But Wait! There's More!

That is often the case, yes ...


The news that has everyone's fingers tweeting is the (in) conveniently-timed accusations against and resignation of provincial Tory Party leader/ yes-man, Patrick Brown:

Just months before a provincial election, Patrick Brown stepped down as Ontario Progressive Conservative leader early Thursday morning amid allegations of sexual misconduct.

Brown, 39, announced his resignation in a statement following a hastily called media conference in which he “categorically” denied the “false” allegations. ...

In a CTV story published Wednesday, two women accused Brown of sexual misconduct that dates back to when he was a Member of Parliament (MP). The women’s identities were not revealed.

One woman said the incident happened more than 10 years ago when she was a high school student in Barrie, Ont., according to CTV.


The woman then said she met Brown at a local bar, had alcohol (even though she was underage) and then went back to his place. She said he exposed himself to her and asked her to perform oral sex, which she did for a short time, according to the CTV story.

The woman, who is now 29, called it a “controlling thing” and said Brown is a “politician preying on young girls,” according to the story.


The other woman said she was a university student working in Brown’s constituency office in 2013 when he sexually assaulted her at his home after an event she helped organize, CTV News reported.

When they were alone, he allegedly kissed her and “got on top of her,” CTV said. She described it as sexual assault.




The woman said she did not report the alleged incident to authorities.

CTV News said it had viewed records of correspondence between Brown and the women. None of the allegations have been proven in court.

Brown's spinelessness and possible guilt notwithstanding, how interesting is it that this came out nearly six months before the next election?


Not to be outdone, the Liberals push to sweep another scandal under the rug:

Kent Hehr has resigned from the federal cabinet after the sport and disabilities minister was accused of making inappropriate sexual remarks while a provincial politician.

The allegation, which stems from his time as an Alberta MLA a decade ago, was first levelled against Hehr on social media late Wednesday. By Thursday afternoon he was out of cabinet pending an investigation.

(Sidebar: one sat on this for a decade? An open secret?)

These Liberals:

Oh, I’m sorry — did you forget how Wynne revealed that at least two Liberal MPPs were accused of sexual harassment, long before #MeToo started trending? Because she totally did. I’ll wait a minute while you get back up to speed.

All done? Great.

Isn’t it strange how people keep needing to be reminded of Liberals who’ve behaved in this way towards women? I’ll bet you already forgot about Scott Andrews and Massimo Pacetti, two Liberal MPs who Trudeau dealt with summarily. Then there’s Darshan Kang and Hunter Tootoo (his technically not harassment, but disgraceful nonetheless), who received a bit more attention before and after they resigned. Then there’s the case of Liberal MP Nicola Di lorio joking that Conservative MP Dianne Watts was a stripper in front of other colleagues after hearing her ringtone, which Liberal-friendly online publication iPolitics thought was funny enough to include in its end-of-the-year top ten list of funniest stories in Canadian politics.

**

His prison sentence runs until May 28, 2018 but that could have been disgraced educator Benjamin Levin you saw walking around in Toronto.

The 65-year-old former Ontario deputy education minister and member of Premier Kathleen Wynne’s 2013 transition team was jailed in May 2015 for sickening and disturbing online child pornography activities. ...

Levin, who was a world-renowned educator before his shocking fall from grace, was jailed in May 2015 for creating and possessing child pornography and counselling others to commit a sexual assault.

At the time, Justice Heather McArthur wrote that Levin had a “hidden, dark side” that he had kept the secret from his family and political friends.

That hidden side included visiting chat rooms “devoted to topics of incest and the sexual exploitation of children,” something he’d done for years.

Levin was ultimately nabbed conversing with police officers posing as single moms. He encouraged them to sexually abuse their kids and in some cases shared photos.

In one case, Levin sent photographs to a New Zealand police officer, one showing a “close-up of the face of a crying child, her face smeared with black makeup.” Levin suggested to her the image was “hot,” according to parole board documents. Another photo he sent showed a young female bound and leashed, with a gag in her mouth and Levin commented, “Mmm, so hot to imagine a mother doing that to her girl to please her lover.”

**

A woman who came forward last year with allegations of misconduct against Calgary Skyview MP Darshan Kang stemming from his time as an MLA says the provincial Liberal party never contacted her despite its promises of an internal investigation. 

(Sidebar: this Darshan Kang.)

**

Canada's updated citizenship guide will include a warning to newcomers about the illegal practice of female genital mutilation.

(Sidebar: this practice -  "Days after a continuing Toronto Star investigation revealed that Canadian girls are being sent abroad to be subjected to female genital mutilation, the federal government is not yet committing to track the cases, nor will it provide details on initiatives it is undertaking to prevent FGM from happening.")

