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Saturday, April 05, 2008
Public Office As A Shield For Villainy
Apologies for the long absence, Gentle Reader. Your Curmudgeon has been coping with an assortment of trials you need not hear about. Your Curmudgeon's thanks go to Aaron, Akaky, Colonel Bunny, Leonidas, and Fetiche for keeping the lights on while he was diverted from blogging. (Yes, yes, that Fran person thanks them, too.)
Courtesy of Aurora at The Midnight Sun comes this appalling story about politically elevated pedophiles:
In 1999, an international investigation of child pornographers and paedophiles run by Britain’s National Criminal Intelligence Service, code named Operation Ore, resulted in 7,250 suspects being identified in the United Kingdom alone. Some 1850 people were criminally charged in the case and there were 1451 convictions. Almost 500 people were interviewed “under caution” by police, meaning they were suspects. Some 900 individuals remain under investigation. In early 2003, British police began to close in on some top suspects in the Operation Ore investigation, including senior members of Blair’s government. However, Blair issued a D-Notice, resulting in a gag order on the press from publishing any details of the investigation. Blair cited the impending war in Iraq as a reason for the D-Notice. Police also discovered links between British Labour government paedophile suspects and the trafficking of children for purposes of prostitution from Belgium and Portugal (including young boys from the Casa Pia orphanage in Portugal).
Simultaneously, Kathy Shaidle brings us this article about an unusual form of zeal at the Canadian Human Rights Commission:
Next time someone threatens to “move to Canada” over real or imagined Patriot Act overreach, present him with this scenario:Having settled into his new Ottawa digs, your expatriate pal is reading his morning paper when a familiar name leaps off the newsprint: his own.
Turns out Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) investigators were trolling your friend’s neighborhood for unprotected wireless internet connections, and leeched onto his.
Why? So they could post racist comments under assumed names on “neo-Nazi hate sites,” then charge the site’s owners with … publishing hate speech.
That’s how your innocent friend’s name and address got read aloud — then hastily broadcast by Blackberrying bloggers and journalists — in open court, as evidence in one of the CHRC’s most widely publicized cases.
So now your left-wing expatriate friend is widely suspected of being either a neo-Nazi racist or part of a secret government entrapment scheme.
His phone starts ringing. It won’t stop for quite some time.
Kind of a buzzkill after all those (highly exaggerated) reports about “gay marriage” and “legalized pot” up here in the Great White North, eh?
On March 25 there were gasps in an Ottawa hearing room when testimony during Warman vs. Lemire revealed that just such Soviet-flavored tactics were being used during CHRC “hate speech” investigations.
Has it ever been clearer that the powerful are at best no more trustworthy than we private citizens?
The pursuit of power, in your Curmudgeon's view, automatically makes the pursuer morally suspect. Why does he seek the means to impose his opinions on others by force? What lacuna in his conscience makes him think himself qualified for such a privilege? The Eliot Spitzers of the world are always unpleasant, but more and worse than that. with staggering frequency they've been discovered to be vile beyond words.
Is there more than one causal connection here?
Your Curmudgeon thinks so. One of the secondary functions of political power is defensive. The ability to bribe others from the public treasury, or intimidate them with the police powers of the State, can be used in defense of one's own perquisites...including the "perquisite" of violating the laws to which private persons are held by force of law. Enough miscreants have been found among American politicians to suggest that this must occur to some of them before gaining high office.
There isn't much more to say about this, beyond what the esteemed Walter Williams suggested in 1992, when he advised Americans to vote out every incumbent executive and legislator in the land: "Every toilet needs a flushing, now and then." What the Canadians and the British have learned about their "statesmen" should have them seriously contemplating that suggestion. Given what We the People have glimpsed in those toilets when the lid has been lifted even a trifle, such a flushing is long overdue here as well.
Comments
The problem with that particular solution is that, of course, you need to be mindful of where the waste is going to go when you flush.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 04/05/2008 at 08:26 PMWell now, Mr. Curmudgeon, I too have thought long and hard on this.
My scholarly take on this is that if you use political office as a latrine, you are gonna get what you give.
The resulting smell is what keeps fellas like you and me out of politics - when what is actually needed is for guys like us to participate and get involved. Equating politicians with child molestors - and having that comparison fly - should tell us all that we need to get dirty and clean up the outhouse.
As it stands now only complete chits will get involved in the sport, and we are reaping the… benefits (?) of their involvement.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 04/05/2008 at 11:43 PMEeeep!
Linked.
Posted by Foxfier on 04/05/2008 at 11:56 PM
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