Bowing before Big Brother has its benefits
July 15, 2007 · By Aaron Unruh
Radler to serve half an hour in a Canadian “prison”, become even richer thereafter. Justice has clearly been served!
The cream of American society selected to sit on the jury were apparently deeply moved by video footage of Black moving boxes about. “Damn, all this paper…Finally, a medium we comprehend!” If only the prosecution had been able to produce and convince Albert Schultz to act in “Non-Compete Payments: The Movie”, Black might have been convicted on all four-hundred and ninety-seven charges or so laid against him.
As it were, the jury could only agree to convict on a tiny fraction of the charges laid. And this is a victory for the prosecution? Why yes, it is. After all, who is holding Fitzgerald (who recently translated millions of dollars in investigation into a single obstruction of justice conviction) and his crack team of career advancement seekers to account for laying a gratuitously high number of charges against Black in an effort to confuse and overwhelm the jury? Pierre Lemieux gratifyingly alludes to inquisitors hanging from lamp-posts, or rather the frustrating lack thereof. Again: Justice is clearly served!
Meanwhile, Canadian columnists (with the exceptions of Andrew Coyne and especially Lemieux) were busy frolicking in their coast-to-coast orgy of glee yesterday. Can you blame them? How often does the author of “Accidental Canadians” and the Toronto Star Oracle who mistakedly identified Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a Republican have the opportunity to peer down their noses at the author of serious biographies of Maurice Duplessis, Roosevelt, and now Richard Nixon?
Fear not. Black can no longer return to Canada and the Liberals will soon be back in power. Then we’ll all be able to wallow happily in our country’s mediocrity once again.
critics will have their day. But they should not be permitted to define his place in this country’s history. Fear not. Black can no longer return to Canada and the Liberals will soon be back in power. Then we’ll all be able to wallow happily in our country’s mediocrity once again. [A]s the jurors begin to speak out it becomes clear, while they may have conscientious, they hardly qualified as a jury of Lord Black’s “peers,†capable of processing the material, discerning what was actually proof beyond a
The reaction now ignores the heart of the case, the non-existence of a “smoking gun” that proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, Black’s guilt. As the present reaction shows, this is all about what it has always been about: hating, mocking, otherwise smearing, and seeking to destroy Lord and Lady Black.
One can wager, however, that the “fraudulent” nature of the non-competes remains unintelligible, barely suggestive of any actual crime. If—that’s IF—Black wins on appeal, the coverage we are now seeing could come back to haunt certain individuals.
It will be interesting to see where Lord Black’s fortunates lay in, say, five years time. What his enemies don’t realize is that the longer it takes to finish him off, without finishing him off, the more epic this battle becomes, the greater Conrad Black could potentially end up; a storied quintessential suffering servant.
[...] And the jury heard a lot more evidence than we did. But somehow this is all the jury’s fault, and the charges were blown out of proportion, and yadda yadda [...]