Cons too tough on crime for Black's taste?

First it was David Frum disassociating himself from the likes of Sarah Palin and the Hatriots - the Tea Party Patriots aka teabaggers.

Now it's Lord Black himself, gently castigating Stevie Spiteful and his bully boys for their "Roadmap to Strengthening Public Safety."

It is painful for me to write that with this garrote of a blueprint, the government I generally support is flirting with moral and political catastrophe. My respect for the Prime Minister prevents me from being any more explicit here about the implications of failure to reconsider the government's course on this issue.

The Roadmap is a bad plan to take Canada to a destination it should not wish to reach. [...]

The whole concept of prison should be terminated, except for violent criminals and chronic non-violent recidivists, and replaced by closely supervised pro bono or subsistence-paid work by bonded convicts in the fields of their specialty. Swindlers and embezzlers, hackers and sleazy telemarketers are capable people and they should serve their sentences by contributing honest work to government-insured employers.

Canada would save a billion dollars annually in prison costs and the employers of the penitent-workers would save $2-billion annually, a tremendous shot in the arm to national productivity. Many of the prisons could be recon-figured as assisted housing for the homeless and slum-dwellers. Canada would again be a model of the innovative public policy pursuit of institutionalized decency and social reform.

The principle that the rape of the rights of the least is an assault on the rights of all is attributed to Jesus Christ and is at the core of Judeo-Christian civilization and the rule of law in both common and civil law jurisdictions. And it is not just a tradition; there are several million Canadians in families that have bitter memories of personal or close relatives' encounters with the vagaries of justice.

According to this, Darcy Sheppard's father is not bitter that his son was pilloried while Michael Bryant won't be held accountable for his homicidal actions on the night of August 31, 2009. Too bad. I'm sure he could have done excellent pro bono work, advocating for the rights of cyclists in Ontario.

And. Also. Read fern hill's 'Stupid on Crime' blogpost again. See? There's a scary convergence happening; some of the Cons are catching onto Harper and his bullies tactic of playing to the stupid, authoritarianism-loving base.