Free Dominion Is BACK!!! Sort of...

They've gone read-only, for the time being.  Meanwhile, it worth nothing the occasion that brought them out.

 A federal appeals court has put the final nail in the coffin of Mark Lemire's constitutional appeal  of section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (the hate speech provision). You can read more about it here; I've written extensively on the matter here; and the court doc is here.  I've only glanced at the latter, but its obvious that Marc Lemire has been defeated utterly.  Even the act's penalty provision (section 54.1), severed in a previous ruling, has been judged constitutional.

Why worry about legislation that has already been repealed?  Well, a Trudeau-led government that wanted to re-establish section 13 and 54.1  could do so knowing that they have passed constitutional muster. And remember, the Tories snuck their changes through the system as a private member's bill in the dead of night. Divided and leaderless as they might well be after 2015, they would not want to revisit these measures, especially since Mark Steyn, their strongest advocate on the file, might be playing piano for tips and cigarettes at some  skeezy  U.S. strip club by that time.

Mann Vs. Steyn, Part II

An update on the unfolding defamation suit climate pitting climate scientist Michael Mann against  Mark Steyn and The National Review.  The NR has offered its response to Mann's contentions here.  It will fight, and not retract nor remove the post in question.  Obviously, IANAL, and U.S. defamation laws make it a tough slog for Mr. Mann.  However, I would note this passage from the document:

Frankly, I know of nowhere that a reader, be they careful or careless, could interpret the term "fraudulent" when applied to a scientist's work as implying anything less than that they were guilty of scientific misconduct (the kind of thing they discuss here) or straight out fraud.  I am unaware of any place the term has been used  merely to state that the scientist's work is incorrect.  This is quite a bit different than the situation with "blackmail", where there is an established colloquial sense that is weaker than the more precise legal sense (the colloquial sense does not entail criminality where the more legal sense does).

But as I say take this for what you will.  IANAL.

PS. I'm not sure why the usual suspects think Mann would fear the discovery phase.  I think Steyn's emails would be far more revealing.

Plagiarism And Mark Steyn

My gal-pal Carol is being hard on Mark Steyn for his incessant self-recycling here.

...when apprised of Steyn’s duplication and errors, editors at Maclean’s did nothing. What does this say about standards at Canada’s national news magazine versus those in leading U.S. publications? Why are fabricated musings about Dylan’s creative juices enough to pull Lehrer’s book from the shelves, while false, inflammatory statistics (which could have an impact on gays and Muslims) are left to stand without correction?

Mind you, self copping is not as bad as ripping off another writer.  You invent a joke, you should be able to tell it as often as you want.  Still, Steyn readers may not know how many times he's used all those lines before.