June 28, 2004
Why it took ten weeks to charge a confessed jewel thief
When B.C. MP Svend Robinson finally got charged last week for stealing a fancy ring last April 9, e-mail letters poured in to the Citizens Centre expressing satisfaction and surprise.
Odd how it surprises people that a confessed jewel thief was charged with theft, but in this case it does.
As we all know, Robinson represents a special national constituency favored by the courts. Judges are now privately lectured and sensitized by government-funded gay organizations. Judges and gay litigants have even partied together.
We also know the decision whether to charge Robinson for his video-taped and confessed crime was handed to a "special prosecutor" for unexplained "political reasons."
What's political or special about a jewel heist? Seems pretty straightforward.
We watched at Robinson's press conference how he pleaded several special excuses--"severe stress," "emotional pain," and "inner turmoil." None of which are supposed to matter to a criminal prosecutor, yet apparently did.
Sceptics also noticed how the media immediately adopted Robinson's own phrase that he had "pocketed" the ring. In other robbery stories newspapers don't say someone "pocketed" the contents of the cash register. But in this case, even though it was grand larceny, the verb "to steal" sounded harsh and unnecessary.
All of this tip-toeing and foot-dragging suggested to a great many people that officials feared political repercussions from Svend's special constituency, particularly in Vancouver.
There is a reason it took 10 weeks to conclude the obvious.
What gives Svend his aura of untouchability is that he belongs to the Court Party. That gives him special status. What was being decided here was whether his membership in the Court Party exempts him from criminal prosecution.
The "court party" is not formally a party, but acts like one. Since 1982, it has transferred ultimate political power from our elected legislatures to our appointed judges, using the new Charter of Rights.
The usual term for this is "power grab."
The Court Party was so named by Calgary academics Ted Morton and Rainer Knopff in their eye-opening book The Charter Revolution and the Court Party (Broadview Press, customerservice@broadviewpress.com).
It is a huge network of judges, lawyers and bar associations, left-wing academics and law reform commissions, turf-building justice bureaucrats and human rights commissions. All these people share a certain general mind-set, and are paid by you (the taxpayer) to cash in on the Charter of Rights.
They in turn channel hundreds of millions more of your tax dollars to court cases brought against the government by "equality-seeking" groups for ethnic minorities, aboriginals, language minorities, social engineers, gays and feminists.
All these groups claim to want "equality," but what they really want is privilege. And in case after case they get it.
The real aim of the Court Party is to remove control of public policy from Parliament (that is, you and me), and give it to themselves.
Svend Robinson is a senior statesman of the Court Party. He has spent his whole life waving placards for gay rights, chaining himself to trees, assaulting elderly anti-abortion protesters on Parliament Hill, helping people kill themselves, fighting to reduce the legal age of anal sex to 14, and loudly branding anyone who disagrees with him a homophobic hate monger.
Through it all he has been extolled as a champion of human rights.
That's why so many people were half-expecting he'd never be charged, and why they still expect he'll come out ahead. Especially under a Martin-led government depending for survival on the NDP. Heck, why put him in prison? As Ric Dolphin suggests in last week's Western Standard, why not make him Governor General?
If this seems to you an absurd impossibility, you don't understand the power of the Court Party.
- Link Byfield
Link Byfield is chairman of the Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy
Why it took ten weeks to charge a confessed jewel thief
When B.C. MP Svend Robinson finally got charged last week for stealing a fancy ring last April 9, e-mail letters poured in to the Citizens Centre expressing satisfaction and surprise.
Odd how it surprises people that a confessed jewel thief was charged with theft, but in this case it does.
As we all know, Robinson represents a special national constituency favored by the courts. Judges are now privately lectured and sensitized by government-funded gay organizations. Judges and gay litigants have even partied together.
We also know the decision whether to charge Robinson for his video-taped and confessed crime was handed to a "special prosecutor" for unexplained "political reasons."
What's political or special about a jewel heist? Seems pretty straightforward.
We watched at Robinson's press conference how he pleaded several special excuses--"severe stress," "emotional pain," and "inner turmoil." None of which are supposed to matter to a criminal prosecutor, yet apparently did.
Sceptics also noticed how the media immediately adopted Robinson's own phrase that he had "pocketed" the ring. In other robbery stories newspapers don't say someone "pocketed" the contents of the cash register. But in this case, even though it was grand larceny, the verb "to steal" sounded harsh and unnecessary.
All of this tip-toeing and foot-dragging suggested to a great many people that officials feared political repercussions from Svend's special constituency, particularly in Vancouver.
There is a reason it took 10 weeks to conclude the obvious.
What gives Svend his aura of untouchability is that he belongs to the Court Party. That gives him special status. What was being decided here was whether his membership in the Court Party exempts him from criminal prosecution.
The "court party" is not formally a party, but acts like one. Since 1982, it has transferred ultimate political power from our elected legislatures to our appointed judges, using the new Charter of Rights.
The usual term for this is "power grab."
The Court Party was so named by Calgary academics Ted Morton and Rainer Knopff in their eye-opening book The Charter Revolution and the Court Party (Broadview Press, customerservice@broadviewpress.com).
It is a huge network of judges, lawyers and bar associations, left-wing academics and law reform commissions, turf-building justice bureaucrats and human rights commissions. All these people share a certain general mind-set, and are paid by you (the taxpayer) to cash in on the Charter of Rights.
They in turn channel hundreds of millions more of your tax dollars to court cases brought against the government by "equality-seeking" groups for ethnic minorities, aboriginals, language minorities, social engineers, gays and feminists.
All these groups claim to want "equality," but what they really want is privilege. And in case after case they get it.
The real aim of the Court Party is to remove control of public policy from Parliament (that is, you and me), and give it to themselves.
Svend Robinson is a senior statesman of the Court Party. He has spent his whole life waving placards for gay rights, chaining himself to trees, assaulting elderly anti-abortion protesters on Parliament Hill, helping people kill themselves, fighting to reduce the legal age of anal sex to 14, and loudly branding anyone who disagrees with him a homophobic hate monger.
Through it all he has been extolled as a champion of human rights.
That's why so many people were half-expecting he'd never be charged, and why they still expect he'll come out ahead. Especially under a Martin-led government depending for survival on the NDP. Heck, why put him in prison? As Ric Dolphin suggests in last week's Western Standard, why not make him Governor General?
If this seems to you an absurd impossibility, you don't understand the power of the Court Party.
- Link Byfield
Link Byfield is chairman of the Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy
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