Mid-Week Post

Your mid-train-of-thought...



Under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (penned by Pierre Trudeau), a criminal is entitled to parole because not doing so is cruel and unusual punishment:

Notorious killer Paul Bernardo is scheduled for a day-parole hearing next March.

Oh, dear...

Patricia Sorbara was Wynne’s deputy chief of staff until she left the public payroll to lead the Liberals’ 2018 re-election campaign in September. Gerry Lougheed is a party potentate in Sudbury, operator of a chain of funeral homes and a member of the police services board. The Ontario Provincial Police have charged them both with bribery under the province’s Election Act.

And:

Former Liberal organizer Jacques Corriveau has been found guilty on three fraud-related charges in connection with the federal sponsorship program.

(Sidebar: this was the scandal that gave Canada the Harper government. How soon the electorate forgets.)



It's like the Liberals have this culture of corruption, greed and favouritism:

Former Ontario Provincial Police Commissioner Gwen Boniface, for instance, was praised in the release from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office as “bringing justice and equity to a wide range of issues and having a profound impact on women in policing.”

Oddly, nothing was said about her wretched handling of the early days of the native occupation in the small Ontario town of Caledonia – and it was those early days that set the tone for the abandonment of the rule of law which followed – and her sudden resignation and flight to Ireland for a new job.

 
Barely a week before the Americans hold their noses and people have forgotten some rather salient points about one of the candidates:

In May 1975, at the very start of her legal career, Hillary volunteered to defend child rapist Thomas Alfred Taylor, but only after guaranteeing herself a “win” by working closely on the case with the judge and his son, who happened to be early public supporters and donors for Bill Clinton’s congressional bid. ...

More recently, Hillary and her spokespeople have insisted she was “court-appointed,” implying that she was required to accept the case, and Gibson has publicly backed-up Hillary’s claim that she tried to get out of the appointment, adding that Hillary shouldn’t be criticized for representing this client to the best of her ability.

Significant questions exist on all of Hillary’s explanations. If Hillary’s initial version is true and the prosecutor asked Hillary to accept the case as a favor, this implies Hillary was never under any judicial order or even direct pressure to take the case. If Hillary’s autobiography version is true, then even if the prosecutor had recommended that the judge “appoint” her, any attorney knows that while it may feel awkward to annoy a judge by refusing, she was perfectly free to refuse the appointment because she was not a public defender.

Whether or not Hillary was “court-appointed,” it was still fully her decision to voluntarily accept the case knowing the savagely beaten and raped victim was a young girl. This decision goes against Hillary’s proclamations of being a champion for women and defender of children.

Newly discovered facts suggest Hillary took this case knowing that she had three allies to assist her: the prosecutor, Judge Cummings, and the judge’s son, all of whom were Democrats pushing a liberal agenda of “rehabilitation, not punishment” for criminals. Cummings and his son, Gordon Cummings, had become early, public supporters and donors of Bill Clinton’s fledgling congressional campaign in 1974, especially supportive of early release and work release for prisoners, policies Bill Clinton promoted in his 1976 run for Arkansas attorney general after losing his 1974 bid for Congress. ...

Hillary then challenged her client Taylor’s guilt by blaming sixth-grader Kathy for her own rape. Hillary Rodham personally, coldly interrogated Kathy, leaving the young girl wondering why “this woman lawyer doesn’t like me at all.”

Hillary required Kathy to take a lie detector test, then argued Kathy had “failed” because Kathy’s test showed lack of truthfulness on one question: this girl, a virgin at the time of the rape, failed to accurately answer whether “full penetration” had occurred.

Hillary then submitted an affidavit to the court with a motion to force Kathy to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, manufacturing lie after lie including accusing Kathy of exaggerating, seeking out older men like Thomas (then age 41), previously accusing a person of attacking her, fantasizing and romanticizing sexual encounters like this, and being prone to all of this because she came from a “disorganized family” (that is, she was being raised by a single mom). ...

In “Living History” she says she “obtained expert testimony from an eminent scientist from New York, who cast doubt on the evidentiary value of the blood and semen[.]” To Reed she said, “I happened to be going to New York and I took the underpants with me. I got a special court order. And I went to Brooklyn, where this man whose name I now cannot remember who had shared in the Nobel Prize for his work the Rh factor” gave her an appointment to discuss her evidence.

So, as she tells it, Clinton showed up at the scientist’s house and “pulled out my underpants you know, gave it to him and he started analyzing, looking for fibers, you know, magnifying glass and all that stuff. He said, you know, ‘Can’t prove anything!’ Can see a slight trace but it wouldn’t be enough to test, all that.” She then informed the prosecutor this expert was “ready to come from New York to prevent this miscarriage of justice!” This ironic statement is one of several times in the audio interview where Hillary laughs.

Based on the details Hillary recounts about this blood expert, the scientist in question was Alexander Wiener, who indeed co-discovered the Rh factor in human blood in the 1930s. Hillary is wrong about Wiener receiving the Nobel Prize, although he did receive the prestigious Lasker Award in 1946. There is zero evidence in the court records that Hillary ever obtained “testimony” from Wiener, or any kind of pretrial expert report or formal opinion at all.

