Monday Post

Lots to talk about...


James Forcillo was found guilty of shooting a mentally disturbed man who waved around a knife:

A Toronto police officer was found guilty of attempted murder Monday in the shooting death of a troubled teen on an empty streetcar, a verdict the teen's mother called a first step in changing the way police deal with people in crisis.

See-  Forcillo should have taken a page out of the "Watch As Vince Li Eats the Man He Killed" playbook.


Also:

A former junior hockey coach, convicted of molesting several of his players in the 1990s, has been granted day parole with conditions.

That's the Canadian legal system for you.




The accused killer of four people in La Loche, Saskatchewan appeared in court today:

The father of one of the victims in a northern Saskatchewan shooting burned logs at the community cemetery Monday to thaw the ground where his son will be buried.

"He was a good kid," Gerald Moise said as he poured gasoline to ignite a fire that will burn for three days over the grave site.

He remembered his son, Dayne Fontaine, as a 17-year-old who liked to be outdoors in the remote community of La Loche that sits on the edge of a lake and in the heart of the boreal forest.

"He always (went) up north with grandparents hunting and he liked quadding."

Dayne and his 13-year-old brother, Drayden Fontaine, were found dead in a home on Friday. A teacher and an aide were shot and killed shortly after at the high school. Seven other people were wounded.

Moise, who is not Drayden's father, said losing his boy is especially hard as it comes on top of other losses.

"I lost my mother and before I lost my mother, my sister (to) suicide. Now this."

He said he's trying to stay strong for the sake of his two other children.

A teen charged in the shooting stared at the floor for much of his first court appearance Monday.

The tall, thin 17-year-old, wearing an orange jumpsuit, his legs and hands shackled, was brought into a packed courtroom in Meadow Lake — a community about 350 kilometres south of La Loche.

He spoke in a soft voice as he was asked whether he understood he is not to contact anyone involved.

"There's to be no phone calls, no letters, no getting messages to any of these people or their families," said Judge Janet McIvor.

"There's to be no contact at all."

The teen, who can't be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, is to be held in custody until his next court appearance Feb. 22.

He faces four counts of first-degree murder and seven counts of attempted murder.

I'm guessing a "residential school" defense is in the cards.

Whether it applies to him or not is immaterial because...

The Supreme Court of Canada on Friday upheld the principle of differential sentencing for aboriginals in even the most extreme and technical cases, such as the violation of long-term supervision orders.

In a 6-1 decision, the court endorsed the widest possible interpretation of section 718.2(e) of Canada’s Criminal Code, which requires judges to consider reasonable alternatives to imprisonment for all offenders, “with particular attention to the circumstances of aboriginal offenders.”

You have got to be kidding me:

The lead investigator behind the undercover Planned Parenthood videos faces up to 20 years in prison after a Houston grand jury decided on Monday not to charge Planned Parenthood with any wrongdoing – and instead indicted him for offering to purchase human organs from the abortion provider.

Center for Medical Progress lead investigator David Daleiden faces a second-degree felony charge of “tampering with a governmental record,” and a misdemeanor charge for violating the state's “prohibition of the purchase and sale of human organs.”

That is, jurors in the state of Texas are accusing David Daleiden of trying to illegally traffic in aborted babies' body parts.

 
(Sidebar: which he did not buy but Planned Parenthood did sell.)
 
So when police officers lie to catch a gun-runner, that, too, is an indictable offense?

Horse ssshhhhaving cream.



Putting Canada back on the world stage:

Canada plans to sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact next week, but that procedural step doesn't necessarily mean ratifying the controversial agreement is a done deal, the federal government said Monday.

International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland stressed that the government's signature on the 12-country treaty essentially means Canada can keep its spot at the bargaining table.

 

What Miss "Tipping-Point" meant to say is that though the deal was unnecessarily seen as controversial, backing out of it would be stupendously stupid even for Justin "what the hell is hummus, anyway?" Trudeau. His handlers might be able to silence some of the "Justin is an idiot" comments but they could not explain that away.

I keep saying to use the French language version of the national anthem; it's more Catholic:

Liberal MP Mauril Belanger is losing his own singing voice but that's not stopping him from trying — for a second time — to change the English lyrics to O Canada to make the national anthem more gender neutral.

Hey - remember when everyone made a huge deal about that law school no one had to attend?

Two publicly funded Ontario colleges have opened campuses in Saudi Arabia that don't allow women, and the province's minister of post-secondary education says it's up to schools to decide which students to admit.

Colleges and Universities Minister Reza Moridi said decisions on the operation of a campus, including student composition, are up to each college's board of governors.

Whither the outcry?



Nor sleet nor snow:

I thought France had shown them what for:

The Islamic State group has honed the ability to launch global attacks and is set to focus more on Europe following the Paris massacre, the chief of the EU police agency Europol said Monday.

The audacity:

The families say that Hasna Aitboulahcen, a 26-year-old woman, and Tarek Belgacem, a man in his 30s, were not armed when they were “murdered” in separate dramas. 

Aitboulahcen died five days after the November 13 Islamic State terror attacks on Paris, in which 130 people were killed. She was in a hideout in the northern suburb of Saint-Denis when it was stormed by police commandos who poured thousands of rounds of gunfire into the apartment. 

Aitboulahcen died alongside her cousin Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Belgian-Moroccan mastermind behind the Paris attacks, and Chakib Akrouh, another terrorist. But Aitboulahcen’s family believe she was innocent of any wrongdoing and should have been given the chance to give herself up.

And now, an Ecuadoran cop saves a baby sloth:

It's a slow-moving feel-good story.