An Act Of Aggression Is Still Wrong

I'm angry beyond words at this:  Transgender Woman's Jail Treatment Prompts Complaints

Baxter said Griffith was concerned about her safety and asked to be put into protective custody. 

Guards moved her to the protective custody section and placed her in a cell with two accused male sex offenders, Baxter said.

We've heard this kind of BS before, and not long ago.

Let me be abundantly clear on this:

Placing a transgender woman in a male prison facility is just plain wrong.  It puts the prisoner in a situation of unprecedented danger.  Placing such a prisoner in the same cell as two sex offenders is incomprehensibly stupid.

However, let's put the outrage over these two incidents to one side for a minute and reflect on the situations and what they tell us about our prison system.

First, I recognize that prisons are necessarily going to be fairly conservative in how they run.  There is a lot of ugly issues that emerge when incarcerating people, and a lot of those behind bars aren't going to be very happy about it.  So, fair enough, guards have a tough lot.

That said, they are still intelligent agents in their actions.  Under what circumstances does placing someone who is known to be transgender in a male prison cell make sense?  (especially in the case of Avery Edison, who was so obviously female in her presentation)  Under what circumstances does it make sense to put that person in the same cell as a pair of male sexual offenders?

It doesn't.  It cannot.  Unless one looks at it as an act of cruelty on the part of the guards.

The only way this makes sense is if the guards believe that their role is to mete out arbitrary punishment over and above what incarceration already is.

Where would they get this idea?  In part from the ongoing flood of US entertainment nonsense that streams across our borders, no doubt.  But also because the policy environment that they live in enables them to ape the kind of behaviours that are commonly shown in television programs.

I suspect strongly that the guards in the Katlynn Griffith case were doing it because they were in a position of power, and they decided it would be "fun" to see what happens.  In an era where our governments are becoming progressively more aggressive and punitive, the message to the prison apparatus is clear:  be nasty - we won't stop you.

When the police have been granted extraordinary powers of search and seizure at the roadside, and the laws are being overhauled to impose ever harsher penalties, it isn't hard to see how the mentality that is being pushed by our federal government is being reflected in the actions of the civil servants tasked with enacting the resulting laws and policies.

The fact that we still have policies in place that say we must incarcerate people based on what is dangling between their legs (or not), says a great deal about a government which has become all about not just punishing offenders, but extending that punishment in as many directions as possible.

Incarceration is the government removing an offender's (or accused's) liberty.  It does not, to my knowledge, suspend the right to Security of the Person.  Guards who place someone in a situation that is inherently dangerous are violating that fundamental right, and are failing to do their job - which is to keep prisoners from escaping on one side, but to keep the prisons relatively safe at the same time.

Attacking Democracy: Adler's Bill C-520

Just as Bills C-23 and C-24 interact with each other in some very concerning ways, Mark Adler's bill C-520 can be seen as part of the Harper Party's active undermining of Canada's democracy.

6. (1) Every agent of Parliament who intends to occupy a politically partisan position while holding his or her position as an agent of Parliament must make a written declaration of their intention to do so as soon as possible and before starting in the politically partisan position. The declaration must indicate the nature of the position, as well as the period of time during which the agent intends to occupy it.

So, someone who is leaving a position as an "agent of parliament" has to declare what they are moving on to?  This is ridiculous indeed.  More disturbing is the broad, and ill-defined term "politically partisan position".

“politically partisan position” means any of the following positions:(a) electoral candidate;(b) electoral district association officer;(c) member of a ministerial staff;(d) member of a parliamentary staff; or(e) member of a political staff.

Wait a second ... that basically means that anyone who chooses to participate in Canada's political system is effectively being constrained from becoming an "agent of parliament" (which is basically anybody on the staff of the parliamentary oversight bodies such as the Auditor General).

What this declaration would do is essentially enable MPs to dismiss as "partisan" the work of anybody who leaves a job as an agent of parliament to work in a "partisan" role.

