A senior official from the Federal Department of Nothing Here To See.

I haven’t weighed in on Karla Homolka’s impending release – enough words have been wasted on this piece of sub-human trash.
However, I do have a question for you all – without diminishing the horrific nature of her crimes and the evidence that she’s a true psychopath – just what about Karla Homolka’s release merits more concern for the public than any number of other cold-blooded, casual murderers who are released without fanfare on any other given day?
Other than the breathless publicity the case received – the innumerable replays of the wedding video clip. Happy, shiney, blonde evil.
Would we even have heard her name had she been born at White Bear First Nation, and committed her crimes in an alley behind 20th Street in Saskatoon? How many reporters from the Toronto Star and CBC and CTV would be covering that story?
Speaking of criminal intent – Norma Jean Mooswa, who supposedly recieved a 10 year sentence last December for the vehicular murder of 6 people on July 1, 2004 (multiple drunk driving convictions) has been moved to a “healing lodge” in Southwestern Saskatchewan.
Think college campus with nicer scenery.

Pick up the phone.
Tell him you want six.
I dare ya.

What 9 (or is it 10?) billion in “security spending” gets us:
National Post

OTTAWA – The RCMP has mismanaged its forensic services, creating a backlog of more than 950 DNA cases while straining other resources, two retired forensic officers said yesterday at a parliamentary committee meeting. Appearing before the Commons justice committee, the former officers, Gary Mcleod and David Hepworth, said the RCMP wastes money through an inefficient forensics system that in February had 959 cases still pending, with the average case turnaround time about 85 days too long. “What we need to have is a national strategy,” said Mr. Hepworth, a police officer since 1962 and a forensics investigator for 30 years.

SDA flashbackto February news that the feds were closing one of six RCMP forensics labs as a “cost cutting” measure:

Well, let’s be practical. So long as the RCMP are short 2500 officers, closing detachments in grow-up regions of Quebec, and a month and a half behind in processing Interpol terrorist alerts, it’s just a little silly to get twisted out of shape about backlogs in forensics. It’s not as though the Canadian justice system actually locks up criminals when they do bother to convict them.

Don’t mess with Texas.
Actually, John Kerry didn’t fare much better.
Via Instapundit

Meanwhile, in grade 8 Family Health, Mrs. Johnston demonstrates the correct way to perform a kitchen table abortion.
ViaMichelle Malkin.

Two AK47s, two empty magazines and one used mortar shell.

Despite their massively superior firepower, the UN team deem it too dangerous to chase the militiamen into the bushes.
“Militants know the area, so you don’t see where they’re running to. If they sent us to run after them, soldiers would die,” says Rifleman Meshack Mathye, the reality of his admission in stark contrast to the “Aggressive and Fearless” T-shirt he sports to match his blue UN peacekeeper’s helmet.
The failure of the UN troops to live up to the slogan is most painfully evident in the quantity of weapons that the confiscation programme has gleaned in this lawless corner of the Congo.
After two raids involving more than 1,000 troops, supported by helicopter gunships and tanks, the sum total of the haul is two out-of- commission AK47s, two empty magazines and one used mortar shell.
[…]
As long as they can keep their weapons, the murder, gang rape and pillaging will continue and the credibility of the UN peacekeeping forces is likely to remain in doubt. Most of the rogue militiamen are loyal to the UPC, or Patriotic Congolese Union, and FNI, or Nationalist and Integrationalist Force, who both defied a UN-backed order to give up all weapons by April 1.
The FNI is believed to be responsible for the murder, beheading and mutilation of nine Bangladeshi UN peacekeepers in an ambush earlier this year, while the UPC has been accused of carrying out similar atrocities against children.
When the mission to disarm them began last month, it was in the rare expectation that the “get tough” rhetoric might be matched with words.
[…]
The reality is rather different. As the multi-national force approaches the target zone, the militia fighters simply run away with as much weaponry as they can carry. After a brief search of the camp, there is little for the UN team to do except get back in their helicopters and fly back to their base.
“We just searched the camp for weapons, saw the militia men on the mountain and didn’t go after them,” says one glum private. “Most of the weapons they leave are useless or broken.”
His commanders, meanwhile, shift the talk from “forcible” disarmament to “psychological” disarmament.
Major Arefin, from Bangladesh, said: “Even though we don’t catch them directly, I think these operations are convincing people to disarm voluntarily. We’re forcing them to disarm psychologically by scaring them.”

Ouch.

