Kitchener

Good question and well-asked. That's the problem. Because this is somewhere between a wide open question and plausibly answerable with "Most of it is to parachute him," it's not a move that inspires confidence in the process. Of course politics has long been part of such appointments; but rules and traditions like the 2-year wait helped ensure that political considerations were at most necessary conditions, and not sufficient conditions, for judicial appointments. None of which is to deny that Toews could turn out to be a fine judge. Yet the same might be true of any Canadian whose name we drew out of a hat; indeed, a randomly selected Canadian wouldn't likely have a track record of, let's face it, political bombast in describing current justices and the legal system as a whole. Whatever his real virtues are, they will look more like reasons for appointing him in a few years than they look right now.

Any reason to believe this claim?

Good to see that no amount of debunking or requests for actual evidence can shame the dittoheads into rationality. Just jump on in with your LIBRUL BLEADING HART JUDGES!!! theory. No evidence or coherent reasoning required.

Throw your back out with that dodge? And your self-foot-shooting about Syria suddenly down the memory hole, eh? Golly, what story did you read those exact words in? Talk about hypocritical buffoonery.

It's a good decision, from what I can tell. I know a lot of apple farmers who've been incensed about this for a long time, just because of the apple juice situation.

I think you meant to address this to the Bush administration, right? This may be too subtle for you, being obvious and all, but the point is about Bush's hypocrisy. Note how the article -- if you read it -- points out that Olmert has blamed the US as being the ones who oppose Israeli negotiations with Syria. Hence making their current negotiations as good a candidate for "appeasement" as whatever lame-assed analogy Bush was burping out about Obama.

Keep trying... clearly you believe you have something to say... The Israelis are negotiating with the Syrians. Bush went to Israel to snipe at Obama that “Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before." If you think something somewhere in the article states that Israel is not negotiating with Syria, you should consider yourself gloriously free to actually cite it. Or continue making a fool of yourself. Also good, I guess.

I'm sure you think you have some point here. Perhaps by attempting to make it explicit, you would discover whether you really do, or are merely under (what some might call) a "foolish delusion".

Israeli leadership turns out to be anti-Israel appeasers; now negotiating with Syria! I'm sure Bush will be "lowering the boom" on them any day now for being, like, all appeasing and stuff.

You're not crazy, but neither of those things is really the issue here. The process must be one in which we can have confidence, not one which merely happens -- perhaps accidentally -- to put someone intelligent or qualified behind the bench. The more the process of appointing Toews looks like a purely political solution to the problem of where to warehouse a powerful ally who's been holed below the electoral waterline, the more corrosive it is of public confidence in the reliability of the process and the government. At a minimum, the two-year cooling-off period makes judicial positions less likely to be used as quick fixes to such warehousing problems.

Okay. I'm interested in the survey of available Canadian potential appointees that you undertook in reaching this conclusion. Would you mind explaining how you surveyed the field and compared Toews to other people, and what legal expertise you relied on in the process?

And it didn't occur to you that the front and centre mention of "Steve" by "friend" Olmert wasn't a little humorous in the context of your railing about the use of that name? Or, heck, if you couldn't figure that one out, that there was just some other joke involved that you hadn't picked up? The only conceivable interpretation the squirrel on that squeaky little treadmill could crank out was that Shakeyhands is a frickin anti-semite? :lol: Impossible to parody.

Consider you have to listen to yourself, that's quite the allegation. But the police certainly don't think it's dumb. Overwhelmingly they supported the use of the gun registry for precisely the reason I gave. Why do you have such contempt for the opinion of the police? I'm not sure what I'd think if I were standing there having done my job improperly so that we weren't prepared. Probably I'd be nervous and scared, maybe feeling a bit guilty, from being underprepared. It's a good reason to follow the rules, as if not wanting the case to be properly thrown out of court weren't a good enough reason. But why are you asking me such questions when you can't answer the simple one I posed? What part of the judge's respect for the rule of law do you find offensive? Or, putting it another way, how little respect for the law would you prefer to see judges show, in order to satisfy your knee-jerk reactions to misdescribed cases?

As a sidebar, the gun registry was a valuable tool for knowing that there are guns. Too bad for the police that so many "law and order" types hated it. But yes, it is hard for police to know that there aren't guns. It's hard to be certain that there aren't live snakes, for that matter. So I guess they should always kick in doors without knocking! How can they know whether there are guns there? Or do we only get to apply this standard post hoc, when the police have let a genuine scumbag off the hook by not following established standards? That a tough one to think through, I understand. It's only easier for me because I'm not wasting energy noticing the existence of victims. Like the various people I love and respect whose lives have been changed or ended by criminal acts, say. If only I were all about the victims, like the truly pious posters in our midst! Alas, I'm condemned to arguing that one's opinions on the topic should be, like, rationally defensible and based on evidence, not on panicked confirmation biases.

