bob tarantino

"charged, convicted and sentenced"

The months since July 2007 have been among the busiest of my career, so I've been unfortunately unable to devote the kind of time I'd like to addressing various matters (legal, political and otherwise) on this blog.  In particular, the recent brouhahas over human rights commission complaints being filed against Maclean's and against Ezra Levant and the Western Standard engage free expression issues in which I have a particular interest, so it's been frustrating for me to be silent on the matters, but others have been doing a much better job of covering them then I'd be able to.  I have been, let us say, derelict in my duties as a member of the vast rightwing conspiracy.  Happily, others have been addressing the issues with much more eloquence and attention than I'd have been able to muster, so my voice has hardly been missed.  A couple of weeks ago I did find the time to pen an op-ed piece which the good folks at the National Post were generous enough to publish today.  It can be found online here, and on page A16 of the print edition.

The piece doesn't begin to contain much of what I'd like to say about the matters, but I thought it might provide some useful context for at least part of the discussion.  I don't love the title ("The Free-Speech Myth") which was appended to the op-ed, but I wasn't really able to offer any better suggestions.  Of more concern, there was one paragraph which lost a sentence in the editing process, which I'd like to add back in because the nuance is important - the underlined portion was in the original but missing from the final version:

Canadians have long sought to define the proper limits of speech and expression: The government once banned the tracts of Jehovah's Witnesses, and pulled Witness children who refused to salute the flag not just out of school, but out of the home of their parents. When the Doukhobor religious sect staged events of public nudity to give expression to their rejection of secular authority, the government responded by amending the Criminal Code to add a specific crime carrying an increased jail term.  These days, and for many years now, various mayors of Toronto have happily participated in Pride parades which feature enthusiastic displays of public nudity.

I was trying to highlight the juxtaposition in how we respond to public nudity: it was once considered a threat dire enough to warrant parliamentary attention, but our concerns have sufficiently morphed over the years that leading public figures will happily associate themselves with it.  The point, and hopefully the theme which came through in the column, isn't the normative aspect of the behaviour, but that our responses to the behaviour are in a constant state of reassessment and revision.  Much the same with free expression: what is considered acceptable expression has rather radically changed over the decades, and will likely continue to do so.  This is all a political project, and should be treated as such.  As I wrote, "In short, the objects of our piety may have changed, but the inclination to government oversight of speech and expression isn't terribly different".

The Innocent Man

You know the old one about a conservative being a liberal who's been mugged?  The less-frequently cited corollary is that a liberal is a conservative who has been arrested.  Which was the only lead-in I could think of to the following recommendation: everyone should read John Grisham's The Innocent Man.  Grisham chronicles the true story of a series of simply stunning miscarriages of justice wreaked on the lives of four innocent men arising from a set of crimes in a small Oklahoma town.  The book is both harrowing and incredibly frustrating: frustrating not because of the writing, but because there is virtually no settling of accounts with those who perpetrated the prosecutorial crimes.  The only complaint I have is that Grisham seems unduly enamoured with the least sympathetic of the men who were wrongly convicted and, relatedly, spends comparatively little time on those caught in his wake.  That minor quibble aside, though, I strongly recommend that everyone, not just those with an interest in the criminal justice system, take the time to read the book.

Great Moments in Canadian Sentencing 01.29.08

Reader and buddy Mike H pointed me to this story, which ran while I was out of town last week:

A paroled murderer who stabbed a man during a crackhouse binge has been sentenced to eight years in prison.

Kevin Humphrey, 43, was on parole from a life sentence when he stabbed Richard Kent multiple times with a folding knife and then slit his throat on Oct. 16, 2006 in a crack house near Church and Wellesley Sts.

Months before, despite three breaches of parole, he was paroled again when an expert deemed him manageable in the community.

Humphrey admitted that had his own finger not been in the way of the knife as he cut Kent's throat, he could have killed the man.

Is there some sort of ink the newspapers could develop so that when they use the word "expert" in a story like this, it shimmers and burns on the page in the manner it so obviously should?  Humphrey was convicted of second-degree murder in 1983.  His "life sentence" is, of course, nothing of the sort.  He gets paroled three times and breaches parole each of those three times, then gets paroled again and tries (and very nearly succeeds in his efforts) to kill someone - and gets another kiss from the system.  And, of course, the "expert" remains unidentified and continues on apace, consequence-free.

The nicest touch is when the reporter, with commendable restraint, notes that Humphrey "will serve his new eight-year term concurrent to his life sentence" - as opposed, I guess, to serving it after the expiration of the "life sentence".

