Getting soft on drugs

You know... the victimless crime.

-- EDMONTON -- With his young wife slain and his brother charged with murder, NDP candidate Mike Butler knows the issue of violent crime more intimately than many Canadians.

On April 7, 2007, Butler's life began to crumble when his father-in-law telephoned to let him know that Butler's wife, Stephanie, had been bludgeoned to death in their home.

Then the news got worse. His brother, Ken, who Butler said was once addicted to methamphetamine, was charged with the crime.

Just one question here, Mike... why are you running for the Dippers?

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FROM THE COMMENTS:

"It sounds like he is not holding his brother accountable for killing his wife. It was the drugs that did it."

"He must be out of his mind with grief."

And...

"It's being reported on the news here that the man with the knife was actually put on the bus by the police."

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RELATED: Maybe after Jack sorts out the Taliban...

...he can negotiate with these guys...

-- MONTREAL -- Over 450 marijuana plants were found on the property where a Quebec provincial police officer was shot during a drug raid Saturday.

Police say the plants where found with drug production material on a building annexed to the property in the town of Saint-Lin-Laurentides in Quebec's Lanaudiere region.

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LAST WORD: That Giant Flushing Noise

“The downward tide of leftism is “tolerant, diverse, non-judgmental, non-discriminatory, egalitarian, politically correct, multicultural, globalist, and collectivist."

"It insists that there are no rights and wrongs, no moral absolutes. It turns everything upside down in its looking glass world."

"It denies the correctness of all that produced what our culture revered before the deconstruction of the world in accordance with the tenets of cultural Marxism.”

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This sounds so familiar

Wasn't there something like this... in one of those bizarre David Suzuki commercials?

Emily Oster, an economist at the University of Chicago, has tried to gather systematic data on the link between witch trials and the weather.

The results look striking: Between 1520 and 1770, colder decades go hand-in-hand with more trials.

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I guess it's true what they say...

Allah is in the details.

" -- ISLAMABAD -- The attack on the hotel is a message to the Pakistani leadership: End all co-operation with the Americans or pay the price."

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RELATED: Is cold-blooded murder really the answer?

The Marriott's owner, Sadruddin Hashwani, said he was heartbroken to see the loss of human life.

"Allah gave me all this and I am not disturbed at the material loss, but I am really disturbed over the loss of innocent people's lives," he said. "Most of the people inside the hotel were there to earn livelihoods for their families."

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FROM THE COMMENTS: Time to make a choice

"We may have reached the proverbial tipping point. Many of the moderate Muslim faithful are getting tired of this shit."

"In the end the majority will rule."

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Unlike his more popular...

...Easter-centric cousin... the "Gun-Bunny" tends to keep a low profile. So it was an especially pleasant surprise to cross paths with him earlier today.

By way of explanation... after a little bit of running around earlier this afternoon... I ended up over at my buddy Bob's place. Now, as it happens, Bob and Mrs. Bob... in a display of self-discipline I one day hope to possess... are paring down their worldly goods in anticipation of moving house. It was this process that rained such good fortune down on me, or more specifically, on my son and heir.

Anyway... Bob casually asks me... "You think Neophyte might have any use for an air-pistol?" He goes on to explain that it is a particularly well-made, rather robust shooter and that he has a scope for it as well.

I take a second to visualise my son hugging me and leaping into the air making triumphal noises... before accepting Bob's generous offer.

"Well, what about that other one?", asks Mrs. Bob. "If you pop off suddenly, I'm gonna be stuck with the damn thing."

Turns out she's referring to a lovely Mossberg .22 bolt-action rifle that Bob has just finished showing me. Now, I'm sorta flabbergasted to find out he's looking to get quit of that as well... but when I express a willingness to take it off his hands... Bob puts that into the goody bag too.

So I get home and as anticipated, Neophyte is one happy little trooper. He is, in fact, so thrilled... he gets Mrs N to take his picture with the rifle out on the porch. He then borrows a screwdriver set and carefully screws the scope onto the air pistol.

