Archive for: May 2006

I have someone that I’d like to nominate for Harper’s job as Scariest Person In Canada (sorry, Steve, but you’re just not living up to it):

Superior Court of Canada Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin.

Let’s start this off by listing just a few of Her Beverliness’s scarier pronouncements, shall we?

“The rule of law requires judges to uphold unwritten constitutional norms, even in the face of clearly enacted laws or hostile public opinion.”

How about this one?

“There is certainly no guarantee or presumption that a given list of constitutional principles is complete, even assuming the good faith intention of the drafters to provide such a catalogue.”

Or this?

“I believe that judges have the duty to insist that legislative and executive branches of government conform to certain established and fundamental norms, even in times of trouble.”

In other words, “The law says what we say it says because we can interpret the spirit of the Constitution better than the people who wrote it and if the democratically elected government of this country doesn’t like it, then they can go to hell and take the unwashed masses of the public with them.”

Think about this. This little control freakette thinks that it’s a good idea for nine individuals, unelected and absolutely unaccountable to Canadian citizens, to have absolute and total control over what is and is not the law of the land. It reminds me of the story of the English tyrant King John, who has been infamously quoted as once saying “the law is in my mouth.” He clung to that until he had a spearpoint jammed between his shoulderblades and was told to either sign the Magna Carta (the document from which all Western democracies sprang) or put all that divine-right-of-kings stuff to the ultimate test.

Frau McLachlin seems to think that cutting off final lawmaking authority from elected officials (and thereby, from the people that elected them) and placing it in the hands of a small body accounable to no one is a good idea. Those who agree with her should read The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich and pay special attention to the role that the judiciary played in the Nazi rise in power. Hitler employed an army of lawyers to get the courts to do things that he couldn’t ever accomplish in Germany’s elected assembly. Those who forget the lunacies of the past are condemned to repeat them in the future.

Some screeching lefties will tell you that we need a system like this, “insulated from popular passions,” they like to call it, in order to protect minorities from the “tyranny of the majority.” Well just who the hell is this malevolent majority that we all need to be protected from, anyway? They never tell us that one. But whoever they are, we are assured that they’re in every closet and under every bed in the country.

Bottom line: The power to make or strike down laws belongs only in the hands of those men and women who are chosen by the people of the land for that purpose. It’s called democracy ladies and gentlemen, it’s sometimes a messy business, and Churchill was right: it’s the worst possible form of government, except for all the others that have been tried.

This is rich, and I do mean absolutely rich. Check this out:Extraterrestrial kittyvore Dolt McSquinty jabs his crassly partisan proboscis into federal politics during the last election by coming out to endorse PMdaPM for… well, for PM. Our little Norman Bates lookalike pulls every snide trick short of the “I may eat kittens but Stephen Harper eats babies!” routine trying to make the wheels fall off the Tory campaign wagon. Not a whiff of Grit outrage anywhere.

Meanwhile, Grit Grand-Poobah-wannabe Gerard Kennedy pipes in that, unlike Harper “by and large Mr. McGuinty has remained above the fray.” Apparently he was too busy at the time to heave his skull out of his sphincter to notice what his boss was saying. Grits fail to notice the irony.

Jonny Cretin flings some thinly-veiled badmouth at Alberta and Albertans in the 2000 campaign, saying “I do like to do politics with people from the East,” and “Joe Clark and Stockwell Day are from Alberta, and they are a different type,” finishing off with “I’m joking. I’m serious.” The Shawinigan Strangler never withdrew the insult. Nary a peep from the Left.

Last year, the Martin Grits broadside McGuinty for having the gall to point out that Ontario sending $23 billion more to Ottawa every year than they get back isn’t exactly the fairest deal in the land. John McCallum (revenue minister at the time) called McGuinty’s beefs “dangerous for Canada.” No Grit outrage.

In the last election, PMdaPM fires one across McGuinty’s bow for breaking his promise to freeze taxes, because it’s making Ontarians PO’ed at the federal Grits. Grits are fine with this.

Grits demonize former premier “chainsaw” Mike Harris, not just when he was in office but right up into the last election, when he wasn’t even in politics anymore. Liberal TV ads weep and wail about how Harris wrecked Ontario and how Harper will do the same to the whole country, along with a hoary host of other attack ads. Only reaction from the Liberals is to try to backpedal when the infamous “soldiers in the streets” spot blows up in their faces like a landmine.

Got all that? Good. So what now? Here’s what now:

At a provincial Conservative fundraiser, Stephen Harper introduces Ontario Tory leader John “Guess-What-Party-I’m-With” Tory as “the next premier of Ontario” and all across the land, Liberals pinch a colossal loaf in their collective stanfields. You’d think that Steve had smacked Dalt’s wife or something.

Ontario Grit Anthony Rota bleats that “with his meddling in provincial politics, the prime minister has insulted the premier and shown contempt toward the people of Ontario who elected the premier to work on their behalf.”

“The fact of the matter is this prime minister has been ignoring the premier of the province of Ontario and has been shoving him aside,” barfed Pickering-Ajax MP Mark Holland.

I won’t even get into what’s been leaking out of Bob Rae’s piehole over this.

Harper, however, has managed to pretty much shrug off all this hoopla: “I do not think the House will be surprised to learn that John Tory is a very good friend of mine,” he told the Commons, “but it would be a surprise if the party opposite is saying it will not in fact campaign or work with its provincial cousins. That would be a surprise.” Well said.

My position is a little simpler, though. A little more earthy, my mother would say. It’s this: Guys, if you can’t take it, don’t dish it out; and until you can figure out if you can or can’t, kindly take your hypocritical little burblings, make like chickens, and shut the cluck up.