"An unhappy day for these girls"

It's official. International ski jump champions will not be permitted to compete in the Vancouver Olympics. Because they're women.

Them's the International Olympic Committee rules, and the Vancouver Organizing Committee spent $100,000 to enforce them. They were successful: apparently, according to our courts, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms doesn't apply--despite the heavy infusion of federal money and involvement in the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games. Extraterritoriality is now the law. Presumably, if the IOC were to declare the games whites-only, Canadian Black or Asian or aboriginal athletes would be excluded, and the courts would decline to intervene.

Sounds like Harper's new citizenship booklet needs a footnote.

The President of VANOC, John Furlong, summed up the underlying problem spendidly, if inadvertently, in comments after the court decision: "It's an unhappy day for these girls."

Not girls, Mr. Furlong. Women.