Laura Miller is back. Good.
Laura Miller is back.
Back in her job, that is, as executive director of the BC Liberals. It was just announced in Victoria, I believe. And – she’s a great friend, and I’m biased, true – that’s a good and right decision.
Ten reasons why:
- Innocent until proven guilty: It gets forgotten, too often – and particularly when political people are the target – but she is guilty of nothing. Nothing has been proven.
- The charges are bogus, reason (a): The much-discussed emails aren’t gone. They’re still on the government servers in Guelph. Nothing was erased.
- The charges are bogus, reason (b): You don’t buy brand new computers for new staffers. You clean off the previous employee’s emailed spaghetti recipes and kitten photos, and you have the new person use that computer. That’s not a crime. That’s what everyone does, the OPP included.
- The charges are bogus, reason (c): The OPP is out of control – see how they were an actual sponsor of the PC’s Ottawa conference, a couple weeks ago? – and they were out for vengeance. Laura caught them perjuring themselves, she complained, and now they’re going after her for it. They’re rogue.
- Hysteria and histrionics lead always to bad law. Remember how those dozens of Senators were all corrupt? Remember how they were all going to jail? How Trudeau expelled them from his caucus? It was front page news everywhere. Well, guess what, folks – yesterday we found out that the RCMP aren’t going to investigate any of those Senators. Not one. A quiet admission that the whole thing had been, well, overblown. That is yet another reason why we need to be wary about political witchhunts, always.
- I know Laura. I have known her for many years. She is one of the most honest and decent people I’ve ever met, inside or outside politics. She didn’t do anything wrong. She simply did her job, in fact.
- “Misuse of a computer system to cause mischief”? Seriously? That’s one of the big charges she’s facing? It isn’t even in the Criminal Code, as far as I can see. How could she have caused “mischief” when (a) she explicitly had the authority to do what she did and (b) nothing harmful was done – to the computers themselves, or the information that was on them?
- Try this simple test. Drop your iPhone in the toilet. Or run over your Blackberry with your car. Now, go find a computer. Log on to Hotmail or Gmail or whatever. All your emails are still there, aren’t they? Yep. The “deleted” Queen’s Park emails are still there, too.
- Should she have left her post in the first place? She left to organize her defence, she’s done that, and now she’s back. As she should be.
- Did I mention innocent until proven guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt? Well, I mention it again. It’s the law, after all.