Free Melissa Firth!
In overturning the 2010 decision of the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario to award $2,000 to each man for “violation of their inherent right to be free from discrimination and for injury to their dignity, feelings and self-respect,” the Divisional Court instead ordered them and the tribunal to pay legal costs of $20,000 to the librarian and to the Peel Law Association, which runs the library.
The three-judge panel found that tribunal vice-chairman Eric Whist unfairly reversed the onus of proof from the complainant to the respondent, and “placed [the librarian] in the difficult position of trying to prove a negative, namely, that her conduct in the performance of her routine duties was not motivated by race and colour.” It also criticized the tribunal’s “misconceived” comparison of the librarian’s conduct to racial profiling by police.
h/t Rita
The Post Hockey Riot Investigation
A whole lot has been going on behind the scenes in the aftermath of last year’s riot in Vancouver, including but not limited to the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) utilizing a special Homeland Security facility in Indianapolis. In this video, David Berner interviews the VPD’s Howard Chow:
In The Mail
This Is Not Your Grandma’s Humane Society
Remember, these are the same people who hang around schoolyards;
“This is Jessica,” the narrator, Kevin Nealon, says. “She suffers from ‘BWVAKTBOOM,’ ‘Boyfriend Went Vegan and Knocked the Bottom Out of Me,’ a painful condition that occurs when boyfriends go vegan and can suddenly bring it like a tantric porn star.”
h/t Adrian
Reader Tips
In tonight’s Tips music, dedicated to swashbuckling Liberal dreamboat Justin Trudeau, monochromatic chanteuse Gale Garnett, who is perhaps most famous for being just another notch in Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s bedpost, trudges her way through Where Do You Go To Go Away?
I believe she’s referring to a sovereign Quebec, but I’m not completely sure about that.
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
Justin, Son Of Margaret
Stirring words, by Canada’s best known member of the Lucky Y-Chromosome Club.
We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans
Out of the blue last November, Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) began the (non-union labour) construction of an industrial wind turbine on the grounds of its Family Education Centre, a facility designed to “encourage…people …to discuss their problems and debate the major issues of the times.”
Despite all the places CAW could have located the mammoth structure, it picked Port Elgin, “considered — one of the leading recreational playgrounds in Ontario” for an industrial wind turbine. CAW’s vacant 128-acre property nearby was deemed too environmentally sensitive. Besides, the land had just been subdivided and its lots stood to rake in $2 million. The FEC’s densely-populated neighbourhood didn’t have such sensitivities.
Life Might Be a Beach, But No Longer in California
California has passed a new milestone on its way to becoming a Totalitarian State of the Idiotic Kind. Adam Carolla has a few things to say about the new restrictions on using frisbees and footballs at the beach (language warning) :
UofR Student Union
Dipsticks.
So at their AGM on the 8th the dumbasses got hijacked by anti-semites and ended up passing another Anti-Israel motion. (I know, quelle surprise, leftist university radicals hijacking a non-entity about Israel.)
I wonder if the student body at UofR understands just what “Commit to identifying and divesting from companies that support or profit from Israel…” means when you put it in the context of this.
Canola: Israel – April 2011 – 8.900k tonnes 2010-2011 16.2k tonnes
Soyabean: Israel – 2009-2010 – 22.6k tonnes
Wheat Flour: Israel – 1q 2011 – 30k tonnes
I guess this means that the wingnuts won’t be going home to Dadda’s farm anytime soon.
h/t JGL.
What We Really Need Is Democracy
With totalitarian kidnappers to vote for;
Egyptian judges have referred 16 Americans and 27 others linked to NGOs for trial, accusing them of using foreign funds to encourage disruptive protests. Among the targeted NGOs whose assets and funds have been seized are the U.S. government-funded International Republican Institute and National Democratic Institute.
Shocking! Appalling! Unprecedented!
Via Drudge
Y2Kyoto: The Final Solution
Now is the time at SDA when we juxatpose!
Adolf Hitler to Heinrich Himmler, 1942; – “The discovery of the Jewish virus is one of the greatest revolutions that have taken place in the world.”
