanted, easily provide abilities and resources to the committee. That’s exactly what has been done with the judicial compensations commission who are charged with reviewing judges’ healthy salaries and pensions. Cotler has made a seamless transition from respected academic to intellectual swindler.

Equally troubling is that the advisory committee is not free to add to the list of six names supplied by the Justice Minister or even to interview the six candidates on his list. It is also not permitted, apparently, to collect its own information about the candidates, but is confined to the dossiers provided by the government. Similarly, the public is not entitled to know the identity of of the three names on the short list presented by the committee to the federal government. In short, everything is done in a stultifying climate of secrecy seemingly aimed at producing a pre-ordained result.”

Translation: It’s just as rigged from the start as it was before. Considering the lack of transparency and secrecy in the process, Ziegel’s over-all assessment is not surprising:

“Our selection procedure remains a national and international embarrassment.”

Being Cotler’s creation, the advisory committee’s impotence reflects the creator’s desire for the creature to be impotent. It’s the fulfilment of the Martinista promise to address the “democratic deficit.”

Crossposted from Civitatensis

Did the US Use Phosphorus in Fallujah?

Yes, according to Italy’s RAI’s satellite TV channel, in a documentary. Also yes, according to such esteemed members of the 5th column including the Boston Globe, Al-Jazeera, The Independent, Reuters, BBC, and Conspiracy Planet.

The Daily Telegraph and the Christian Science Monitor are more guarded in their newstories.

Good reason too. Because no one has established that the US targeted civilians and no one has ruled out that the evidence RAI has produced was the result of accidents or carelessness among US soldiers using phosphorus for legal uses, including lighting up battlegrounds at night. One can imagine that, in an urban environment, there would be a high risk of the stuff getting blown toward civilians.

Criminal negligence perhaps. But no one’s shown there was intentional targeting of civilians.

Alito the Judge, Alito the Socratic Law Prof

WaPo has an interesting story about SC nominee Samuel Alito’s law course on civil liberties and terrorism which he taught in the fall of 2001 at Seton Hall in New Jersey (where many of the students saw the twin towers go down):

There was no hint, Alito’s former students said, that he had resolved the tension in his own mind — only that he was wrestling intellectually with it. He told them the course was an academic exercise for him as well as them because there is little guidance in the Constitution or case law for where executive power ends and civil liberties begin in times of national emergency.

His questions pushed them sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left, but never to a conclusion, they said, as they debated the constitutionality of the USA Patriot Act, military tribunals, detention of enemy combatants without trial, expanded use of electronic surveillance and more.

“One of the great things about the class was if you went in knowing his conservative reputation, you came out questioning that reputation,” said Robert G. Marasco, who took the class in 2003 and is now an associate at Gibbons, Del Deo in Newark. “I had no idea where he stood afterwards or if he has even reached a conclusion of his own.”

I’ve seen people guess that Bush nominates on the basis of whether the nominee would grant the presidency extensive powers to wage the war on terror. Alito’s course suggests he’s no pushover and that he carefully weighs the issues that are at stake.

H/t: Volokh

David Warren on the Riots

Ottawa Citizen’s David Warren ruminates on the civilizational tectonics at work with the riots in France.

He also explains the role of the French unions in preventing the immigrants from integrating into French society. I don’t think anyone’s mentioned that yet.

France Riots: Muslim or Not?

Via Ken Masugi at Claremont, Olivier Roy argues the French riots have nothing to do with Islam. Michael Gurfinkiel argues they do.

You decide.

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