Abuse of power and authority in Ottawa.

Zoom at knitnut writes about this from a blogger's perspective, one who has been covering gratuitous police brutality in Ottawa for a while.

However, when I read the original news story something else emerged, as malign as unwarranted and illegal cop violence but symptomatic of a specific authoritarianism.

An Ottawa police officer who hit a 15-year-old boy in the head several times during an arrest in a darkened Rockcliffe Park Public School yard has been cleared of misconduct after a review concluded the constable used “accepted” standards for use of force. [...]

While the probe couldn’t figure out how many times McFadden hit the boy, it is known that the officer broke his left hand — the hand he used to strike the boy in the head.

The trouble began just before 10:30 on the night in question. There had been complaints about mischief at the school yard weeks earlier, so Ottawa police set up a four-officer surveillance team.

The team included two plainclothes officers, one of whom wore shorts and a backwards ballcap, a sergeant, and an officer positioned inside the school, which is known for educating the children of diplomats and politicians, including those of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. [my italics]

And there you have it. Just as the multiple disruptions of civil rights during the G-20 were the required trappings of Contempt Party leader's MASSIVE *security* show, so must this particular surveillance "incident" exonerate police officers of charges that unwarranted and brutal force was deployed. The conclusions of the Review Board were predictable, as with the official refusal by Toronto Police to investigate cops' criminal actions during the G20.

SHithead and his Con jobs found in the RCMP and now in municipal police forces their most compliant and eager bullies.

Here's a worthy challenge, NDP & LPC! (update)

How about joining forces to investigate whether this Con tactic is legal in Canada?

At doors I canvassed I kept hearing certain stories about how I spent too much time in Africa, or that my voting presence in the House wasn’t too impressive. When I informed them that I only spent one week a year on that continent (Sudan), and that I take it on my holiday time over New Years and on my own dime, I could sense the hesitation in their voice. “Oh … that’s not what we heard when the Conservatives phoned us last night.” Something that hadn’t been an issue heretofore was suddenly looming large in the final days. It was frustrating, but I didn’t know who to talk to. It was only when the election was over that a good Conservative friend informed me that they had actually been utilizing a central office for phone calls and that none of them emanated from London itself. They had poured big money from afar into influencing my riding. What I had thought to be a local campaign had suddenly taken on national dimensions.

I should have figured it out earlier. While the opponents from the other parties were front and centre in the campaign, the Conservative candidate had been AWOL, appearing at only one televised debate in the entire five weeks. Instead, the Conservatives opted for phone calls and signs – no replacement for flesh and blood candidates, but they were looking to win from a distance.

From here.

There were also documented calls to voters in specific ridings, deliberately creating the impression they came from Elections Canada, telling people that locations of polls had been changed when in reality they had ^NOT.

Thus does democracy crumble. Investigating and bringing criminal charges requires a united front, as well as a well-funded legal commando strike force.

If the Contempt Party financed these dirty tricks, they should be held accountable. After all, aren't they allegedly the *Tough on Crime* party?

Update: The Waterloo Region Record, which covered the attempt by Con staffer Michael Sona to disrupt a legitimate special polling station in mid-April, has more about the robo-calls.

Tom Deligiannis is a political science instructor who lives in Guelph but teaches at the University of Western Ontario in London. He received an automated call early Monday morning.

“I was skeptical at first because I follow elections very closely. And it’s highly unlikely Elections Canada would call the day of the election to make a change like that,” he said. “I was pretty upset by it all, actually. It seems to be a blatant attempt to manipulate the vote in some way.”

Deligiannis said he filed a complaint with Elections Canada. Deligiannis said he would never fall for such a tactic, but others, like his 70-year-old mother who moved to Canada from Greece, just might.

“The message has the potential to sound legitimate to some people, at least on the face of it. There is a reason it’s done,” Deligiannis said of the tactic. “It can confuse elderly citizens or new Canadians who maybe aren’t familiar with Canada’s democratic process.”

The penalty for being found guilty of such illegal actions is a maximum fine of $1000. That's not going to hurt the Contempt Party much. They probably spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on these dirty tricks, across Canada, in target ridings which evades the scrutiny of Elections Canada, since that money is likely off their books. The companies who provided the service are based in the US and they won't tell anyone who paid the Cons' bills.

Harper got his majority; his ReformaTories are laughing all the way to the bank, where they'll cash in the rewards the tar sands industry will provide to them. *Ethical Oil*, anyone?

Tough on Crime

Unless you're a cop.

An Alberta RCMP officer who admitted he beat a prisoner but said he was stressed out over the murder of four Mounties has avoided jail.

Const. Desmond Sandboe has been given a six-month conditional sentence.

Three months of that will be house arrest followed by three months under a curfew.

The beating occurred four years after the murder of the Mounties.

Such frail flowers our cops are.

Con blue sweater has officially jumped the shark. (Update)

Too much of a very baaad thing, I'd say.

And doesn't Fuzzy Fantino look absolutely overjoyed in this photo op?