7. (1) Every applicant for a position in the office of an agent of Parliament must, as soon as possible in the selection process, provide the relevant agent of Parliament with a written declaration stating whether or not, at any time in the 10 years before applying for the position, they occupied a politically partisan position. The declaration must indicate the nature of any such position, as well as the period of time during which the person occupied it. 

This is more than a little bit extreme, and given that the hiring of "Agents of Parliament" is inherently somewhat political in nature, you can bank that this information will be used to determine who is going to be be receiving these appointments - not based on their capabilities and qualifications, but on their political stripe.

9. On written request to the office of an agent of Parliament by any member of the Senate or House of Commons that alleges that a person who occupies a position in that office has conducted their duties and responsibilities in a partisan manner, the agent of Parliament may examine the matter and take such steps as they consider necessary.

In itself, one might find it somewhat ironic that the most extremely partisan government in Canada's history is suddenly worried about the agents of parliament becoming "partisan".  Of course, the Harper Party has long held a persecution complex, claiming that the courts, bureaucracy and everybody else is "biased against them".  There is no doubt that the Harper Party has been more willing to accuse others of being "partisan" than any governing party before them, and views anyone who dares challenge their assumptions as being "partisan".  

The reality is that we have a government that is so self-absorbed in the "rightness" of its mission that they perceive themselves as under siege at every turn.

This bill is ultimately about accomplishing several goals at once:

1.  To make someone's political history part of the hiring decision process for a position in any of the parliamentary oversight bodies.  In short, the governing party suddenly has a sledgehammer it can use  to suppress the hiring of otherwise qualified candidates into senior positions in the parliamentary apparatus.

2.  It acts as a suppression tool to inhibit people who worked on campaigns or for MPs who didn't win the last election from applying for these positions.

3.  It gives the governing party the ability the ability to be dismissive of reports from these various entities that are "inconvenient" by accusing them of being partisan.

4.  It will make some people more cautious about being involved in election campaigns or riding level politics if they belong to parties other than the dominant political party of the day, thereby subtly hamstringing the efforts of those parties to compete for votes.

Think about this in light of the various aspects of Bill C-23 that I have discussed elsewhere on this blog, and suddenly Bill C-520 looks like it is another part of a larger tapestry of legislative initiatives that the Harper Party is pushing forward to undermine our electoral system and parliamentary accountability.  

Bill C-23: Stealing Democracy Part VIII: Brad Butt Lies To Parliament

One of the centrepieces of Bill C-23 are a series of measures intended to put a stop to voter fraud.

Central to all of this is the testimony of one MP - Brad Butt who rose in the House of Commons to state the following:

  Mr. Speaker, the fact of the matter is that there are 30-plus documents that individuals can bring with them when they want to vote that will verify that they are, indeed, the persons they are. 

    Earlier this afternoon I asked the Minister of State for Western Economic Diversificationa question. I think my friend from York South—Weston will appreciate this because, just like the riding I represent, there are a lot of apartment buildings in his riding. I will relate to him something I have actually seen. On the mail delivery day when voter cards are put in mailboxes, residents come home, pick them out of their boxes, and throw them in the garbage can. I have seen campaign workers follow, pick up a dozen of them afterward, and walk out. Why are they doing that? They are doing it so they can hand those cards to other people, who will then be vouched for at a voting booth and vote illegally. That is going to stop. [emphasis added]

Remember, the House of Commons is part of the legislative branch of our government.  On that basis alone, the words spoken in that chamber are assumed to be truthful at all times.  Just as lying before the Supreme Court carries such fell consequences, those who lie to our parliament are subject to being found in contempt of parliament and punished appropriately by that body.

Perhaps particularly galling about this situation is the fact that Mr. Butt rose and lied to the House of Commons in defence of the changes that Bill C-23 makes to voter identification requirements on voting day.

