This is how they think they’ll win? With puerile tweets like this?
Here’s a fact, Wizard War Room: Kathleen Wynne, who is a smart person who you continually embarrass with crap like this, is – post-legalization – going to become the biggest seller of cannabis in North America.
But, by all means, keep aiming for third place. The PCs and the NDP are cheering you on, every step of the way.
At @UCalgary @UCalgaryLaw, I generally teach my students that, when the judge wants you in court, it’s not always a good idea to be photographed smoking cigars with a bunch of creepy guys on a sidewalk a few blocks away. #USPolitics #Cohen pic.twitter.com/QTeXEbefpj
— Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) April 14, 2018
Seriously: they worked to put yellow stars on the identification of “non-citizens.”
In other news, Holocaust Remembrance Day happened this week.
Story here.
Excerpt here:
A pair of House bills proposed last month by Republicans, state Rep. Pamela Hornberger, R-Chesterfield Township, and state Rep. Beth Griffin, R-Mattawan, call for the driver’s licenses of noncitizens to state when the legal status of the license holder expires and also to be “visually marked,” indicating they are different from regular licenses.
The bills, which deal with both driver’s licenses and state identification cards, are now being considered by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. A committee hearing is planned for Tuesday.
“I expect them to not have a great deal of resistance in committee and come out fairly quickly once we can get the hearing process over,” said Rep. Triston Cole, R-Mancelona, chair of the committee considering the bills.
…my Mom says he is me. She says I did exactly this with her and my Dad.
An effective attack ad shouldn’t merely repeat things voters already knew, and have already dismissed and discounted.
This is phoning it in. It isn’t going to change minds.
Oh, and the Ontario Liberals are reportedly paying their campaign “wizard” $70,000 a month for this.
A smart CBC Winnipeg reporter contacted me this week about a fascinating story. It’s here:
Snippet below:
Kinsella, who is a Toronto-based lawyer and author, said businesses have the right to exclude anyone from their establishments.
“That right exists … [but] they’re not allowed to do that on the basis of race or religion or disability or something like that,” said Kinsella.
Kinsella had never heard of a criminal organization banding together to give businesses one-star reviews on social media. He said while that might appear almost comical, it’s not.
“This is not just a bad review, it’s a bad review on steroids. It has a menacing overtone,” he said.
He said words have different meanings coming out of different mouths, recalling an incident several years ago outside an Ottawa courthouse.
Kinsella had testified at a hate trial. As he was walking out of the courthouse with police, a skinhead walked by and said Kinsella’s home address.
“That’s all he said — he didn’t say anything else.”
Kinsella said police phoned him that night and told him they were arresting the skinhead because his words amounted to a threat.
He wonders if the Hells Angels’ social media attacks on the Manitoba businesses could also be considered a crime.
“I think the emotional and psychological impact of hundreds of Hells Angels members going after your business, even if they’re not standing there in the lobby — you know, wearing their leather jackets and looking threatening — even if they’re not doing that, I would imagine for these businesses it is quite intimidating and quite upsetting,” said Kinsella.
He said police in Winnipeg should take a hard look at Kelland and the other Hells Angels who posted reviews, because if they did it to threaten or intimidate a business, their actions won’t be protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
“What if this is not just a one off? What if this is the beginning of a strategy for these guys? It’s a strategy that could have an impact on a lot of people’s bottom line,” Kinsella said.
“If it’s the beginning of a trend, it’s something that people in politics, and bureaucrats and police and the Crown need to look at, to see if this is the start of something far more sinister.”
Snippet from next week’s Hill Times column, based on the intrepid reporting of CFRA’s Brian Lilley:
The dirty little contract was discovered by Brian Lilley of Ottawa’s CFRA. Reports Lilley: “It’s a staggering amount for a contract that only lasts 8 months. The law firm McCarthy Tetrault is being paid $5,320,766.60 in a sole sourced contract. A contract worth almost 10 per cent of the inquiry’s $54 million budget,” he writes.
“What is the work for? Well at this point, that is unknown. Despite phone calls and multiple emails, my simple questions to the inquiry have gone unanswered. Given all the coverage of problems at the inquiry, a contract like this should raise questions and those questions should be answered.”
The clandestine contract was to run from September 6, 2017 and end on May 15, 2018. It wasn’t put up for competition because, Lilley reported, it supposedly related to “Consulting Services Regarding Matters of a Confidential Nature.”
A confidential nature.
As such, we still don’t really know why McCarthy Tetrault was handed this sole-sourced, “confidential” sweetheart deal. We do know, however, the math about the cost. Lilley worked it out. “[The] $5.3 million fee is for a contract that lasts just 251 days. That works out to $21,198.27 for each day of the contract. If we assumed a 10-hour work day, that would mean McCarthy’s is billing out at $2,119 per hour.”
Read that again: $2,119 an hour. Considering that the standard rate is $235 an hour, this contract verges on criminality.