Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Silly Senators

...make the case for outright abolition of the Upper Chamber:

[Doug] Finley was one of a quartet of Tory senators to lead a Senate inquiry into free speech rights in Canada, rights they felt had come under attack when the speech by controversial American pundit Ann Coulter at the University of Ottawa was cancelled, and again when a woman in Vancouver sued a comedian because she didn't like jokes aimed at her.

Er...no. The Vancouver woman is complaining to the BC Human Rights Tribunal--not suing--after having her glasses smashed and a stream of homophobic comments directed at her and her partner that had nothing to do with the "comedian's" act.

As for the scheduled University of Ottawa Blonde Bigot speech:

"[T]he mob took its cue from the provost," [David] Tkachuk told the Senate. The provost, university vice-president François Houle, sent Coulter a letter cautioning her about Canada's speech laws.

"The letter closed with a line that could have come straight out of the re-education camps of Pol Pot's Cambodia," Tkachuk said.

By "the mob," I assume Tkachuk was referring to the thousand or so would-be attendees that the benighted organizers had thought might fit into a small room, and not the two hundred or so protesters exercising their own freedom of expression outside. Here, for the record, was Provost François Houle's genocidal last comment:

I hope you will enjoy your stay in our beautiful country, city and campus.

Obvious incitement to mob violence. I'm amazed the man hasn't been charged with something.

Keep talking, Senators. I just wish it weren't on my dime.

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