Then, a few days later, Mr. Butt rises again in the House to tell us that he was "inaccurate" in his earlier statements:

"I made a statement in the House during the debate that is not accurate, and I just want to reflect the fact that I have not personally witnessed individuals retrieving voter notification cards from the garbage cans or from the mailbox areas of apartment buildings," he said. 

"I have not personally witnessed that activity and want the record to properly show that." [emphasis added]

It seems to me that Mr. Butt has deliberately mislead the House of Commons to defend an appalling piece of legislation with an appalling lie about the extent of alleged voter fraud at the ballot box.

Now we find Prime Minister Harper opening his mouth on the topic, and apparently he doesn't see anything wrong with lying ... as long as it is done by a Conservative MP who "apologizes" for it after the fact:

Harper responded, saying "the member in question" did the right thing by apologizing. 

"He, at his own initiative, brought this to light in the House of Commons and corrected the record, and he is to be commended for doing so," he said.

Given that Mr. Butt so blatantly lied to the House of Commons on this matter at the outset, I am considerably less willing to give Mr. Butt a pass.  Lying to the House of Commons is lying to Canadians - all of us.  His apology is a start, but it does not address the fundamental point - he lied during time limited debate on a bill that is at the centre of the Harper government's legislative agenda.

Mr. Harper's defence of his MP makes me suspect even more that Mr. Butt's lie - and subsequent retraction - may well have been staged.

As for Bill C-23,  I agree with Elections Canada head Marc Mayrand - this bill is profoundly flawed.  

Thoughts on the Ukraine Situation

There has been an enormous amount of speculation around the Ukraine situation on social media today.

First, let me be abundantly clear:  I do not support the Russian actions towards Ukraine in recent days.  Russia would be far wiser to allow the Ukraine to have an open election or referendum focused on the issues that started the riots in Kiev (or Kyiv - I've seen both spellings and I'm not sure which is more correct).

My personal speculation is that Putin is working to do two major things.  First, he wants to reignite the old cold war hostilities.  He knows full well that the western powers are unable or unwilling to intervene directly in a conflict with Russia, and the fact that he has very successfully embarrassed the US on both Syria and Iran in the recent past has bolstered his ego.

Second, I suspect that Putin is trying to rebuild what we often referred to as the "Iron Curtain" from the Soviet era.  This has been quite apparent in the way that he has gone after conflicts in several former Soviet republics in recent years.  As much as possible, he will try to make these "bloodless" takeovers.  He wants nominally friendly "puppets" in place for now.  That's all he needs.

Putin knows full well that the spectre of the cold war era has not been forgotten in the west.  If he can push things back to their old cold war footings, it allows him to play on a field that he knows very well.  The cold war situation serves Putins immediate and long term interests quite nicely.  It gives an enemy that he can "demonize" in much the same way that the Bush II presidency went after "terrorism" - the enemy is so abstract that you can accuse it of anything and nobody will call you out for it.  That allows Putin to "shadow box" with this enemy and look as if he is being a hero, which plays fairly well in Russia itself.

Rebuilding the "Iron Curtain" is another hero moment for Putin.  He can claim that he is taking Russia back to its grand status as the anchor of an empire, returning it to its former glory.

Is he likely to try invading across the north pole into Canada or Alaska?  I seriously doubt it.  The logistics of doing so are enormously complex, and there would be little to be gained compared to the costs of such an invasion and occupation.  The threat will be present, but for the same reasons that the old Soviet Union regularly flew heavy bombers over the pole.  It's easier for Putin to gain control over the old satellite states of the Soviet Union, and there is more political gain to be had for doing so.

In terms of the Ukraine itself, I expect Putin will end up splitting it, keeping the eastern third of the country which borders Russia itself, and allowing the remainder to align with the EU for now.  The one thing that will stay Putin's hand in this matter will be the political cost of trying to put down the uprising that has already begun in western Ukraine.  He can make an argument for taking control of the eastern portion of the country that would be at least moderately palatable to his allies on the world stage, and what he is taking over isn't something that the western powers would be terribly interested in trying to do anything about. 

