Why No Big Blogospheric Libel Suits?

No major libel case has emerged since the advent of the blogosphere.

Read the whole thing

H/T Captain Ed

Memory refresh on Captain Ed:

April 2, 2005

 

Canada’s Corruption Scandal Breaks Wide Open

A political scandal involving the Public Works Ministry, a government effort called the Sponsorship Program, and allegations of corruption in the ruling Liberal Party has Canada abuzz with rumors of payoffs, Mob ties, and snap elections. For the last two years, Canadian politics has been gripped by the so-called “sponsorship scandal”  tens of millions of dollars in government contracts which were funneled into advertizing firms closely connected with the Liberal government for little or no work, but with shadowy rumours that much of the money found its way back into Liberal coffers. Prime Minister Paul Martin, himself a Liberal, appointed the Gomery Commission to investigate these charges and determine whether to bring charges against government officials for corruption and malfeasance. (See the blog Small Dead Animals for some excellent background on the case.)

Ban the Drive Thru in North Vancouver

Ban restaurant drive-thru’s?

You’re kidding right?

You’ve got a problem with idling cars causing pollution,  build bigger roads and bridges.  100 times the pollution for 4 hours each morning and 6 hours each evening as the Second Narrows and the Lion’s Gate back up for miles.

The average person idles in a drive thru for less than 5 minutes.  He idles on the bridge deck for an hour at least during rush hours.  What about public health?  Why do we force people to sit in traffic breathing carbon monoxide?  You can’t have it both ways - you either build the transit to move people or you build roads to accommodate cars.  You can’t not build transit then whine that nobody rides it.

Galileo’s Star Trek

The Church was keenly opposed to such fatalism. On April 22nd, 1604, the Inquisition formulated its charge against Galileo Galilei, lecturer in mathematics, whereby he was accused of ‘haver ragionato che le stelle, i pianeti at gl’influssi celesti necessitino [10] - he had reasoned that the stars, planets and celestial influences were able to determine the course of events. It also accused him of ‘living as a heretic’. These were “charges of the utmost gravity”. Although Galileo was interrogated at Padua as a heretic over this, the charge was not pursued, and never passed into the hands of the Holy Office in Rome: he was evidently protected by his holding the chair of mathematics at Padua. The Church did not wish for trouble with the university.

To sum up: Galileo was a very popular and prominent Astrologer, as was typical for natural philosophers up until the 17th century.  Much of the corroborating evidence was only found recently. In addition to botching the Galileo story (Galileo was condemned for a far different reason than most people think),  it turns out that the Church backed off from what was a legitimate prosecution of heresy for — wait for it — political reasons.

As we’ve come to expect, the true story is much more intriguing than the urban mythology would have us believe. Critics of pseudo-science note well.

Where the Gaia Worshipers…err, Sorry, “Secularists” Are Taking Us…

They say that university campuses are the driving force behind all the major political movements these days…well at least those on The Left. I was waiting for this to happen though:

Sydney’s Cardinal Pell heavily criticized an Australian medical journal for publishing a professor’s letter calling for a tax on children of $5000 per child and $800 yearly for each child after birth, as punishment for parents who have families larger than two children.

…

Dr. Barry Walters condemned Australia’s “baby bonus” program, writing that “showering financial booty on new mothers” encouraged “greenhouse-unfriendly behaviour” and that Australia should adopt population plans similar to those in India or China. Trees should be planted to negate the ecological effect of every child born, he said.

But Cardinal Pell said that anti-human environmental proposals from extremist minorities were the real cause for concern.

Sadly, extremist minorities, the likes of which we saw around here courtesy of Atheism’s American high priest, soon become oppressive majorities after they use their influence in the education system to brainwash enough young voters to militantly support the agenda in question.

Just for the record as well, it’s not like India (whose culture is known to mimic ancient Rome’s and prefer male babies while slaughtering its daughters — feminists? feminists?!) or China export there excess human capital to other nations like our grande immigration scheme in this country likes to imagine. The bodies pile up pretty fast.

This professor’s letter also begs the question of what would happen if expectant parents aren’t able to pay a sickening carbon tax on newborns. Does the state then empower itself to violate the mother physically and abort the child? (Feminists? Feminists?!) The only crime that I can see the armies of The Left truly convicting this professor of is demonstrating modern liberalism’s true agenda of pursuing a Utopian world (which won’t work under real-world circumstances) through means that would make Hitler, Stalin, et al blush in jealousy. At least the ancients, as primative as I’ve been told they were in comparison to our highly evolved brains and culture, were honest enough to admit when all they wanted was a good old genocide to appease their blood-thirsty gods!

