From the bulging “junenile insults” file: Kid Kodak lashes out

— 02.17.2016 08:31 AM

My sense he is unhappy about not being reappointed. Um. Er.

Here’s his (typically) tweeted response to Your Humble Narrator’s post of yesterday, which he posted at three o’clock in the morning. I’ve done a screen shot of it in case he decides to disappear it into the Internet ether:

  

What’s he referring to, there? Well, he and his cabal made a complaint to the Law Society of Upper Canada, no less, to have me disbarred for being critical of him. I’m not making this up. 

As I this morning told a fine National Post reporter (who has also been attacked by Marin), if the Law Society accepts this bogus complaint, they will be setting a very dangerous precedent – for themselves. They’ll thereafter get an avalanche of complaints about lawyers getting mad at refs at hockey games, lawyers having marital problems, lawyers’ personal Facebook posts, lawyers getting tipsy at Christmas parties. If you accept one complaint about non-lawyering activity, you have to accept all of them. It will be a disaster.

I was critical of Marin because I think he is a vain, thin-skinned bully. Because I think he didn’t act like a representative of the Legislature, he acted like a six-year-old with a bad temper. Because the senior people around him facilitated all that.

I was critical because Marin and his senior team have been the subject of several human rights complaints, all settled with secrecy agreements. Because he used public money to buy himself wide-screen TVs for his home and body wash and whatnot. Because he has given contracts worth a quarter million dollars to a friend. And because he – a quasi-judicial officer of the Legislature, with more power than any judge or MPP – repeatedly acted like a child on social media.

Every newspaper in Ontario, pretty much, has editorialized against him at one time or another, and for good reason. Good riddance, we say. And good luck with your attempt to silence your critics, pal – same sort of thing isn’t working so well in Alberta for Rachel Notley, is it?

(Oh, and if you want to contribute to my legal defence fund, feel free to use the “donate” button to the left!)


Comments (11)

Ten reasons why the Notley government is really stupid to bar Ezra and The Rebel

— 02.16.2016 04:14 PM

  1. Ezra lives for this stuff. In a battle with bureaucrats, he always wins. He always has the last word, and his audience is bigger than you think.
  2. Media who dislike Ezra are starting to come to his defence.
  3. Political people who dislike Ezra are starting to come to his defence.
  4. The Notley folks look scared shitless when they pull a stunt like this. Or, worse, like thugs. Same beast.
  5. The Notley folks embraced The Streisand Effect when they kicked out Ezra et al. – so, now everyone wants to hear from Ezra, even those who dislike him.  Well done, Dippers: Martyr-Makers, just add water. Good job!
  6. Governments should have no role – none – in deciding who is media and who isn’t.  Ever.
  7. The Supreme Court of Canada, no less, has held that what Ezra does online – and even little guys like me – enjoys actual, you know, constitutional protection.
  8. Accreditation should be decided by press galleries, not hacks.  In Ottawa, that’s how it works.  And it works just fine.
  9. As Romeo LeBlanc used to say to me: when you’re hunting’ bear, don’t get distracted by rabbit tracks.  The Notley folks should focus on the many big and real problems they have, not the chickenshit puny ones.
  10. I have fought Ezra more than any of you have, or ever will.  We’re not besties.  But on this, he is right.  And you, Premier Notley, are so wrong.

 [About to do Arlene Bynon Show on this subject, on Sirius XM Canada Talks.  Tune in!]


Comments (72)

Savages – Adore

— 02.16.2016 10:27 AM

Boring video, genius of a song: “I understand the urgency of life.” No kidding. There’s Sleater Kinney in here, Siouxsie, Pauline Murray’s Penetration, Bikini Kill. All good, good things.

Brit bands come and go. Will be interesting to see if they make good on the promise of this epic.


Comments (2)

In this week’s Hill Times: the first casualty of war

— 02.16.2016 01:00 AM

Not that it’s anyone’s business, but I voted Liberal in the last election.

The Liberal candidate in our riding, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, made it easy. Serious, impressive young guy, great C.V. Had a big red sign on our front lawn touting him, the minute the writ was dropped. Easy choice.

Standing in the voting booth at a local school on Election Day, a stub of pencil hovering over a slip of paper, however, I hesitated a bit. I thought back over the preceding months.

Justin Trudeau’s verbal flubs, which his own staff had admitted to me were a problem. The preoccupation with marijuana to the seeming exclusion of anything else. Letting imported terrorists keep acquired Canadian citizenship, even after they were convicted of killing someone. The selfies. Eve Adams. Not-so-open nominations. And so on. There had been not a few things to make one think twice, perhaps, about voting Liberal.

But the big one, for me, was the promise to pull out of the coalition fighting ISIS. That one, for me – along with several million other Canadians, for quite a while – had me wondering how to vote. When veteran Liberal MP Irwin Cotler abstained on his party’s ISIS position in the House of Commons, I knew: Trudeau had made a big, big mistake. The polls reflected it.

The Vatican had called ISIS the authors of genocide. The United Nations had provided proof they were engaged in genocide. ISIS had revealed itself to be a well-funded, well-organized genocidal cult – a malignant force unlike any that we had seen in our lifetimes. They were not going away, either. Beheadings, crucifixions, mass rapes, enslavements, torture, and – don’t forget – the actual murder of actual Canadian citizens. ISIS was doing all of those things, sometimes on YouTube, so everyone could see it. There was proof. It was real.

Equally real, equally true, was this: the Liberal Party of Canada sent Canadian forces into battle to fight fascism in World War II. To stop genocide, in Bosnia. To contain terror, in Afghanistan. It was Liberal governments who made those difficult decisions.

Liberals rightly opposed the war in Iraq in 2003 because that American-led effort lacked evidence of weapons of mass destruction. It lacked United Nations support. In 2015, however, the United Nations had clearly documented horrors carried out by ISIS – including the murder and enslavement of children. How – I and many others wondered – how could Justin Trudeau be unmoved by all that?

Well, he wasn’t.

For quite some time, I had agreed with Trudeau on one important criticism: Stephen Harper’s contribution to the war against ISIS was a bit of a farce. Six fighter jets? That is all? Harper’s soaring anti-ISIS rhetoric did not even remotely match what he was doing on the ground in Iraq and Syria. He was not doing nearly enough.

Trudeau initially gave us all the impression that he felt Harper was doing too much, true. But it turns out it was a head fake. When it came time for the newly-minted Liberal Prime Minister to make a decision of his own, at or about the 100-day mark of his administration, here is what he decided: he didn’t pull Canada out. He actually committed us to an even greater role in the just and proper fight against ISIS. More, not less.

He is tripling – tripling – the number of Canadian special forces, on the ground, training Kurdish forces. He is sending Canadian troops into nations other than Iraq. He is spending millions more on counter-terrorism measures. It was a change that was “riskier overall,” said Canada’s Chief of Defence staff. And, from our Minister of Defence: “There’s no mistake about it, we are in a conflict zone.”

The reaction of our allies? Barack Obama, David Cameron and the Pentagon all rushed to applaud it. The White House even issued a statement: “The President welcomed Canada’s current and new contributions to Coalition efforts and highlighted Canada’s leadership in the Coalition.”

Sound like Trudeau is cutting and running to you? Me, neither. If anything, he’s more fully committed to the fight against the enemy than Harper was.

Moral of the story? There may have indeed been reasons not to vote Liberal in 2015.

But Justin Trudeau’s apparent reluctance to take the fight to ISIS was not one of them.

 


Comments (29)