Rev Boissoin

My friends from the Canadian Constitution Foundation report a partial victory in the Rev Boissoin case. Unfortunately the hrc law was not found unconstitutional. The ruling of the hrc was vacated, but Rev. Boissoin suffered a lot of damage.
The fight is far from over. We must get rid of the federal hrc section 13.1. I urge the Alberta government to get rid of this odious law.

CALGARY: The Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF) responded to today’s release of the Judgment of the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench in Boissoin v. Lund, a case which pits freedom of expression against human rights legislation.
In 2008, an Alberta Human Rights Panel ordered Reverend Stephen Boissoin to pay $5,000 to University of Calgary professor Darren Lund in respect of a letter Reverend Boissoin wrote in 2002, published in the Red Deer Advocate. In his letter to the editor, Reverend Boissoin expressed his opposition to homosexuality being portrayed positively in the public school curriculum, and commented on other public policy matters. Professor Lund complained to the Alberta Human Rights Commission that the letter violated section 3(1)(b) of Alberta’s human rights legislation, which bans expression that “is likely to expose a person or a class of persons to hatred or contempt” because of race, religious beliefs, colour, and other grounds.
Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench Justice E.C. Wilson set aside the Panel’s order against Reverend Boissoin, ruling that Reverend Boissoin did not violate section 3(1)(b) of the legislation. Accordingly, the Order against Reverend Boissoin, that he pay $5,000 to Professor Lund and that he refrain from making “disparaging remarks” about homosexuals, is no longer in force.
“I am pleased that the Human Rights Panel Order against Reverend Boissoin has been overturned,” stated John Carpay, lawyer and Executive Director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation.
“Unfortunately, the law that was used against Reverend Boissoin to subject him to expensive and stressful legal proceedings for more than seven years, is still on the books,” added Carpay.
“In spite of today’s court ruling, Albertans need to continue to exercise extreme caution when speaking about public policy issues, lest they offend someone who then files a human rights complaint. No citizen is safe from being subjected to a taxpayer-funded prosecution for having spoken or written something that a fellow citizen finds offensive,” continued Carpay.
The Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF) intervened in Boissoin v. Lund to argue that the legislation itself violated Canada’s constitution, because provinces do not have the constitutional authority to restrict free speech on matters of public policy. Justice Wilson rejected this argument.
Justice Wilson also held that section 3(1)(b) does not violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, following the Supreme Court of Canada 1990 decision in Taylor v. Canadian Human Rights Commission.

Ann Coulter on Climategate

Ann rips the fraudsters a new one.

As we now know (and by "we" I mean "everyone with access to the Internet"), the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) has just been caught ferociously manipulating the data about the Earth's temperature.

Recently leaked e-mails from the "scientists" at CRU show that, when talking among themselves, they forthrightly admit to using a "trick" to "hide the decline" in the Earth's temperature since 1960 -- as one e-mail says. Still another describes their manipulation of the data thus: "[W]e can have a proper result, but only by including a load of garbage!"

Am I just crazy from the heat or were they trying to deceive us?

Global warming cheerleaders in the media were quick to defend the scandalous e-mails, explaining that, among scientists, the words "trick," "hide the decline" and "garbage" do not mean "trick," "hide the decline" and "garbage." These words actually mean "onion soup," "sexual submissive" and "Gary, Ind."

More Climategate

More evidence of collusion, dishonesty and incompetence from the fraudsters. This is all becoming more obvious by the day. The chicken littles must be defeated. They are truly environmentostalinists.


In my previous post on Climategate I blithely said that nothing in the climate science email dump surprised me much. Having waded more deeply over the weekend I take that back.

The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me. The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering. And this scandal is not at the margins of the politicized Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change process. It goes to the core of that process.

One theme, in addition to those already mentioned about the suppression of dissent, the suppression of data and methods, and the suppression of the unvarnished truth, comes through especially strongly: plain statistical incompetence. Climate scientists lean very heavily on statistical methods, but they are not necessarily statisticians. Some of the correspondents in these emails appear to be out of their depth. This would explain their anxiety about having statisticians, rather than their climate-science buddies, crawl over their work.

Will Durst

While in California , I attended a second Commonwealth Club event. This time the speaker was comedian Will Durst. Durst's specialty is political humour. To me Durst is a lefty, but he says he is a moderate. He was interviewed by lefty Angie Corio. I must admit Durst is a very funny man. He is also married to a comic. He spoke about his career and about political humour.
He did make jokes about the dems, but many more about President Bush. I did say he he really is a lefty when questions from the audience were asked for. He said that it depended on where he was in the country. In California, especially San francisco, he is considered right wing, in the south ( where he doesn't really preform) he is considered a lefty.
He did confirm that comics really miss President Bush ( but not for the reasons I miss President Bush).
He did actually make a few jokes on BO. he said that First Ladies and children are usually off limits. He sees his job as afflicting the comfortable ad comforting the afflicted. He talked about Jon Stewart and a host of other issues, including Arnold.
I got to speak to him after the talk. He was quite gracious when I told him I was pretty right wing and found him quite amusing. I will post the video when it becomes availible. Until then, here is Durst reading from his latest book, The All American Sport of Bipartisan Bashing.
Now I'm off to Chez Panisse, my favourite Restaurant in the world!

Tory Accomplishments

The desperation of this red star writer is apparent. His list of negatives for HM PM Harper, is a list of accomplishments for any right thinking Canadian. Were that some of the list were more true.
Iffy bashing continues at the red star. Do they want Bob Rae as the new grit leader?


Also, over the last 12 months he has displayed little evidence of wanting to do anything while in power except to cut taxes, reduce the role of the central government and get tough on crime.

Just as critical, Harper has shown a total lack of leadership on some of the biggest issues of the day.

For example, he has done nothing to stop the drive by many neo-cons for privatized health care, which undermines Canada's universal medicare system and provides "choice" only for those rich enough to afford head-of-the-line care.

On climate change, Harper is badly out of step with Canadians, with polls showing the vast majority of us wanting Ottawa to take a more aggressive approach toward global warming. Instead, Harper is defending the increased exploitation of the Alberta oil sands and had refused to attend a critical international conference starting Monday in Copenhagen until U.S. President Barack Obama said he was going.