Mr. Charisma

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This was Giuliani’s second visit to The Villages, a sprawling planned community in the exurbs of central Florida. He fondly recalled how at his last appearance, held outdoors, an eagle flew overhead.

“I want the eagle back,” he said, “I thought it was a great omen.”

But this event was held indoors — and no one seemed to regret it.

Mr. Giuliani again referred to the eagle when talking about how he wants to “take the top off the roof, so that people can look way up in the sky, at that eagle, and kind of dream as soaring as far as they can go.”

But throughout Mr. Giuliani’s speech, the sound of rain pounding on the roof and thunder led people to worriedly look at the ceiling.

A sentence I never thought I’d see

*

Romney also benefited from his Mormon religion, the poll results show. Romney captured 94 percent of the voters who identified themselves as Mormon, which made up 25 percent of all Republicans participating in the GOP caucuses.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints estimates there are 170,000 members living in Nevada.

John Tory Supporter Attacks Former MP, So Much For Team-building…

When one stakes his leadership on team-building and fostering an environment for all party members to be comfortable with, it makes you wonder what John Tory thinks of supporters of his who openly attack former MPs of the party and implies that a past president is criminally negligent. Unfortunately, this arrogant attitude it quite common among Tory’s defenders right now and even among the man himself who is acting as if those of us in the party who do not support his leadership are an annoying cancer that needs to be routed out of the party once the convention next month is over and he doesn’t need to suck up any more.

I heard Mr. Tory state to Nick Kouvalis in December that he “hopes that nothing gets personal” — would this mean now that the Tory camp will condemn the above-linked blog and its author?

Pope Benedict XVI on Galileo and God

As pope, Benedict XVI has never directly intervened on this topic. But of extraordinary interest for understanding his thought is the reply that he gave in Saint Peter’s Square on April 6, 2006, to a 17-year-old high school student who had asked him “how to harmonize science and faith.”

Here is the pope’s reply:

“THE GREAT GALILEO SAID THAT GOD…”

by Benedict XVI

The great Galileo said that God wrote the book of nature in the form of the language of mathematics. He was convinced that God has given us two books: the book of Sacred Scripture and the book of nature. And the language of nature – this was his conviction – is mathematics, so it is a language of God, a language of the Creator.

ddd

The Road to A Harper Majority…

…is paved with the extortion attempts of Natives. Well, not like the majority highway that the Prime Minister is currently paving in Quebec, but consider this: a Liberal Premier is currently allowing a lot of terrorist Natives to run amok in Caledonia, the Conservative government in Ottawa is refusing to break bread with this group and now the Natives are threatening every community along the Grand River — many of which are part of swing ridings in south-western Ontario. Out of these ridings, Kitchener-Waterloo, Kitchener Centre, Brant and Guelph are all held by Liberal MPs and the latter three were all won within reasonably close margins (Kitchener-Waterloo is a distinct beast which likes to stick with an incumbent). Four ridings, 1.3% of our national seats total, could make all the difference if Stephen Harper is able to pick up another 20 seats in Quebec as many speculate he will do; in fact, it could turn a strong minority into a razor-thin majority. The Natives, in their quest to get their way, might consider this before they attempt to extort money and illegitimate taxes out of the half-a-million residents who live along the Grand River.

I’m sorry that they feel that their people got a raw deal from Confederation and in a perfect world, yes, the treaties negotiated over a hundred years ago (and gifts for that matter) were done in bad faith, but a Native today has no more right to rule over this land than an immigrant, a native-born Euro-Canadian or anyone else for that matter. Canada is a U.N.-recognized, politically sovereign entity which calls the shots in its territory. In all fairness, what have any of these mobsters or terrorists now crying crocodile tears done to deserve the very generous tax exemptions, government programs and hand-outs that they get besides winning the genetic lottery? Have all of those perks been considered by these people or should we subtract all of the tax money behind them from the total we are to pay this band for the Grand River territory (IF we even owe it to them post-negotiations!), because it might just turn out that the Natives owe us a nice big fat cheque along with the apology!

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