Conservative MP Russ Hiebert wasted no time this week grilling the CHRC’s David Langtry during the recent parliamentary hearing: “I note that in recent years the Commission and the Tribunal have conducted secret hearings to withhold evidence from defendants, and to conceal the name from accusers, and to even exclude a defendant from portions of his own hearing, among other things….such practices do not occur in regular courts; if they did, they would bring the administration of justice into disrepute. So my first question is, who approves these kind of legal tactics?”
Langtry replied in soporific, evasion-adorned bureaucratese (“as you well know, we are an administrative tribunal and as such are subject to the rules of procedural fairness”) and in the face of further questioning he professed with a straight face to be entirely unfamiliar with well-known, damning particulars that most every newspaper reader in the country is well aware of. Such opacity and unaccountability is the CHRC’s bread and butter; its recent report manages to insert in its introduction a complete and utter falsity, that the right to be treated with “respect” is a “fundamental right of Canadian democracy.” Mere words can violate this right:

Words can isolate and marginalize our fellow citizens, not because of what people have said or done, but solely because of their personal characteristics, such as ethnicity, religion, race or sexual orientation.

Spot the Trojan Horse there? The CHRC conflates race — something one has no control over, and which is neither an idea nor a philosophy — with religion. Consider Islam: it is not only a religion but also a political force, a globally-surging ideology that demands the preeminence of its own laws and ideas over all others. To suggest that that any given particular Muslim sock has a human “right” to not be disrespected for his religious views is to in effect deem the geopolitical force that is the aggregate of his ideas as being off-limits from debate, examination and criticism.

“In the debate about freedom of expression and freedom from hate, Canada’s commitment to
equality lies at the centre.”

This pretense, that the HRCs and HRTs are interested in equality, is put to the lie by the fact that no Muslim, no matter how radical, hateful or extreme his views, has ever been hauled in front of a HRT for voicing his religious views on homosexuality, women, or any other subject. We’re all familiar by now with the case of the Christian minister who was not only ordered to publish an apology in a local newspaper for giving his expressed interpretation of the biblical view of homosexuality, but also ordered to refrain in perpetuity from ever restating such views again, even in private emails. It’s beyond dispute at this point that the CHRC proscribes certain political views in the interests of strengthening those they support.

The freedom to express ideas and opinions is both the cornerstone of democracy and of human rights.

The CHRC will continue to use these bureaucratic feel-good buzzwords to justify its mandate, but the enormous gap between their self-professed noble intentions and their actual behaviour has never been more evident than in the last few weeks. I believe we’re seeing the beginning of the end.
Langtry’s testimony here.

Enjoy!

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a special edition of SDA Late Nite Radio. This afternoon, for your delectation and pursuant to our distinguished lecture, documentary & interview series, here, at the Institute for Neural Computation and in the Frontiers of Knowledge lecture series from the University of California at San Diego, is Dr. Stephen Wolfram presenting his talk A New Kind of Science ¤ (1:26:42), for the 2003 H. Paul Rockwood memorial lecture. In this afternoon’s talk, the controversial Dr. Wolfram introduces the now famous Rule 30 and many of the other concepts that lead some of us to think that, at scales a dozen orders of magnitude smaller than anything ever before contemplated, it may be the case that all that actually exists is information. I would suggest that one can easily see why Mr. Wolfram’s ideas are at least interesting.

Please note that this is not Reader Tips, our regular
Reader Tips entry will appear tonight as scheduled.

Some heavier reading.
But if you’re in the mood for lighter fare…
Feed the Kitty

Every day is April 1:

PEOPLE for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is upset with US President Barack Obama killing a fly during a televised interview.

PETA is sending President Barack Obama a Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher, a device that allows users to trap a house fly and then release it outside.

No word on whether PETA has a walk-in freezer to store the thousands of dead flies they had to euthanize when they couldn’t find an above-freezing outdoor environment to release them in.
h/t ghostofaflea.com

In an article published last Saturday in the WSJ.com, Paul Starobin suggests that America, as a direct reaction to an ever-growing and more powerful central government, may edge towards being “an assembly of largely autonomous regional republics.” Starobin sees the unmistakable growth of secessionist sentiment in Texas, Alaska and elsewhere, and notes:

… history seems to be driving one nail after another into the coffin of the big, which is why the Obama planners and their ilk, even if they now ride high, may be doomed to fail. No one anymore expects the best ideas to come from the biggest actors in the economy, so should anyone expect the best thinking to be done by the whales of the political world?

American Thinker’s George Joyce, in a review of Starobin’s piece, writes “A failed presidency for Barack Obama could turn into liberalism’s worst nightmare. Barely six months into his term, the 44th president has succeeded in generating the most widespread and serious discussion of secession since the Civil War. Despite what Newsweek’s Evan Thomas may claim, Obama is not the ‘God’ who will bring us together but the autocratic sponsor of an overbearing, oppressive leviathan from which a growing number of Americans are seeking refuge.

Wouldn’t a new American devolution…be a liberal’s worst nightmare? Beyond the psychosis most liberals would have to endure at the thought of losing any kind of control, the prospect of vibrant, happy, and successful conservative republics in places like Texas, South Carolina or Utah would be an inescapable spotlight forever exposing the failure of liberal ideology…

In light of America’s consistent historic reaction to any attempt to impose control from a distance, some form of major push-back against Obama’s preening emperor-act seems almost inevitable. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.
Both pieces are well worth reading.

Source
Update: More @ America’s Right