Globe & Mail:

A former government employee has been sentenced for her role in one of Canada’s most serious cases of passport theft.
Toula Blanas, 27, was sentenced on Friday to 5� years for dealing with blank Canadian passports, and two years, to be served concurrently, for breach of trust.
[…]
Ms. Blanas, who worked in the passport office in Scarborough, was accused of stealing 246 blank passports, which were being sold on Toronto streets for the bargain price of about $1,000 apiece.

Now, let’s see…. 5 1/2 years, with a release at around the one third point of time served… around 20 months.
So… about $12,300 a month, take home.

The New York Post is reporting that a joint US-Italian investigation has cleared US military personnel in the death of an Italian secret service agent who was escorting terrorist collaborator-journalist Giuliana Sgrena after her purchase from Iraqi “captors”.

The car was about 130 yards from a checkpoint when the soldiers flashed their lights to get it to stop. They fired warning shots when the car was within 90 yards of the checkpoint, but at 65 yards, they used deadly force. Calipari was killed and Sgrena wounded.

Via Powerline

If you’re like me, and get a sense that border surveillance on the US-Canadian prairies is more illusion than reality, you’re not wrong.;

A scathing new report by the union representing Canada’s customs agents suggests bad policy and slow police response have turned the country’s border into a sieve easily exploited by criminals.
The leaked document, which was prepared last week for a Senate committee reviewing security at entry points across the country, reiterates longstanding union demands for an armed presence at the border. Appended to the report is a list, compiled by the Canada Border Services Agency, of 116 ports of entry and distances to the nearest law enforcement detachments.
Nearly half are at least 25 kilometres away, with most rural ports located 50 kilometres or more from the closest police station.
“It stands to reason that distance between a police detachment to a customs port is not a perfect marker for police response time,” the Customs Excise Union report acknowledges.
“But it does highlight challenges posed by distance and, in some examples, clearly illustrates that even if a police cruiser could travel at high speed with its siren on, response times are beyond minutes and span into hours.”

There’s a reason he chose the words “even if”.

I do so love it when people open a link to my blog with such enticing provocative commentary…
April 11 Update:
Warren Kinsella subpeonaed by Commons public accounts committee.;

“I found it fairly amusing,” said Bloc MP Benoit Sauvageau, who tabled the original motion to hear from the Liberal insiders.�
“They’ve probably got the country wrong or the time in history,” he said of their requests to negotiate their appearances before the committee.

�

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Update: To the friends of Warren Kinsella – the best friend Chuck Guite ever had – who are stopping by. This is the reason the thin-skinned Librano has directed you to this post. (which links to a story of World Health Organization workers being attacked for attempting to bring relief to Angolans.)
Warren has been outed as a pro-pollution chemical industry lobbiest in a post lower on the page titled “Whorin’ Warren”. He doesn’t like it very much, and true to the testosterone-challenged technique he is famous for – chooses to misrepresent the content of this post instead.
What a pussy you are, Warren.
Globe and Mail;

The Ontario government came under attack yesterday for allowing an influential Liberal Party strategist to attend a cabinet meeting just days after he was hired to lobby against proposed environmental legislation that would impose stiff penalties on polluters.
Progressive Conservative Bob Runciman asked Premier Dalton McGuinty why Warren Kinsella was allowed to attend the meeting on March 23, nine days after he signed on to help the chemical industry fight legislation that Mr. Runciman says is now at risk of being watered down.
“Do you not see a massive conflict of interest here?” the Tory MPP asked during Question Period.

---

Original post, and link unchanged below.
Is there a point where we are allowed to stop feeling sympathy for these people, seal off the borders and just let nature take its course?

Senator Norm Coleman has dragged Kofi Annan out of the saloon and back into the street;

The Volcker report did not “exonerate” Annan, as many have claimed; to the contrary, it pointed the finger directly at him. Indeed, one member of Volcker’s committee, Mark Pieth, made that point loud and clear: “We did not exonerate Kofi Annan.”
With that in mind, I reiterate my call for Annan’s resignation.

More here: “Volcker did his level best not to connect the dots”

Former national security adviser Sandy Berger (under Clinton) is going to plead guilty today to having made an “honest mistake” in going to the National Archives and shoving notes and classified documents down his pants, into his jacket and briefcase and then losing a whole lot of them.
James is rounding up reaction.