Petra Döll, German climate scientist, February 2012 – “Klimaskeptiker sind wie Viren”.
h/t DN
The Tolerant Left
Looks like they came up empty;
A little after 1 p.m. on Sept. 29, 2009, Karl Frisch emailed a memo to his bosses, Media Matters for America founder David Brock and president Eric Burns. In the first few lines, Frisch explained why Media Matters should launch a “Fox Fund” whose mission would be to attack the Fox News Channel.
“Simply put,” Frisch wrote, “the progressive movement is in need of an enemy. George W. Bush is gone. We really don’t have John McCain to kick around any more. Filling the lack of leadership on the right, Fox News has emerged as the central enemy and antagonist of the Obama administration, our Congressional majorities and the progressive movement as a whole.”
“We must take Fox News head-on in a well funded, presidential-style campaign to discredit and embarrass the network, making it illegitimate in the eyes of news consumers.”
What Frisch proceeded to suggest, however, went well beyond what legitimate presidential campaigns attempt. “We should hire private investigators to look into the personal lives of Fox News anchors, hosts, reporters, prominent contributors, senior network and corporate staff,” he wrote.
Related – US senator calls for News Corp probe and The curious link between Media Matters and the White House war on Fox
Remember, It’s Starbucks Appreciation Day Today
Short version:
Starbucks is requested by anti-gun nanny nazi types to refuse service to people carrying guns.
Starbucks refuses and says it will continue to serve people carrying guns.
Anti-gun nanny nazis call for boycott.
Gun owners from across America and Canada today flood Starbucks to buy copious amount of foo-foo drinks even though we’re not really the foo-foo latte type. (I plan on getting a mint mocha thing with lots of whipped cream.)
Will SDA get results!? Tune in next quarter when Starbucks CEO says,
“For some reason sales jumped across Canada on Valentines Day by $3.1 billion.”
Daniel Hannan At CPAC
h/t Adrian
Reader Tips
In tonight’s Tips video, via Kate, we take a look one of the oldest domesticated dog breeds, the “living antiquity” known as the Saluki.
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
We Don’t Need No Stinking French Fry Grease
In its early years, biotech company Amyris described itself as a start-up “applying its proprietary breakthrough technologies to address major global health and energy challenges.”
Its originally planned to make an anti-malaria drug, as well as renewable diesel and jet fuel, by feeding sugar to genetically-engineered microorganisms. Having spun off the anti-malaria technology to another company in 2008, yesterday Amyris said it’s giving up making fuels too. Instead, it will to focus on higher value products, such as moisturizers for cosmetics.
The company learnt first hand just how difficult it is to achieve the kind of yields seen in lab tests in large-scale production. In an update call for investors, CEO John Melo said he is “humbled by the lessons we have learned.”
Pharma Shrugs
Supply of a Cancer Drug May Run Out Within Weeks. “A crucial medicine to treat childhood leukemia is in such short supply that hospitals across the country may exhaust their stores within the next two weeks, leaving hundreds and perhaps thousands of children at risk of dying from a largely curable disease, federal officials and cancer doctors say.
[…]
Thank goodness President Obama is on the case, issuing executive orders! But the existence of any kind of shortage in a market-driven economy should make one’s nose twinkle. One drug shortage might be some kind of freakish anomaly, but 180 crucial drug shortages?
Manning Centre Networking Conference
Canada’s largest conservative event of its kind. March 8 – 10th in Ottawa.
Is There Nothing That Obama Can’t Do?
Now, the Obama Administration has, by executive fiat, determined that a private company must give away its services to a class of people it (“The Administration”) has determined should get these services.
Going back to our California example, what is to stop the Federal Department of Energy from requiring auto insurers to provide no-cost insurance to anyone driving a car running on electricity, natural gas, or bio-diesel – to promote the use of those vehicles.
For that matter, what’s to prevent the U.S. Government from telling GM (which still owes us about $25 billion) they need to provide small, fuel efficient cars to people who cannot otherwise afford them, but live in areas that have limited public transportation?
I don’t understand where that authority comes from. But it worries me, very much.
This occurred to me, too – It’s almost as if Stephanopoulos got the memo first.
h/t Dave