It does appear that Hillary violated the court’s June 9, 1975 order that the defense could only independently examine the physical evidence if a method was agreed upon that would “not interrupt the plaintiff’s claim of custody” over the evidence. There’s no indication whatsoever that Hillary was given a “special court order,” as she claimed, to take the physical evidence out of state.

Nothing would “interrupt” the prosecution’s chain of custody more than having the defense attorney personally throw some “evidence underwear” in her handbag or suitcase and jet off on a “long trip back to Chicago and the East Coast to visit friends and people who had offered me jobs” while she pondered whether to marry Bill (the trip Hillary describes in her autobiography, the dates of which line up with this trip to New York meeting with Wiener). Then, as she details on audiotape, she gets to Wiener’s house in Brooklyn and “pulls out her underwear” for him to visually inspect in his basement.

The whole scene she paints is bizarrely out of line with proper procedure and the court’s order in the Taylor case. But the judge and prosecutor didn’t question Hillary’s “blood expert” story or her personal handling of physical evidence in such a casual, irregular manner. Wiener served as a useful cover for Hillary to plea bargain violent rapist Taylor down to a minor charge and let him off with time served.

Of all Hillary Clinton's wrongdoings, this one is the most cringe-worthy and the most overlooked.

In leftist politics, it is not what is done but who does it.

That's why this case is rarely mentioned.

(Insert own feelings of disgust here.)



Because Mark Steyn:

We now learn that the FBI are looking into 650,000 emails discovered on Anthony Weiner's laptop, a machine Huma Abedin has told friends she never used - as you wouldn't, if your spouse had the habits Mr Weiner has. 650,000 emails is at least 20 times the number Mrs Clinton originally turned over to the government - or approximately a thousand emails per day for two years, so Weiner would have to be sexting his spambot penis to an underage girl every minute-and-a-half to rack up that total. Which would be impressive even for him. Instead, the metadata indicates that thousands and thousands of those emails were sent either to or from Mrs Clinton's private server. And she seems unlikely to be that interested in Anthony Weiner's penis.

Trudeau's favouritest country:

In this Report, John Sudworth, the BBC’s Beijing Correspondent, interviews the father of a family in hiding because his wife has just given birth to their third child.  The Report describes the man as “anxious and on edge, but still determined to tell his story.”  The father told the BBC, “A third baby is not allowed, so we are renting a home away from our village.  The local government carries out pregnancy examinations every three months.  If we weren’t in hiding, they would have forced us to have an abortion.” (Emphasis added.)

On the Korean Peninsula:


President Geun-Hye Park's recent trouble might end her presidency before her five-year term is up:

In recent months, Park has also concern-trolled Kim Jong-un about the instability of his regime, accused that regime of “driving the lives of its citizens into a hell through the brutal reign of terror,” and promised the North Korean people better lives and equal treatment after reunification. She has vowed to support more efforts to get outside information into North Korea. She acknowledges that her government must do more to support the 30,000 refugees who’ve already arrived. She has even openly called for North Korean soldiers and civilians to defect ...

Who is this person, and what has she done with Park Geun-hye? If this is the voice of Choi Soon-il, President Park’s alleged svengali, then I nominate her for Unification Minister. More of this, please! It should go without saying that the usual suspects hate such talk. For obvious reasons, North Korea hates it. It also hates Park’s closure of Kaesong, her diplomatic campaign to cut off Pyongyang’s overseas arms trade and labor exports, and her implementation of a new North Korea human rights law. It has reacted with an intensity of nasty, sexist invective it reserves for strategies that threaten the regime’s very survival.   ...

China hates this talk because it prefers North Korea just the way it is, and because many of the North Koreans who answer Park’s call to defect might try to transit through China’s territory. Park (joined by the President of the Council on Foreign Relations) has responded by trying to assuage China’s fears about a reunified Korea. China also resents Park for agreeing to deploy the THAAD missile defense system to South Korea.

South Korea’s anti-anti-North Korean left also hates such talk, because North Korea hates it. Its key members ask how Park would deal with the consequent mass refugee exodus they accuse her of inviting. Park acknowledges that South Korea must be ready for this. But a mass exodus would only happen coincidentally with regime collapse, and if South Korea isn’t prepared for that by now, much responsibility must lie with the left itself. Under Roh Moo-hyun, the Blue House refused to contemplate or plan for a collapse. Then, there are the reactions like that of People’s Party leader Park Jie-won, who in his best KCNA imitation, accused Park of making “a proclamation of war,” and the Minjoo Party says she’s walking the “warpath.” 

Well! Perhaps reporters should make a habit of asking Mr. Park to characterize the things North Korean state media say about South Korea, or about President Park, on any given day. (See, e.g., “barefaced and impudent bitch,” or this, or this, or this.)