Anyway... I decided to look the rifle up on the internet... and I came up with this...

"My Dad was 14 years old when he made this particular purchase (Eek! A child with an unnumbered gun!). And where did he get it? From his pediatrician (Eek! Doctors with guns?!). The good doctor kept it in the office, and my Dad came in (alone), gave him the $25, and walked out of the office and back home through his neighborhood with his rifle over his shoulder (Eek! Children buying guns unsupervised, unrestricted, and unhampered!)."

"Now what would a 14-year-old boy want to do after buying a new rifle? Shoot it, of course! So his Mom (my Grandmother) drove him from their home in Arlington, Virginia down to the NRA headquarters at 16th and Rhode Island in Washington DC (Eek! Guns in DC?!), where they had a small range in the basement. She then went home."

"When he was done shooting (only after running out of .22 ammunition, I bet) my Dad needed to get home. So he slung his new rifle over his shoulder, walked outside (Eek! Carrying a gun in DC?!) and caught a city bus back to Arlington, and raised no eyebrows in the process."

"Just a kid taking his rifle home."

Ah, yes... the good old days.

And thank you, yet again, Saint Bob of Northumberland County.

You will not soon be forgotten hereabouts.

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RELATED: Meanwhile, back in TCOTU...

No word yet... on exactly which gun club is responsible for the latest carnage...

In another wave of gunfire in Toronto, four young men were being treated in hospitals last night after separate non-fatal shootings in North York. Ironically, the second wounding -- of a 23-year-old man's groin on Driftwood Court in the Jane St.-Finch Ave. area -- occurred around the time of a memorial for reputed drug dealer William Junior Appiah.

About five hours later and 1 km west, police had to order a group of youths away from Driftwood Court after the 23-year-old man was shot in the groin. Reported conscious and breathing, he was transported to a trauma hospital.

Shortly after that 9:40 p.m. shooting, two men with gunshot wounds arrived at the Finch branch of Humber River Regional Hospital. No details were available and officers two hours later were trying to determine where they were wounded, including a possible connection to the Driftwood gunfire.

Don't look at me Dawg... I've got an alibi.

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LAST WORD: Paging Mayor Miller...

Say, Yer Blondeness... what part of targeting farmers, hunters and recreational shooters... is gonna deal with repeat offenders like these two guys?

Two loaded pistols and cocaine were seized after two men were arrested in south Etobicoke, police say.

One of the suspects had been banned from having a firearm. The other suspect has a record of firearm offences following the August 2005 shooting of a man in the neck.

Maybe we can "double-ban" them, huh?

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See Dick and Jane...

See Jane kick ass... and fracture the loony leftosphere...

"Which party do you think won the first two weeks of the federal election campaign?"

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FROM THE COMMENTS:

"Hey Neo, I clicked on your link to the results first. Then I decided to go to the globe site to vote and it said I had already voted, which I had not. You may actually be lowering the conservative tally with your link to the results page."

Oops... my bad.

Link fixed to point to main Globe webpage.

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Globe "puff piece" canonises...

...Lucy Warman... totally skips over "abuse of process" issues...
And if that isn't skewed enough for you... here's the money quote...

“It's a little bit like counting the rats in the New York City sewers,” said Mr. Warman, a one-man crusade to eradicate racists and neo-Nazis from cyberspace. “You never know whether you are seeing the same rats or whether it is a new one that has stuck its head out the hole.”

Lots of emotionally loaded verbiage from Lucy... but no serious attempt at dealing with the huge "free speech" implications... or Warman's unsavoury tactics.

Unbelievable.

(h/t bcf)

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RELATED: Hey, Lucy... you missed one

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LAST WORD: Fakin' Makin takes a shit-kickin'

"Your feature on Mr. Warman didn't ask any of the hard questions that should have been asked. It is a puff piece, a whitewash: a modest contribution that adds little to the overall debate on this important issue."

And...

"This doesn't make sense. Kirk Makin has been reporting on court matters for years without, to my memory, committing anything this puerile to paper. Somebody's called in a favour (or held a gun to his head)."

