Friday, July 17, 2009

It's not TV

Sometimes you wonder if our opinion of the criminal "justice" system is coloured by television. On TV, people are always getting off on technicalities. But that couldn't be real life, could it?

Today the Supreme Court of Canada threw out a drug conviction against a man. The police pulled over his SUV, he was driving with a suspended license, and when the cop searched his SUV the cop found 35 kg of cocaine.

Now I don't believe random searches are justified in a free society, but this guy was already committing a crime by driving with a suspended sentence.

Apparently I am not Supreme Court material. I'm just surprised that our judges didn't order the police to return his "private property" (a.k.a. the cocaine).

It's not just TV folks. The people in our top court truly are on the loony left, making crazy decisions for what they think are higher motives.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Homeschooling

And people really worry about whether home schoolers will develop enough social skills. Actually, in the sphere of education, this is not one of the biggest worries.

Saturday, July 04, 2009

Obama

I'm not a big fan of the policies of President Obama. However I just read something that said Obama tries very hard to pronounce the names of people and places correctly, even including phonetic spellings in his notes and briefings. I'd like to complement Obama for this. Pronouncing names and places incorrectly is an insult, while taking the time to pronounce correctly is praiseworthy.

Thursday, July 02, 2009

Salaries

The list of salaries of White House staff has been released. No surprise at the top of the list; the Chief of Staff makes the mandated maximum of $172K. But surprisingly the Senior Presidential Speechwriter makes $65K and two others make $45K. There are a couple of other speechwriters who make a bit more, and have "Director" in their title, but frankly this is a pittance considering the kinds of hours these guys work and the overall responsibility.