Wilber, meet parody. Parody, Wilber. Shake hands, fellas. Good grief. Well, since this thread has focused on whether the system is broken or fundamentally flawed, and since none of the people who've denied that claim have denied that "it is ineffective in many areas", this all seems to have been a terrible misunderstanding. Yet somehow I can confidently predict more context-free cherry-picked outrage-porn will be linked again and again, as if this establishes something other than the obsessions of their posters. ...and right on time, there it is. Well, what aspect of the judge's clear emphasis on the rule of law and the rights of citizens do you find offensive?

What are these "victims" of which you speak? <Googles> Oh, wow! I had no idea! This changes everything! Screw the rule of law! Judges are bleeding heart liberals, the system is BROKENSES, and due process is for pussies! What, and the criminal justice system is supposed to make sure that this never happens? I had some tenants who turned out to be three-time losers wreck my place once, too. Can't sue them, of course, because they had nothing to take even if I'd won. OMG! TEH JUSTISE SYSTEM IS BROKEN!! It's not an urban myth; it happened just the way I said, to a friend of my cousin's. Buncha folks were talking about it and everything. But never mind. As I said, even if you have the details right, it's impossible to fathom what you're in a tizzy about. Cops have to make sure it's the right place and the warrants are filled out before they kick the door in? Gasp! However will we root out the evildoers?

No, if you're being hysterical, you're just being hysterical. Of course I might have my head up my ass as well. But the sustained failure of Chicken Littlers to make a coherent case on this thread certainly wouldn't show it. But I didn't say that you were hysterical in any event. I didn't recall, and can't be bothered to check, whether you in particular have been raving about lib'rul judges and bleeding hearts. Yet it is to that general approach that FTA's remarks were addressed, hence mine remarks about his as well, hence (whether you had thought this through or not) yours about mine. If you think this latest focus is the Holy Grail that finally proves some general ZOMG Brokin Ju8stice!11!! thesis, you should feel free to argue it. Reckon that's somehow linked to the massive difference in per capita incarceration rates? There's more than one measure of a dysfunctional justice system. Then you don't know what is. Warrants and due process are integral to the rule of law. Not only should this thread have taught you the danger of citing these half-remembered one-off anecdotes as if they were evidence; even if you somehow have all the details and subtleties right, it's just a ghastly mistake to think that insisting on due process is a problem with a justice system.

It sure would, if Bev Oda were being criticized for doing something really, really positive. Since that's not what's happened, though, your comment is absurd.

And he slimed you by suggesting you're a Jew-hater where, exactly? But never mind. If "He dun it furst!" is your big response... well, frankly, nobody will be surprised.

To read what? FTA was not specifically responding to the grow-op report, which has suddenly become the focus of the thread (apparently since it's an example that hasn't been debunked). He seemed rather to be just evincing frustration that no matter how thorough his debunkings and careful his refutations, the Chicken Littlers would always just leap to a new cherry-picked case as bearing out all their preconceptions. Nevertheless, I have looked at the study, and for more than the "few minutes" one might take to skim the Exec Summary without thinking about the actual data and what it means. For example: one might wring one's hands about the fact that these dangerous grow-op houses are also functioning as residences (the exec summary mentions children living in them), and also about the fact that charges are stayed in many cases. But how about putting 2 and 2 together: if these houses are residential, there are likely to be people living in them who are not directly responsible for growing pot -- girlfriends, family, children, etc. Prima facie most adults in residence are likely to be charged; subsequent investigation and testimony will then pare down the numbers to those who can be proved to have run the operations. This seems to be borne out by Table 5.7, for instance, suggesting that women "in residence" are initially overcharged. But paring down the charges to focus on those who are actually running the grow ops is not "broken justice". It's "justice". If you think the UCFV report somehow proves the various hysterical claims that have been made in this thread, though, why don't you attempt to actually argue this in detail?

Nothing like false piety about respect and raising the tone, intermingled with vicious, sneaky smears.

Yeah, working from a sample to draw defeasible but confident conclusions about a population? It's almost like, you know, statistics! Math bad! Justice broken! But wait. Actual alleged examples cited on this thread occurred in Alberta. Is FTA's data and expertise on the Alberta context at least relevant to them, or would you like to insist on yet some further way of dodging the evidence in those cases as well? Riiiight. The problem is FTA's inability to grasp basic facts. If only he were bright enough to cherry-pick a handful of (misdescribed) cases, wet his pants in outrage, and do a hysterical Chicken Little impression. Then he'd be one of the s-m-r-t kids too!

... I mean, You are correct. And it's kinda funny, but mostly sad.

Well, that's a false dilemma. But yes, it's hypocrisy. This is now a clearly established pattern of the Conservatives blocking, limiting, and tightly controlling access to government information that used to be more open. Does anyone remember their pious mouthings about openness and transparency? I hope we all remember it come election time.

If "rightly so", why call it "whining"? In any case: People do get upset about false convictions, and call for those specific injustices to be reversed. What I've never heard is people whining that "the system is broken" on the strength of a few false convictions. At most these cases are taken to illustrate the kind of rare but serious mistakes by police, prosecutors, and judges against which we should be vigilant. Maybe your experience is different, but I don't see "Broken Justice!11!!" threads here premised on false convictions.