For a Monday

A lot going on ...





Oh, dear:

In a serious blow to the Democratic Party, and a large-scale vindication for the Trump Administration and Donald Trump in particular, the summary of the Mueller Report shows that his campaign did not collude with Russia.

Mueller’s investigation issued nearly 3,000 subpoeanas, in addition to executing about 500 search warrants. Yet, there was no collusion found.

(Sidebar: or perhaps this is the result of super-secret Russians planting seeds of discord and conspiracy wherever they go? Is there no one who can be trusted?)


The Russians have been infiltrating governments for decades. Why would they choose the election in 2016 to get sloppy especially when they didn't need to?:

If the Russians were keen on disrupting or changing the outcome of the election, why get in the way of someone who would do that work for them?

Not that anyone will Occam's Razor this.

I know you're behind this, Fyodor Dostoevsky!

Moving on ...




An unelected judge has decided that convicted terrorist Omar Khadr has served his sentence:

An Alberta judge has ruled that a war crimes sentence for former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Omar Khadr has expired.

An eight-year sentence imposed in 2010 would have ended last October had Khadr remained in custody.

But the clock stopped ticking when a judge freed him on bail in 2015 pending Khadr's appeal of his military conviction in the United States.

Chief Justice Mary Moreau says the Youth Criminal Justice Act gives judges flexibility to consider bail conditions as part of a sentence.

She told an Edmonton court Monday that, with that in mind, she ruled Khadr has served his time.

Now, when will Omar give his money to Christopher Speers' widow and orphans?:

Relatives looking to collect on an American lawsuit against Omar Khadr are asking a Canadian court to force the former Guantanamo Bay prisoner to answer questions about his confession to purported war crimes.

As part of the pre-trial process, Khadr has refused to discuss the agreed statement of facts he signed on which his 2010 conviction before a U.S. military commission was based. He argues the information was derived from torture.

Khadr has also refused to answer other questions on the basis of solicitor-client privilege, or because the military commission rules prohibit his divulging certain information.

The American plaintiffs have now filed a motion in Ontario Superior Court — a hearing date has yet to be set — to compel Khadr to answer.

At stake is the US$134 million a Utah judge awarded the family of a U.S. special forces soldier Khadr is accused of killing in battle in Afghanistan in 2002 and another soldier blinded by shrapnel in one eye.

Or is Omar going to use his ill-gotten money that Justin gave him to renounce Islam and his rotten, inbred family that Chretien supported? 

Also:

Former Afghanistan hostage Joshua Boyle is slated to be in Ontario court today to face trial on several assault charges.

Boyle and his American wife, Caitlan Coleman, were taken hostage in 2012 by a Taliban-linked group while on a backpacking trip.

The couple were freed by Pakistani forces in October 2017, along with the three children they had in captivity.

Boyle was arrested by Ottawa police in December that year and charged with offences including assault, sexual assault, unlawful confinement and causing someone to take a noxious substance.

The charges against Boyle relate to two alleged victims, but a court order prohibits the publication of any details that might identify them or any witnesses.

And - when Yazidi children ran from ISIS rape gangs, Justin offered parkas:

Haji Ali Hameka, another Yazidi activist and interpreter, expressed dismay at a recent case of a Yazidi genocide survivor who was horrified to encounter her ISIS captor and rapist in Canada.

"It is very disappointing to hear that Western governments are enabling criminals who have raped and beheaded innocent people to return with impunity," Hameka told Gatestone. He stressed:

"A criminal is a criminal, whether he or she is Western or Middle Eastern. The rule of law must prevail everywhere. I don't think there is an ISIS fighter who has not raped or killed. Punishment for their actions should be severe. How can Canada allow these terrorists to roam free?"

Because it's Canada. That's how.




The scandal that just won't die:

Opposition members of the House of Commons ethics committee will be pushing this week to bring renewed attention to the SNC-Lavalin affair, with the hope of hearing from the two Liberal MPs who quit cabinet over the government's handling of the issue.

**

How much longer will Prime Minister Justin Trudeau allow Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott to remain in the federal Liberal caucus? ...

It’s almost as though the two women are daring Trudeau to expel them, daring him to repudiate his status as a champion of feminism, Indigenous rights and doing politics differently. It’s as if they’re daring him to act like any other leader — Stephen Harper, Jean Chretien or his own father, the late Pierre Trudeau — would have done and assert his authority over wayward MPs. ...

So why hesitate now? What is it that Trudeau fears? What do Wilson-Raybould and Philpott know — or could they say — if he cast them out of caucus? Speculation runs rampant, but some scenarios appear more plausible than others. The main one is that SNC-Lavalin wasn’t the starting point for the women’s discontent but only a convenient tipping point. The theory is that other issues — the government’s failure to settle Indigenous land claims, the lack of material advancement on First Nations issues — are really what made them mad. They may have concluded that Trudeau’s embrace of these causes was a fraud, mere virtue-signalling for votes, and they weren’t going to take it anymore.

(Sidebar: the sanguine tone of this commentary aside, kicking the women out might allow them to reveal the super-duper illegal stuff the Liberal Party is hiding.)

**

A CBC report is alleging that the City of Ottawa gave SNC-Lavalin the $1.6 Billion contract “to extend and maintain Ottawa’s north-south LRT line” despite the fact that SNC-Lavalin didn’t even meet the minimum technical qualifications for the project.

Because not New Zealand:

A Notre Dame de Grâce man has been charged with attempted murder and assault with a weapon after Father Claude Grou was attacked while saying mass at St. Joseph’s Oratory Friday morning.

Vlad Cristian Eremia, 26, was arraigned by videoconference from a detention centre on Saturday afternoon.

 


Because not Omar Khadr:

Global Affairs Canada says consular officials in China visited today with detained former diplomat Michael Kovrig today.

It is the fifth time Kovrig has received a consular visit since he was detained by Chinese authorities in early December, but the first since he and fellow detainee Michael Spavor were charged with stealing state secrets two weeks ago.

Spavor has received four consular visits thus far.

And now, a newly-discovered Viking ship:

Using geo-radar, archeologists in Norway have discovered a viking ship buried in the ground near the largest burial mound site in Northern Europe.

Archaeologists say they have no immediate plan to unearth the ship — which is located about 100 km west of Oslo — but they will be using non-invasive methods to find out more about it.

Vestfold county spokesman Terje Gansum said Monday the ship burial — where a vessel is used as a container for the dead — was found in the Borre burial mounds. The area considered one of Norway’s most important cultural heritage sites, contains the largest number of graves from the Viking Age.

The 20-metre-long ship compares to the famous discoveries of the Oseberg and Tune ships, which gave researchers a clearer image of Viking culture and the importance of ships both in life and death for Vikings.