Writing that you’re “setting aside a bottle of expensive champagne to be opened and consumed at the moment of the vegetable’s expiry.” in response to a reader’s email seems a little over the top – particularly if you’ve just declared the “utter obnoxiousness of Terri Schiavo’s ‘defenders'” . As for obnoxious responses, I’m not sure what he expected, after his descriptions of “AHHHHH! WAAAAAAA!” Terri and her “dessicated cakehole”.
Ordinarily I enjoy Colby’s writing, and generally agree with him on substance in most issues. In this case I think he might have been wiser to begin and end the religious aspect of this debate with the “I’m not a Catholic” disclaimer and leave it at that.

James notes an item questioning how this could happen;

A Czech tractor driver died under eight tons of manure in a bizarre accident that has baffled his employers, local media reported. The 34-year old man, identified only as Martin T, suffocated after the load fell on him while he was dumping it in a field near the western Czech city of Karlovy Vary, news Web Site www.novinky.cz reported Sunday. “It absolutely beats me how this could happen,” said Vladimir Erps, chief of the company employing the victim. “The truck is operated from the tractor cabin, using hydraulics. There was nothing for him to do under the truck, but it’s tough to blame him now that he is dead,” the news site quoted him as saying.

I know someone who was killed doing this, in what I suspect was the same manner. The truck’s hydraulics were functional, but the control levers to engage them were not. Thus, the box had to be raised by activating the hydraulics from under the truck. As it did, the weight of the sliding load caused the truck to suddenly move forward (the brakes were defective or disengaged) and he was crushed beneath the rear wheels.

Roger Simon has an Oil-For-Food investigation scoop;

The committee has been interviewing Pierre Mouselli, a businessman in Paris who was Kojo’s business partner. Their relationship started in 1998 when then 45-year old Mouselli met young Kojo (then 23) at a Bastille Day Party in the French Embassy in Lagos, Nigeria. Mouselli, who has been a cooperative witness and is not under investigation himself, has told the committee numerous interesting things, which deserved to be followed up, They include:
1. Previously unrevealed private meetings between Kojo and two separate Iraqi Ambassadors to Nigeria, arranged by Mouselli in or about August 1998. At these meetings Kojo presented the business card of Cotecna, which subsequently won the lucrative oil inspection contract for Oil-for-Food. Cotecna had previously been blacklisted from doing business in Nigeria for alleged arms trafficking.
2. A trip in September 1998 by Mouselli and Kojo to the Non-Aligned Nations Movement Conference in Durban, South Africa during which they traveled with the Secretary General’s entourage and later had a private lunch with Kofi Annan. In Mouselli’s view, the purpose of the lunch was to make the Secretary General aware of the various business dealings in which he and Kojo were engaged, in order to get the Secretary General’s “blessing”. It was Mouselli’s understanding at the time that Kojo had previously discussed the Iraqi Embassy visits with his father, though he does not recall specific statements regarding the UN inspection contracts.

Stay tuned.
March.29 update – Roger Simon is perusing the report.

Kofi Annan is depressed.

KOFI ANNAN, the United Nations secretary-general, is said to be struggling with depression and considering his future. Colleagues have reported concerns about Annan ahead of an official report this week that will examine his son Kojo�s connection to the controversial Iraqi oil for food scheme.
Depending on the findings of the report, by a team led by the former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, Annan may have to choose between the secretary-generalship and loyalty to his son.
[…]
American congressional critics of the UN are already pressing him to resign over the mismanagement of the oil for food programme, and even his supporters have been dismayed by the scandals on his watch, including the sexual abuse of children by UN peacekeepers in Congo.
One close observer at the UN said Annan�s moods were like a �sine curve� and that he appeared near the bottom of the trough.

What the hell. Time to insert a feeding tube.
Just so it can be pulled later.
More on the report out tomorrow. Also – don’t bother looking for this report on either the CBC or CTV websites…
(Don’t forget Friends Of Saddam – your one stop shopping center for Oil-For-Food updates.)

1,600 vehicles entered Canada in 2004 and didn’t bother stopping for Customs. To deal with the problem, the federal government is closing RCMP detachments.

James Rosczo made a tactical error when he committed suicide after killing four young RCMP officers in Alberta two weeks ago. He should have simply gone back to his house, cleaned his guns, and proclaimed his innocence when the inevitable arrest came.
In the Canadian justice system, where serial murdering sociopaths are released back into society, rapists who kidnap,beat and torture teenage girls get 7 years (and identity protection from the court), and plane bombing terrorism investigations take 20 years and end in acquittals – James Roszco probably stood a better than even chance of walking away a free man.