And...

"Uh...you should have asked him how MANY others he is currently suing! A long list that includes notorious anti-Semites like the National Post and Ezra Levant."

"You were suckered, Mr. Makin."

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Dave's not here, man

More madcap antics from the party of Cheech and Chow...

-- VANCOUVER -- The federal New Democrats have lost their second pro-marijuana B.C. candidate in a matter of days.

Vancouver-Quadra candidate Kirk Tousaw, a lawyer and former campaign director for the B.C. Marijuana Party, resigned Friday afternoon.

Online videos aired on Friday evening news broadcasts showed Tousaw smoking pot with marijuana activist Marc Emery.

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RELATED: In other "peecee" news...

"The question of how, exactly, a bunch of warring, pre-literate aboriginal hunter-gatherer societies can claim credit for the creation of a modern, democratic, capitalist, industrial powerhouse built entirely in a European image is one that, alas, I must leave for others."

I fear for my country.

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Funny how the television networks...

...decided to constantly gloss over this part of the story...

Justice Lynn Ratushny describes Shawn Brant's actions in the dispute as those of a deceptive, self-serving man who played the role of victim and failed to take responsibility for himself.

And, in this instance, it's not just the wily white man that Brant is at war with. This time he gave his aboriginal brothers a royal screwin' over, too.

The long-running dispute between the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte community and the Brants involves a piece of land where the men started a cabinet-making business in 1992. They received $430,000 in loans from an aboriginal financing company and Industry Canada for the start-up. Despite the sizable loan, Shawn Brant scoffed at the $8,700 purchase price his father negotiated for the land and instead offered $1,500.

"With the benefit of hindsight, it is evident that his initial reaction of trying to get something for less or for nothing was a foreshadowing of what was to come," Judge Ratushny writes.

The band refused the offer and a deadline for the purchase passed without event.

But even that wasn't gonna stop this noble native entrepreneur.

The Brants went ahead and erected a building on the property. Their business failed within one year and none of the $430,000 in loans was repaid.

"At times during the last 16 years, therefore, the Brants have used the lands and building almost for free, for their own purposes," Judge Ratushny writes in her decision.

"They have used hundreds of thousands of dollars from lenders for their own purposes. Shawn Brant has purported to sell that which he never did purchase and knew he did not purchase and he has kept the sale monies, for his own use."

And he's still not in jail.

Amazing.

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Say, Yer Blondness...

What say you start working on that NEW law to ban sociopathy?

A woman suffered slash wounds to the neck in an apparent random attack at a grocery store this afternoon, Toronto Police say.

The woman was heading to her car, parked in the Great Canadian Superstore parking lot at 51 Gerry Fitzgerald Dr., around 12:12 p.m. when she was approached by a stranger, Const. Tony Vella said.

"The male struck up a conversation with her asking for directions and while the women was giving directions he pulled out a knife and stabbed her in the neck," Vella said.

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Somehow... "more than once"...

...just doesn't seem to quite cover it...

Watching the CTV news the other night and almost fell off my chair when the always politically-correct talking head casually remarked... "China has experienced this sort of thing... more than once."

It was a rapid expansion of a scandal that began with tainted baby formula at a single company and soon spread to 21 other producers. Thousands of frightened parents flooded into Chinese hospitals yesterday to seek medical tests for babies who had consumed the tainted products.

There was growing evidence that Chinese authorities knew of the scandal in early August but failed to announce it publicly for fear of embarrassment during the Beijing Games.

The government did not update its toll of children sickened by the milk powder, but on Wednesday it said more than 6,200 babies were ill, including 1,327 who were still in hospital and 158 with acute kidney failure.

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FROM THE COMMENTS:

A senior dairy analyst said Chinese farmers were cutting corners to cope with rising costs for feed and labor.

"Before the melamine incident, I know they could have been adding organic stuff, say animal urine or skin," said Chen Lianfang of Beijing Orient Agribusiness Consultant Co. "Basically, anything that can boost the protein reading."