In a statement provided to CBC News, Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen called it an "abhorrent practice" that is against the law in Canada.

This douchebag right here:

What a disturbing pattern of behaviour from a party that screams its "progressive" bona fides but delivers on none of them.


Also:

The refugee group's support for Soleiman continues in spite of the troubling accusations against him, Trautman said. 

"I'm not really focused on what he's accused of," he said outside court on Wednesday. "I want to show him that he has a community."

**

CBC News spoke to dozens of community members in the weeks leading up to the one-year anniversary of the shooting. They described having to negotiate casual racism, outright Islamophobia and persistent fears for their safety.

(Sidebar: wait - Islam is a race?)

 

Just remember who the real victims are. 

Yes, but one already knew that Justin is stupid:

As proof of his mental incompetency one only has to look at some of the things he has said over the years. “The budget will balance itself” and “We have to rethink elements as basic as time and space.” The first statement is ludicrous on its face and the second one makes no sense. If he misspoke while uttering these inanities he never told us. And if he was somehow trying to be funny he never told us that either. He lacks the minimal intelligence to realize a statement made by a prime minister is different than one made by an ordinary person in a bar. Words matter and it is scary to realize how mentally incompetent Canada’s PM is.

Wait - the Shermans were possibly Clintoned and now a review into them is closed? :

The newly-appointed federal lobbying watchdog won’t look any further into a complaint about a private fundraiser the late Barry Sherman hosted for Justin Trudeau.

Nancy Belanger cites the billionaire’s death in December as the reason for ending the investigation in a letter to Democracy Watch, the group that filed the initial complaints.

Barry and his wife Honey Sherman were found dead in their Toronto home on Dec. 15, 2017.

Democracy Watch had asked Belanger’s predecessor to review two fundraisers Sherman, the founder of generic drug giant Apotex Inc., held for Trudeau and the Liberals in August 2015 during the last federal election, and in November 2016, a year after Trudeau had been sworn in as prime minister.

At the time of both events, Apotex was registered to lobby the Prime Minister’s Office.

Democracy Watch argued that Sherman shouldn’t have hosted the 2015 fundraiser attended by Trudeau at the Sherman home, nor helped sell tickets to a 2016 event involving Finance Minister Bill Morneau.

The dead tell no tales.



Because Islamophobia doesn't sell, the central focus on the censorial M-103 won't be central somehow:

The parliamentary committee tasked with preparing a report on racism and religious discrimination as required by M-103, the Liberal government’s controversial anti-Islamophobia motion, is about to make its recommendations public. But after months of debate over the definition of Islamophobia and the use of the term in a motion intended to address all forms of racism, sources say Islamophobia won’t be a central focus of the M-103 report.

It will just be hidden somewhere in hopes that no one notices, re-packaged and - Allah willing - will be passed as a bill.

Just watch.


Also:

Anyone remotely attuned to the mood on university campuses knows that while faculty associations, administrations and student organizations may pay lip service to the notion of freedoms of speech and expression, they rarely mean it. ...

What was unsettling were the references, made by lawyer Marty Moore, who represents the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, which has taken on the fight for the student groups, to the reasons given, either in meetings, email, affidavits or testimony in examination for discovery, by the student union reps.

NOW Canadians will riot:

Beer Canada says almost half of what consumers pay right now for the average price of beer is tax, and as the federal tax on beer increases annually starting next April, consumers will have to pay even more for their suds. 

A desperate Kim makes a plea to people he would otherwise kill:

North Korea has issued an appeal to “all Koreans at home and abroad,” urging them to “turn out as one” to make a “breakthrough” for “independent reunification” and urging the South to halt joint military exercises with the U.S. “forever,” state-run media said Thursday.

(Insert own comment here):

"Before, every morning, I was afraid to discover a guy hanging in his cell. You know what I'm dreading today? To be slaughtered, stripped, stabbed in the back. In the name of Islam and ISIS. Every day, on my way to work, this fear gnaws at my belly." — 'Bernard,' a French prison guard.

One of the last two unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls is actually a calendar:

Israeli researchers have translated one of the last two unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls from a simply coded Hebrew, revealing what appears to be an ancient unknown “perfect” Jewish calendar.

It also reveals two previously unknown festivals, one for new wine and one for new oil.

The discovery is the latest revelation to emerge from the treasure trove of ancient parchment known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were discovered in a West Bank cave by a teenage goatherd in the 1940s.

Most of the 900 scrolls have already been translated from Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, revealing the rich literary culture of the Essenes, a sect of Jewish mystics who withdrew from Jerusalem to the desert to practice a severely ascetic form of religion, cut off from the world in anticipation of its imminent end.

(Merci beaucoup)