Scotty

If you are a fascist or have a history of being a fascist you would not be welcome in the Tory party. But the NDP has never had any particular inclination to boot out communists or those with communist beliefs. In fact, the guy they ran in Gatineau who defeated Lawrence Cannon previously ran under the Communist banner. And no one in the NDP finds that to be an issue.

Even if crime were falling, and there really isn't any evidence of that, given Stats Canada's victims survey, justice remains a concept most Canadians are attached to. If someone hurts someone we want them to be sufficiently punished. You seem to feel, well, even if people get away with a slap on the wrist, hey, there's less crime! Not good enough!

You are, in fact, advocating for the hug-a-thug-system implemented a generation ago which caused crime to skyrocket, all while Corrections Canada lied about the recidivism rate.

The system was changed a generation ago to be softer, kinder, and gentler. The result was a tripling of violent crime. Did you get a report on that? I'm thinking probably not. The wealthy don't give a crap about crime. The wealthy have limousines and door guards and alarms. It's the people stuck taking buses and walking on streets and doing their own errands who worry.

The ideal of 'impartial' is good, but it refers to impartial with regard to guilt or innocence, not with regard to justice or injustice. Unfortunately, the way our system works, impartiality to justice - or its lack - is a requirement, as well.

Scientific information? Criminology, ie, the psychology of crime, is a soft science, and at best, makes educated guesses. We have too much fraud in Canada. Why? Because the police don't invest much effort into combating it. Why? Because they regard it as a waste of time given the generally lax sentences imposed by courts. Yet these people ruin lives, and if caught, generally wind up with a short sentence and a small fine. I was reading up on ID theft today. A number of individuals caught committing ID theft and fraud have been sentenced in the US to as much as 20 years in prison. To my knowledge, no one in Canada has ever gone to prison for ID theft. Embezzle a million bucks in Canada and you'll probably get, at most, a few months in jail - and out early on parole.

Justice stands on its own without regard to emotions or laws. A guy kills a priest and steels a candelabra, runs outside and is hit by lightning. That's justice for you. Doesn't even need humans. What would have been justice for Osama bin Laden? Take him up in a helicopter to the same height as the world trade centre, set him on fire, and push him out the door. Barbaric? Perhaps, but imho, quite just. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth set out our society's understanding of justice long ago. And while we've grown and now take a lot of things into consideration, when it comes to the central idea of what constitutes justice, we still believe the punishment should fit the crime. And that has little or nothing to do with who pronounces sentence, or even if it's done legally. If Paul Bernardo, instead of being caught by the police, was caught by the father of one of his victims, and hanged, who would say that was an injustice?

Which does not detract from what I said. You can't teach 'justice'. Justice is a concept and it's based on society's feelings during a given point in time. Ie, what was considered 'just' a century ago likely would not be now. There is no reason to suggest a judge has a better concept of justice than I do.

The mandatory life sentence was the trade-off the Liberals gave for eliminating the death penalty. There was a lot of opposition to getting rid of the noose and a lot of people dwelling on murderers who were released early after serving only a few years of a short sentence. That's why we get mandatory life and mandatory minimums that have to be served.

Most of the times when I've seen this commented upon it turns out that it isn't true. There are a variety of factors in play, including previous history, academic and job record, and likelihood to re-offend. Skin colour has a tendency, statistically, to put one further away from the judicial ideal of a responsible, family oriented, stable working person who can be relied on to see the error of his or her ways.

That's an elitist belief. What is justice? In some societies and cultures, justice is cutting off the hand of the criminal, or caning them, or throwing them into a dark hellhole for twenty years. The definition of justice is a product of the society and culture in which it takes place. So no individual has a better idea of what constitutes justice than the society as a whole. And judges, let's face facts, have no training in 'justice'. They're trained in legalistic argument, interpretations and statutes, and precedent. It's all rote. Nowhere does justice even come into consideration. The law says this, precedent says that. Use the slide-rule, come out with the punishment, and on to the next case.

The poor get representation. The middle class have to bankrupt themselves paying for it, whether they're guilty or innocent.

Parliament in this case is a reflection of the will of the people. We've all been reading the crime stories, following the court cases, observing the sentences given out most of our lives, and many of us have not approved of the overall level of severity, especially when you take lax parole laws into consideration. Lax laws lead to more crime. Fraud is commonplace now among several professions because the laws are so slack the police don't bother even trying to enforce them. It isn't just about violence, it's about fraudsters, it's about burglars and car thieves with dozens of convictions, it's about the $57 billion in crime costs every year, and a citizenry which is, more and more often, not even bothering to report crime because of the ineptitude of the system they see as fundamentally incapable of substantially punishing the person who victimized them.

Well, yes, but the context, as I understand it from news reports, is the pilot made them get off the plane and wouldn't give a reason. They were re-secreened, at his insistence, found to be fine, but the pilot still wouldn't let them back on the plane. The guy from the airline tried to argue with him but couldn't get him to change his mind or even give a reason, so the plane left without the two muslims. Isn't that basically the story here?

