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| Photo Credit: Provincial Court of Alberta |
Robin Camp, the Alberta federal judge made famous for asking the complainant in a rape case "why couldn't you keep your knees together?" is fighting to keep his $300+k a-year job. His defense strategy is ignorance of criminal and sexual assault laws, because his Canadian criminal law experience was "non-existent". Despite this, he was appointed provincially to the head of the Domestic Violence Court in 2012 and then appointed to the federal bench in 2015 by then Justice Minister Peter MacKay's flurry of get-'em-in-before-the-election judicial appointments.
In the interest of judicial integrity, or lack there of, Camp's verdict in this case was thrown out prior to to his appointment to the federal bench.
Camp, who called the complainant "the accused" during the criminal trial, continued to do so during his own testimony and defended his conduct by stating "I think that my thinking isn’t really sexist, but just old-fashioned." Yes, like the old-fashioned attitudes those pesky suffragettes combated nearly a century ago when they wanted to be persons under the law.
He's very sorry though, as anyone would be seeing a prestigious and lucrative career end in disgrace and has faith that he can be redeemed in the public eye by a favourable decision. "I can see the perceived problem. If the council sees fit to permit me to keep sitting, that should signal to the public that I am not such a person."
Wrong again, Robin. If the council finds in your favour, it doesn't mean you're fit to practice, it means that the judicial system that saw fit to appoint you not once, but twice, failed us for a third time.
South of the border, Hillary Clinton is backtracking on a claim that half of Trump supporters are a "basket of deplorable", calling them "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it." Not because it isn't true, but because the anti-politically correct, freedom-of-speech defenders don't like to be called names. Irony: it's a tricky mistress.
Meanwhile, Mike Pence stumping for Trump at the Reagan Library did his best to paint Trump as the candidate to carry on Reagan's legacy. Thirty years after Hollywood celebrity politician declared wars on the poor and drugs, gutted higher education and mental health funding (despite being shot by a schizophrenic), and whose supply-side economic theory of deregulation, privatization, and tax breaks for the wealthy lead to the greatest income equality in American history, Pence is right. Trump, that over-privileged, unread, orange-stained bigot who has never been told no, is the poster child for Reaganomics. The only thing Pence misses is that this isn't something to be proud of.
And speaking of bigot politics, Conservative leadership hopeful Kellie Leitch has gotten over her remorseful crying jag about the Barbaric Practices Hotline of last election and now wants to screen refugees for "Canadian values". She says Trump comparisons are unfair. Kellie, short of a time machine, there's no way to re-frame your party as giving a damn about either group after the last decade, but you're right, Trump comparisons are unfair. You're not Trump. You're Ben Carson. Exquisitely well-educated and still a fucking idiot.
Locally, Mark Lever, Chronicle Herald CEO, wrote a letter to CH readers on Friday. He's very proud of the work his paper has done in the two months since he wrote his last letter to readers. That makes one. I thought his promotion of Now! Nova Scotia was particularly timely. Because nothing says journalistic integrity like a deluge of advertorial masquerading as news interspersed with fluffy calls to action based on thoroughly debunked social theory. You're never bringing the unionized workers back. Just fucking say so.
And that's the things that made me go WTF last week.