After the by-election results were confirmed, k'in - a loyal reader and clever commenter - observed at Bread'n'Roses:

Is there room in the Con party for two dictators? I just can't see Fantino sitting down and shutting up and hiding out in the box where Steve keeps Cheryl Gallant. He doesn't take orders, and Steve doesn't tolerate insubordination. Plus the Cons have become scarier with this new addition. Even Blatchford (!!) doesn't support Fantino. Hopefully this much touted breakthrough in the GTA will backfire. Two fascists, three (Harris) stooges, and a bunch of refoooorm party leftovers. That's your "new Canadian government" folks!

Expect more of the Con 'Stupid On Crime' blather, with extra-super authoritarianism.

Update: Scott Feschuk has uncovered young Julian's tough-guy letters to Santa, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny.

This is rich

An adulterer smears journalists in defense of a former colleague arrested for speeding, drunk driving, and drug possession.

This calls for action, Canadians!

A few days ago, our friend Bina wrote a love letter to Dan Savage.

Dan challenged Canadians to pay more attention to Vic Toews.

Toews has described gay marriage ceremonies as satanic "Black Masses," and insisted that adding gays and lesbians to existing Canadian civil rights statutes would bring the "jackboot of fascism [down] on the necks of our people."

You know where this is going, right?

It turned out that Toews—who once warned that gay marriage could lead to polygamy—was cheating on his wife of 25 years. After getting a much younger woman pregnant, Toews wound up getting divorced. Another marriage destroyed not by gays stomping around in fabulous jackboots, but by yet another straight "Christian" bigot slamming his dick into someone who isn't his wife.

Toews's affair became public two years ago, but the scandal didn't destroy him—he became minister of public safety this January—because the Canadian press sniffed that Toews's affair and divorce were private. Excuse me, Canadian- press pansies, but a politician who scares up votes attacking the private lives of others, a politician who insists that other people are out to destroy his marriage, can't be allowed to hide behind "my private business!" when it turns out that the only threat to the politician's marriage was the politician's own greasy cock.

Dan winds up with this:

Toews is pronounced "taves," and it seems to me that it should be a word for something nasty. Get on it, Canada.

Hmmm. Should the word be a noun, like Santorum? Or maybe a verb: 'to toews: v. trans., to defend the indefensible, preferably with smear tactics, from a safe ReformaTory seat'.

There are some good suggestions at Bina's. As Dan said, let's get on it.

BONUS: Read the excellent comments here.

Out of the mouths of blabbing rightwing idiots.

"We need an election to get rid of most of the opposition, non party status for the libs would be nice." As Canadian Cynic: The unbearable inconvenience of dissenting viewpoints and Sister Sage - Oh my, Mary T, Are You Lobbying for a ….Totalitarian Regime? - point out, that perspective is likely at the heart of the ReformaTory agenda. Eliminationism Nation - wipe out all opposition.

And about that "tough on crime" propaganda that the Con jobs are so fundamentally fond of promoting: when will the RCMP arrest the Prime Suspect Minister Harper for his illegal machinations and complicity in torture?

The pic? Not from last evening's Best/Worst Dressed at the Oscars©™.

Where's the praise from tough-on-crime types?

You'd think that a phalanx of fundamentalist religious zealots and tough-on-crime attention mongers politicians would rush to publicly applaud the actions of this mother.

An Ohio woman who asked that police be called after she caught her 6-year-old daughter shoplifting a package of stickers said Wednesday that she was just trying to teach the girl a lesson early in life.

Diane Lyons said she doesn't believe she overreacted when she discovered the girl, Shiane, had taken the $3.11 package of stickers used to make temporary tattoos. Lyons' 10-year-old daughter told her about the theft.

Chief Ronald Yeager of the Carrollton Police Department in eastern Ohio arrived at the Discount Drug Mart Dec. 15 and took the girl to the police station in his cruiser [...]

Perhaps the awkward fact that the mom asked about a $30. reward for turning in a shoplifter and that she doesn't belong to any visible minority groups rightwingers enjoy trashing, just about dampened any good spin somebody might get from flogging this "news" item.

Update: On the topic of different parenting styles, Andrew Sullivan reminds us of what has been said about $arah in that regard, by Levi Johnston. Wonder if he'll have to wait for Bristol to get away from her mother's control before he gets a chance to see his son again?

It Ain't Over

Antonia Zerbisias calls him dogged. He certainly is.

In an update to his post about failing to meet 'appropriate criteria' for wanting the judge's reasons for convicted rapist Fernando Manuel Alves's no-jail sentence, Dr. Dawg writes:

UPDATE: (October 6) Reader and lawyer "truewest" suggests that I press on. Accordingly, I have this morning written back to Judge Rideout to ask what the "appropriate criteria" are for access to his Reasons for Sentence. Stay tuned.

Secret justice is outrageous. The public must know why, especially in the current CONservative atmosphere of 'tough on crime', a rapist serves NO time in prison for a brutal crime.

This needs to get political and media attention. Please, if you are a BC resident, contact your MPP to alert her or him to the situation and to ask what can be done.

Meanwhile, go read an update from the victim at meanoldmommy. Heart-wrenching testimony from a very brave broad.

PS. Where are the Conservatives on this?