But he and others expressed skepticism that so many farmers would know to add melamine to milk. The chemical is not water-soluble and must be mixed with formaldehyde or another chemical before it can be dissolved in milk.

"Farmers can't be well-educated enough to think of melamine," Chen said. "There must be people from chemical companies contacting them and telling them it's a good idea."

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Clearly Stephane Dion...

...hasn't fully considered all of the implications of his... "So what, if I'm an awkward, geeky, socially-isolated, egghead kinda guy" initiative.

That useful, productive, socially beneficial stuff... is way over-rated.

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UPDATE: That Steffi... what a kidder!

-- WINNIPEG -- Liberal Leader Stephane Dion said today that his Green Shift plan featuring a controversial carbon tax is not a major part of his election platform.

"You have said it was but never me," Dion told reporters.

His surprise declaration follows by a day campaign appearances in the Toronto area where he failed to mention it once in his speeches.

You can alsmost see the Toronto Star Editorial board start to bleed from their ears over... "Dion’s slight change in approach."

(h/t reader rich)

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LAST WORD: In other "shifty green" news...

"Unfortunately, just saying 'Green Collar Jobs' and clicking your heels together won’t buy groceries and pay the mortgage."

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"Dear Lefties..."

"...all your heroes are scumbags..."

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FROM THE COMMENTS:

"Castro, Sacco & Vanzetti, Alger Hiss, Michael Moore, Mumia, the Weathermen, the Black Panthers, the Rosenbergs, Leonard Peltier, Angela Davis, Tom Hayden, Ward Churchill, Che..."

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"Live and DON'T learn"

And die...

“Our soldiers are trained to take all appropriate steps to minimize civilian casualties. However, they must take action to protect themselves when they believe they are being threatened.”

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RELATED: He was "gentle", he was "fit"

Well then, we're obviously dealing with an unrepentant police "death squad", huh?

The family of a "gentle" Brampton man who died hours after being Tasered by Peel police are demanding answers.

Sean Reilly, 42, died Tuesday less than 12 hours after being shot with a stun gun during a struggle in a cell at a Peel Regional Police station. He had been arrested earlier "without incident" at a Mississauga home on a charge of assault with a weapon.

Yesterday, Reilly's family released a statement through their lawyer, Ian Smith, describing him as a non-violent man who was well-liked by all who knew him.

Well, you know... "everybody"... except the person who was assaulted and called 911.

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Well... imagine my relief

It turns out he wasn't drinking after all...

The medical history of a former school bus driver charged with impaired driving was laid out in detail in court yesterday, as the defence tried to explain Jerry McNeill's erratic behaviour.

McNeill's psychiatrist, Dr. Leslie Kiraly, took the stand in a College Park court, and said his patient suffered from bipolar disorder, evident through bouts of depression, mild mood swings, and "hypomanic" episodes..

So why is this case even on anybody's radar?

He was pulled over by police after he picked up nearly 40 children from a water park in Toronto's east end and drove them down the Don Valley Parkway.

Good grief.

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The good ol' days...

A team of Canadian researchers has unearthed the most ancient ice ever found in North America – 700,000-year-old wedges that didn't melt when the Earth was much balmier than it is today.

The scientists say their discovery means the permafrost that covers a quarter of the land in the Northern Hemisphere may not release its vast stores of carbon as quickly as some experts fear.

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RELATED: But not everyone is 'blinded by science'

"They called me foolish and laughed at my predictions. Yet even now, the Midwest is flooded, the ice caps are melting, and the cities are rocked with tremors, just as I foretold."

Yeah, yeah CC... we know.

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LAST WORD: What the doctor ordered

We have this Green Shift theory which sounds interesting, but what we don’t have at our finger-tips is the shapes of those curves I drew above.

We could easily make greenhouse gas output worse, we could have no effect at all. We could cause a depression, we could cause the worst outcome possible: stagflation.

Therefore, it seems it would be stupid to manipulate the Canadian economy so drastically at this time, that is, when one considers the peer reviewed Economic evidence.