Whether Park survives or not, if she continues to speak calmly and cogently of universal humanitarian principles and Korea’s dream of nationhood, she may yet win the national argument for which Koreans, north and south, are so long overdue. That makes her a threat to powerful interests, both within Korea and beyond its borders. That conversation doesn’t have to end when Park’s troubled presidency does. Polled in isolation, Park’s North Korea policies have been popular. To keep up the argument for a “tough love” policy toward North Korea may be the best way for her to recast her legacy.

There is a lot of weirdness and speculation regarding Choi Soon-Il and her role as confidante but one would hate to see this tarnish the important and inevitable conversations about North and South Korea. It may be that this Choi business is a clever overblown distraction from the real issues.


(Kamsahamnida) 


** 

North Korea is apparently purging military officers with family members who have defected to South Korea.

Officers and soldiers who have family or relatives that have defected have been driven out since early October in a purge led by the Politburo and state security, a source said Monday. Around 1,000 officers and enlisted soldiers have been dishonorably discharged over the last month.

Kim Jong-Un is run-of-the-mill mad.

**

North Korean restaurants in China have quietly lifted a ban on South Korean customers put in place after the entire staff of one restaurant defected in April, Radio Free Asia reported on Tuesday.

So their motive was not snobbery but fear of defection.

As long as they're not bigots.

**

Just invade North Korea already:

U.S. Forces Korea Commander Gen. Vincent Brooks on Tuesday said South Korea and the U.S. are ready for war if necessary.

**

It's like she's Kim Jong-Un's Huma Abedin:

The wife of Kim Jong-un, the North Korean dictator, has not been seen in public for more than seven months, prompting speculation that she is pregnant or has fallen out with her husband.

Another possibility is that Ri has upset Kim Yo-jong, who is believed to be 29 and was last year placed in charge of North Korea’s Propaganda and Agitation Department. Her tasks include promoting her brother’s cult of personality, while she also reportedly exercises influence over Kim. 

“The belief is that while Kim lacks political ability, she is far more adept at the sort of manoeuvring that is required to keep him in power,” Prof Shigemura said.

And now, some happy news and thoughts:


A dog is pulled out from the rubble in central Italy.

(Sidebar: the article is in French.)




Scientists activate a comatose man's brain with ultrasound:

As reported in the medical journal Brain Stimulation, the 25-year-old man recently suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) in a car accident. "The first week [after a TBI] is spent keeping the patient alive and ensuring that the brain doesn’t undergo any further damage," Martin Monti, head of the research and associate professor of psychology and neurosurgery at UCLA, ...

Patients who show signs of recovery usually do so within two weeks post-injury. "That’s the interesting moment, because they’re coming out [of the coma], but it’s unclear if they’re truly recovering cognitive function or not," says Monti. This is when an intervention can do the most good.

Their intervention happened to be a matter of good timing; Monti’s colleague Alexander Bystritsky, a UCLA professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences, had recently pioneered a technique called low-intensity focused ultrasound pulsation, and co-founded Brainsonix, the company that makes the device used in the trial. Traditional ultrasound "scatters a beam of sound widely," and bounces back an image (such as when looking at the image of a fetus in utero). The Brainsonix device, approximately the size of a coffee cup saucer, generates a small, focused "sphere" of energy in the form of sound waves. It can target a small area of the brain, and does not bounce back any images. Monti hoped that this targeted approach might be able to help coma patients recover more quickly.

"We are just using it to inject energy into the brain," says Monti. Specifically, he sent that energy into the region of the deep brain known as the thalamus. Composed of a pair of tiny, egg-shaped structures, the thalamus is a sort of broadcast station, Monti says. "All the information that is coming from the world to your brain goes through the thalamus," Monti says, calling it a "central hub for all information." The cortex and the thalamus "sort of talk back to each other, which is very mysterious. But we know it has to do with complex behavior—those kinds of things you can do only if you’re conscious."

At the time of treatment, their patient was showing signs of being minimally conscious. He could track movement with his eyes and occasionally attempt to reach for things, but little more. "Don't think he was conscious like you and I are," Monti says. The researchers placed the device by the side of his head, and activated it 10 times for 30 seconds each, over the course of a 10-minute period.

The day after the treatment, the patient was not only tracking and trying to reach for objects, Monti says, "he was trying to use a spoon," and could recognize objects and differentiate between them. "He also started verbalizing and would respond to things by blinking his eyes."

Three days after treatment, the patient demonstrated that he fully understood the words spoken to him, "and he clearly understood what was happening around him," Monti says. He answered questions by shaking or nodding his head. He even gave his doctor a requested fist bump.

Five days after treatment, the patient’s father reported that he was trying to walk, and at his six-month assessment, he was walking and talking. "He himself said that he felt he was 80 percent back," Monti says.

However, this research is still in its earliest stages. More must be done.




Finally, are you unsure what to celebrate in November? Wonder no more:

NOVEMBER 28: CIDER MONDAY

Cider Monday is the antidote to Cyber Monday: a day that encourages you to go out to local businesses, do a little shopping, and enjoy a free cup of seasonally appropriate cider.