Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Jesus, folks ... overreact much?


Yes, that annoying whine of high-pitched hysteria you hear is, in fact, emanating from the Blogging Tories, as they shriek like little girls over a recent decision to strike down one component of Canada's anti-terrorism legislation.

Ignore, of course, that the individual involved in this case, Mohammed Momin Khawaja, is still in jail awaiting trial. Ignore that even the federal prosecutor in the case doesn't think this development will hurt his case. Ignore that some legal experts think this might even make it easier to convict similar defendants. Yes, let's ignore the actual facts because it's so much easier to pontificate like a pompous gasbag from a position of eye-rolling ignorance. Sort of like this:

But wanting to prosecute people who’d love to blow scores of innocent people up on account of some perverted interpretation of a religion is not cool, an Ontario court has ruled. The Supremes will likely agree with the lower court (lest they be targeted by terrorists), but the Crown should appeal the decision anyway.

And if you can't even control yourself to that extent, well, there's always running around in circles, encouraging the dissolution of the Charter itself:

An Ontario judge used the Charter today to knock out a key part of Canada's anti-terrorist law. Just what we need when we're fighting a war on terror is someone sympathetic to the other side. Nice going, Justice Douglas Rutherford. Here's the Globe report and the CBC report.

This is another reason, as if we needed one, why the Charter itself should be abolished. It's being used by the non-elected judiciary to thwart the will of the people.

iamnotafraid.ca? or ijustwetmypants.ca? We report, you decide.

BY THE WAY, what I find so entertaining is how the above airheads so thoroughly misunderstood the consequences of the ruling, consequences you can read about here (emphasis added):

In June, Justice Minister Vic Toews suggested that the motive clause impeded prosecutors and could have led to accusations of racial profiling.

University of Ottawa law professor David Paciocco said the ruling has advantages for prosecutors.

"Normally in criminal law we don't worry about why the act was done for two reasons," he said. "First, if the harm occurs and it's intentional, it doesn't matter why, and sccondly, the toughest thing to ever prove is why."

Um ... exactly. Now that that section has been struck down, prosecutors technically should have an easier time getting a conviction, since they don't have to establish an "ideological, religious or political motivation" for an act of terrorism.

Lord, but if I keep reading the Blogging Tories, I might need to go back on cocaine.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The CPoC crew has yet to understand the Charter and its subtleties. (I doubt most of them have actually read it, and the few that have, clearly didn't understand what they read)

The 2001 "anti-terrorism" act was a poorly conceived piece of legislation written in haste by a government desperate to appear that they were "doing something". Such laws are seldom "good law" - they have a tendency to trample over fundamental rights and freedoms.

It's actually rather amusing to note that the CPoC isn't carping and whining about what a crappy job the "previous liberal government" did on this file {because this would be a legitimate criticism point} - unlike their "Clean Air Act" apologetics.