"not only was there no harm, there was no foul"

Buried in the Wheels section of today's Toronto Star is an interesting story about Toronto police officers ticketing for an alleged "offence" which simply doesn't exist:

Diamond flicked his headlights at oncoming traffic.

As you would. And as you would, most of the oncoming traffic did slow down.

Now, still assuming, perhaps naively, that slowing traffic down to make the roads safer is the objective of radar (it never works, but that's a story for another day), you'd think the cops would be happy that Diamond was assisting in their cause.

You'd think they'd want everybody flashing their headlights, all the time. Who'd take a chance at speeding then?

But no, stationed at the west end of the bridge were a couple more cruisers, pulling people like Diamond over for warning people about the radar trap.

$110 and no points.

As the writer notes: really, is there nothing more serious going on in this city such that police management thinks it's a worthwhile expenditure of time and money to not only (a) set up a speed-trap, but (b) set up a separate trap for people who tell others that there's a speed-trap?  And then run this sort of garbage through the court system, thereby wasting even more time and money?  Cripes.

On TV 01.17.08

The good folks at Daytime Toronto will be interviewing me about Under Arrest - Canadian Laws You Won't Believe on Thursday, January 17, 2008 at 11am (I understand the show will be re-broadcast the same day at 4pm and 11pm).

Speaking of Under Arrest (which is back in stock at amazon.ca *ahem*), and it's startling (*ahem*) relevance to your daily life, Chapter Two (entitled, rather unimaginatively, "A Gunfight at High Noon? Too Uncivilized") should have been required reading for this guy, charged as he is with 42 counts of promoting and/or being present at an illegal "prize fight".  Charges for illegal prize fighting are fairly rare these days: in my research the most recent reported case I found was from a 1998 mixed martial arts tournament in Ontario.  Among other things, Under Arrest covers the history and law of duelling in Canada, along with prize fights (which used to be prosecuted with a fair bit of vigour), hockey violence and animal fights.  I quote:

Immersed in a world where on-demand savagery is available for download, saturated with violent imagery from boxing matches, bench-clearing brawls on television, movies, mixed martial arts tournaments and the exploits of their peers, perhaps the lifting of the cap on consensual violence has led to its normalization as part of the social fabric.  The assessment of whether that is good or ill, and the inevitable legal response to the problem, is likely to resemble the legal history we have already seen.

Pick up the book to find out what that legal history is.

bookforum

I'm probably a few years behind the curve on this, but if you're looking for something beyond political news from the usual aggregators, check out bookforum.com, which contains links to, hands down, the most informative, insightful and diverse collection of content on the web.  You can thank me later.  Or curse me, depending on how many hours you waste as a result.

10% of nothing is still nothing

Canadian sci-fi author Robert J. Sawyer explains the economics behind those $4.99 hardcovers you've been buying from the big table at the front of Chapters.  Long story short: if you bear personal ill-will towards the author, buy them.

The Deep Funk 12.31.2007

Damn - been a while, eh?  Belatedly, my favourite songs of 2007.  In no particular order.  I had been aiming for ten, but, um, couldn't think of any others.  Andrew Potter, one of the country's brightest commentators, frowns on year-end "best of" lists because it's "like trying to shoehorn the stream of sense-data into the artificial January-to-December format".  Which is correct, and yet terribly lame.  This is about bringing down the house.  Here goes.

• Linkin Park, Bleed It Out - I like hearing Binnington shred his throat into certain polyp territory, but what really puts this over the top is when Shinoda suppresses a laugh at about 0:17 - like he knows just how good this is going to get.

• Rihanna, Umbrella - one day, someone will do an acoustic cover version of this song that will rule the world.  They just need to eliminate the "ella, ella, ella" bit.  Really.

• Kanye West, Stronger - oh!

• White Stripes, You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As Your Told) - not as strong an album as their previous two, but the best band of this decade keeps crafting perfect pop tunes.

• Avril Lavigne, Hot - in a very deep and fundamental way, I cannot stand Avril Lavigne.  Notwithstanding, this song kicks.

• Matchbox 20 (or however they're spelling their name this year), How Far We've Come - the video also helpfully (if inexplicably) functions as a Democratic Party ad.

• Feist, 1,2,3,4 - yes, the most annoying song of the year, but, hey, you try writing one this good 

• Finger Eleven, Paralyzer - does anyone else remember when this band was called Rainbow Butt Monkeys? Can anyone tell what song they pinched the riff from?