And the Rest of It

Just in:

Former justice minister and attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould will be called to testify at a parliamentary committee probing the SNC-Lavalin scandal — but it's not yet clear how much she'll be able to reveal publicly because she's still bound by client-solicitor privilege.

Wilson-Raybould said today she is consulting with her lawyer about what she can and can't say, and his guidelines also will apply to her appearance before the Commons justice committee.

"I will appear, but as I said, I'm still in discussions with my counsel about the various privileges and confidences that I have," she said.

 
Will she burn herself or others?


Also:

In what appears to be a deceptive effort to give the appearance of transparency without actually getting the truth, the Liberal-controlled justice committee will invite Jody Wilson-Raybould to speak.

However, the PMO continues to block Jody Wilson-Raybould from being able to fully speak about what happened, because they aren’t waiving ‘solicitor-client privilege.’

This means she still can’t go into details.

As a result, inviting her to the committee without waiving privilege appears to be a political stunt.

Naturally.



A man who fired into a crowded mall is found guilty of manslaughter:

In a stunning verdict, a Toronto man accused of fatally shooting two men at Toronto’s Eaton Centre seven years ago was found guilty of two counts of manslaughter.

After almost six days of deliberations, the jury also found Christopher Husbands guilty of five counts of aggravated assault, one count each of criminal negligence causing bodily harm and reckless discharge of a firearm in the June 2, 2012 mall shooting.

Just manslaughter.


Also:

An appeal court has found that a judge mistakenly failed to consider the Cree background of a drug trafficker who had been taken from his Manitoba parents as an infant and raised by a non-Aboriginal family on Prince Edward Island.

Nicholas George Nash McInnis was taken from his biological Cree parents at birth and placed in the care of Manitoba Child and Family Services.

When he was seven months old, he was adopted by John and Brenda McInnis, who are originally from Sherwood, P.E.I., and are not Indigenous.

A provincial court judge rejected a joint Crown-defence submission that would have seen the 20-year-old man avoid jail time for possession of cannabis for the purpose of trafficking.

McInnis was apprehended with marijuana and cash at Charlottetown Rural High School where he was a student, The Guardian reported. He told police he was selling marijuana to about six students.

Furthermore, she decided not consider the man’s Aboriginal heritage in arriving at her decision — an intermittent sentence of 90 days in jail — because he had been adopted at a very young age.

Where is the scientific evidence that race determines what crimes one will commit?



Canada is back ... getting the Americans to do the fighting for us:

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham said Friday the response by the United States to China detaining two Canadians in apparent retaliation for the arrest of a Chinese Huawei executive has not been strong enough.

Graham also told Munich Security Conference delegates the international reaction to China's arrest of ex-diplomat Michael Kovrig and entrepreneur Michael Spavor hasn't been enough to persuade China that its apparent use of hostage diplomacy won't be tolerated.

"The president has been tough on China but this is one area where I think we need to make a more definitive statement, because the two people arrested in China had nothing to do with the rule of law. 

It was just grabbing two Canadians," Graham said.

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, who appeared on the panel with Graham, mouthed the words "thank you" to Graham after he said it. Roland Paris, one of the delegates and a former foreign policy adviser to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, asked Graham about it.

Why didn't that come from you, Crier-in-Chief? 

Also - no, when Trump declared that the North Korean people loved their tyrant, he made vanish any political or moral authority he had:

Trump’s praise for the North Korean dictator — and hopes for a breakthrough in negotiating peace — won’t surprise his detractors, either. “Kim Jong Un has become yet another authoritarian ruler that Trump simply can’t resist praising,” scoffed Slate, one of many media outlets mocking Trump’s presumed naiveté in foreign affairs and shallowness in judging character.

The shallowness, however, is all the media’s, whose blind hatred of Trump leads to a myopic analysis of his M.O. True, Trump has also lavished praise on China’s President Xi Jinping and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, both strongmen. But that hasn’t prevented him from being tougher on China and Russia than any president in recent history, as their leaders no doubt rue.

The media have nothing better to do  than moan about Trump. That doesn't change the fact that the error he made was his to own.



I'm sure it's nothing to be concerned about:

Russian lender Gazprombank has decided to freeze the accounts of Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA and halted transactions with the firm to reduce the risk of the bank falling under U.S. sanctions, a Gazprombank source told Reuters on Sunday.

A fact uncovered about the Stonehenge:

Researchers excavated two quarries at the Carn Goedog and Craig Rhos-y-felin outcrops—sites geologists had matched with bluestones. Analyzing and dating charcoal from the sites in the lab, the team was able to build a picture of the ancient quarrying that yielded stones now standing 180 miles away.

Pillars of rock rise naturally from these jagged outcrops, likely giving neolithic quarriers a serious advantage. The ancient workers could have eased the large stones from their homes with the use of stone wedges that helped loosen them from their rocky neighbors. 

Ancient mudstone wedges—likely used to prevent damage to the megaliths—and stone hammers have been found at the site. Quarry workers probably also used perishable items like ropes, wooden levers and mallets to extract and move the rocks.

After they loosened the rocks, these ancient workers would have lowered them to a platform area at the bottom of each outcrop. Researchers found evidence of platforms built of earth and stone, the end of each giving way to a three-foot drop.