Hmmmm... you'd think Prof. Steffi might have heard of the "Law of Unintended Consequences."

Apparently not.

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Media bias? Whaddaya mean?

Apparently, according to CTV's Robert Fife on the Thursday night news... Stephen Harper doesn't just refute an argument - he...

"...firebombs their credibility."

No word yet, on whether he does this in concert with his "Conservative Warlords."

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Dear Dr Dawg

This one's for you...

He is described as white, approximately 1.8 metres (6') tall and 84 kilograms (185 lbs) with a full beard and shoulder length grey hair. He wears glasses and was last seen wearing a brown or tan jacket.

Hey, Dawg... it even happened in a "trailer park."

That make you feel better?

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UPDATE: Oh-oh... the racist Toronto Star...

...just had to rain on Dr Dawg's parade...

The 23-year-old Humber College student died from a gunshot to the head fired by one of two men who walked up to his car Tuesday afternoon in Malton as he waited outside a Reindeer Dr. home for his girlfriend.

The men demanded drugs and cash he was carrying and Dhinsa was shot point-blank when he refused to deliver, a source said.

The portrait of a young man dead in a drug deal stood in stark contrast to the picture of an eager student without enemies painted by his grieving family.

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UPDATE2: Now... the racist Toronto Sun...

...is piling the injustice up higher and deeper...

A court order was issued today allowing for the identification of a 16-year-old Toronto boy for alleged shooting of a crony during the attempt robbery of another teen at a Scarborough high school Tuesday.

Jermaine Williams is wanted by Toronto Police for robbery while armed with a firearm and discharging a firearm, endangering life for the botched heist of another teen outside Bendale Business and Technical Institute on Midland Ave.

Quick... somebody fill his water dish and get the Dawg a bone!

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LAST WORD: Yeah, sure... more social workers...

That's been working out so well.

The Harper government's Tackling Violent Crime Act increases mandatory jail sentences to five years for gun use during an attempted murder, kidnapping, robbery or sexual assault, not to mention a reverse onus for the accused to show why they shouldn't be kept in jail waiting for trial.

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The Puffin Papers

"In order to be a good liberal you have to believe... that there were no charities before welfare... that there was no art before federal funding... that taxes are too low - but ATM fees are too high... that the AIDS virus is spread by a lack of federal funding... that there is no such thing as a "sovereign citizen" - in fact, there is no such thing as "inalienable rights," only permissions from government..."

Read it all.

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RELATED: Honestly... the dog ate my cerebral cortex

"The old line on imprudent debt went something like: If you owe the bank a thousand dollars, you have a problem; if you owe the bank a million dollars, the bank has a problem."

"We seem to have casually accepted the extension of the paradigm: If the bank loans you a million dollars, the bank has a problem. If the bank loans you a billion dollars, the US government has a problem."

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Dead and gone

Here's a sobering statistic... as bad as things are in Hogtown... it's only about 1 percent of the victims that will fall, countrywide, to this killer...

"Colorectal cancer will claim about 50,000 lives this year in the U.S. and 8,500 in Canada."

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RELATED: Paging Mayor Miller

"Regulating law-abiding citizens will do nothing to stop these atrocities from happening. These crimes are clearly being carried out by thugs and criminals who have no respect for human life or the law."

"Focusing on the object, rather than the individual, has diverted scarce resources in the wrong direction."

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Section 13

Barbara Kulaszka, a lawyer for Mr. Lemire, told the tribunal that the mainstream media paid no attention to unfairness of Section 13 complaints until Macleans magazine columnist Mark Steyn was targeted by a Muslim group earlier this year.

“Every religion is going to start using it,” she warned. “Just look at the first Muslim complaint in 30 years. Everyone went nuts. The media woke up, and said: ‘It isn't just Ernst Zundel and his creepy right-wingers being attacked. They are going to come after us.'

“You're going to be caught in the cross-hairs,” she cautioned.

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RELATED: A singular lack of trust...

...in his fellow Canadian citizens.

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