How far back to you want to go? Even in the Napoleanic days life for the average Frenchman was better than the average Englishman. The Catholic Church had its moments, but was it really that much worse in France than the Church of England? The British people, except those at the top, had little power over life and government, and faced cruel laws and an uncaring government. Dickensonion England was not exactly a paradise on earth. Poverty abounded. Hell, it wasn't until practically the twentieth century that the Royal Navy - which impressed civilians into service - gave up flogging as a disciplinary tool. The British army used it too. And, of course, punishments for civilians for the slightest misstep were cruel. The upper classes didn't much care what happened to the lower classes - witness the Irish potato famine, where Irishmen were literally dying in the streets while landowners shipped food out of Ireland.

Don't a lot of Jews dress pretty strangely too?

So if the pilot decided not to let any black people fly on his plane, that wouldn't be a violation of civil rights either, right? Black people can be dangerous you know, and he'd just be looking out for safety.

My thinking is it's because they think they're better than others. There's always been a kind of sneering condescension from the French, be it here or in Europe, an assumption they're more civilized and forward thinking than those money-obsessed Anglos. Actually, to be honest, at least in Europe, they're partially right. For most of Europe's history the French actually were more socially and culturally advanced, more egalitarian than the English. But that doesn't carry through to Quebec. The French there tend to be, no pun intended, provincial in their outlook, very inward looking and self-admiring. They're obsessed with culture and language, and feel a very nationalistic sense of superiority over the rest of us. It's galling (no pun intended) to them that les anglos are the ones in charge, due to our numbers. You saw this last election, when Quebecers reacted with such illogical outrage at the cutting of a few arts grants. "The anglos are cultural barbarians! We can't be ruled by them!"

I think much of crime is driven by drugs, and the need to feed the habit, but there exists and has always existed a certain personality type which simply finds it easier to profit off the work of others than to engage in work themselves. You are not going to persuade them to do something else just by lecturing them. These are often people who dropped out of school because they were too lazy or disinclined to attend, and have no job skills and little desire to learn any. They want to party and enjoy life and do drugs, and they want society to pay for it. I posted government statistics last month regarding the cost of crime to Canadians, and I believe it was $57 billion per year excluding the costs of the judicial, police, and prison systems. And as people are fond of saying about health care - there is only one pocket. If spending an extra few billion on prisons saves us billions more in crime then it's well worth it simply from an economic perspective.

I realize you meant that in a jeering way but it's actually true. The vast majority of English language information available to the casual researcher - ie, on the internet - will be from the US. And that's a large part of why people use them. Canadian statistics, when available, are often unreliable. For example, the police reported crime rate is falling, but the victim reported crime rate is not. The recidivism rate cited by Canada Corrections is 10% (using a very narrow interpretation), but in reality is more like 37%. I've seen very little from the British or Irish or Australians on their experiences with judicial systems.

Longer sentences are not designed to 'reform' prisoners. They are designed to keep criminals off the street for longer periods of time, especially violent and repeat offenders. And yes, it will cost more, and I think everyone is aware of that. So? As to the US. People need to stop using them as a comparison. The socioeconomic circumstances there which continue to push crime are not active here, or active to a far lesser extent.

The exact moment when we knew “international law” had little to say about the war against terrorism came on November 3, 2002. That was the day an American Predator drone, flying high above the Yemeni outback 100 miles east of Sanaa, fired a Hellfire missile into a car containing al-Qaeda’s local commander, Abu Ali al-Harithi, and five jihadi comrades. Photos of the scene show a black hole in the ground where the car once stood — a suitable metaphor for the once-fashionable notion that “international law” trumps a nation’s right to defend itself. Bin laden's killing shows us the irrelevancy of international law

No, this has been handled abominably by the Obama administration. They should have figured out their message and then said it. Why are they continuing to change things? First there was a forty minute firefight, then not. Then Bin Laden was armed, then he wasn't. His wife died because he hid behind her, except now she didn't. Now we learn only one guy in the compound was armed and he was killed very early on. All of these shifts and changes are amateur hour. Why even tell us anything other than he was killed? And since they own the news, why not hold to the long firefight, or at least not tell us that no one was armed? It makes them look bad in many parts of the world. Personally, I don't care how bin laden died, but it is bad horribly bad communications. There’s no way around it: Barack Obama has taken the greatest public relations triumph of his presidency and ruined it. Not completely ruined it, no: the take-out of Osama bin Laden, America’s public enemy number one is too big an achievement to be completely undone by the president’s ham-handed handling of the aftermath. But he’s done an admirable job of taking the shine off of one of his nation’s most gloried moments by turning Americans’ attention from celebrating together to arguing over a couple of photographs and whether or not a crack team of Navy SEALs were merciful enough in their treatment of one of history’s most notorious mass murderers. Obama bungles his bin laden opportunity

I'm waiting for charges under the police act for falsifying their official reports. That's a firing offense no matter what the court finds about perjury.

I don't think the candidate had anything to do with that. That would be the local riding volunteers basically approaching anyone who would say yes. And why not sign? I would have. If someone wants to run, more power to them. Besides, it was the NDP, so no one would have though it very important to check credentials. It's not like she had the slightest chance of winning, after all!