Municipal Voters: Partisan Intervention is Coming Your Way

Did you mistakenly think that the Manning Centre's attempt to bend the 2013 Calgary municipal election to more "conservative" was an aberration?  You would be quite wrong.

The author of the Metro News article is considerably more charitable than I am about the matter - but then again, he was in Ottawa, not Calgary and didn't necessarily see the full breadth of the effort on the part of the angry right wing to twist the election.

When right-wingers from across the country huddled in Ottawa last weekend for the Manning Networking Conference, they understandably had their eye on the next federal election, but they also examined city politics and their perceived weakness there. 

One talk on the conference agenda was entitled, “How conservatives can succeed in the last bastion of the left – City Hall.” 

The title — and the talk — began from the assumption that the bicycle-riding, fancy-coffee-sipping socialist hoards by and large have a lock on city councils. ...

That's far from true, but what does happen at the civic level is that council decisions have a more direct impact on people's day to day lives than does a decision about interest rates in Ottawa, or Harper's rather naive and bellicose approach to foreign affairs.

Consequently, people tend to vote for councillors that actually do a good job of representing their local interests.  Whether that's ensuring that garbage gets picked up, or the snow is removed from the roads - political stripe doesn't usually matter to most people.

On the other side of the coin, apparently the far right thinks that they are imperilled somehow.

One might argue that as tax and spending cuts became orthodox at the other two levels of government, municipalities have had to step into the resulting gaps. And Ottawa had a right-leaning mayor not so long ago who vowed to hold the zero-means-zero line on tax increases — until reality caught up with him. 

Pantazopoulos allowed that conservative ideology as it’s articulated at the federal level may not filter down perfectly to Main Street: “What does smaller government really mean at the municipal level? Does it mean fewer roads get paved? Does it mean less snow gets cleared?” 

In city politics, he said, it’s more helpful to talk about supporting “market-oriented” candidates. That’s what the Manning Centre tried to do in Calgary’s elections last year with their Common Sense Calgary campaign.

"Market Oriented candidates"?  If you're as surprised by that mealy sounding term as I was when I first saw it, I can't blame you.  Once again, the far right is trying to sugar coat a turd.   In this case, the turd being a candidate who is on the political right wing, but madly running about trying to mask how far right wing they are, or what interest groups think they can control them.

The "Common Sense Calgary" thing was, fortunately, more or less a failure.  But it didn't fail because they weren't trying to get their message out - they spent hugely on advertising.  It failed because someone saw Cal Wenzel talking about trying to buy control over city council in the upcoming election via the Manning Centre and leaked it to the media.  People were expecting a bunch of Astroturfing to take place, and when it arrived, it mostly fell flat.

‘The idea was to really try and talk about some of the issues from a conservative perspective. And if you think that would be very harmless and that people would have no objection to that, you’re wrong,” said session moderator Monte Solberg, a former Conservative MP. “Mayor (Naheed) Nenshi was really quite outraged about all of this because it drew great scrutiny to his record.”

Well, actually the attempts to "scrutinize" Nenshi's record were not only blatantly partisan, they were full of lies to boot, and the Manning Centre's report on "council voting patterns" turned out to be a bunch of poorly analyzed statistics which really did not show what the far right claimed they did.

I don't think the Manning Centre/Developers did themselves any favours by having Jon Lord play the "angry old white guy" candidate for Mayor either.  He simply ended up looking stupid, especially when competing against incumbent Naheed Nenshi whose tireless work during the June flooding crisis had likely already won him the election entirely.  The real fight was to ensure that the developers didn't get their way with controlling the individual members of council.

But the Manningites also have some ideas about how citizens can use information technology to keep better tabs on city council. Researcher Jeromy Farkas crunched numbers from Calgary city council, from councillors’ attendance to the number of questions they ask staff to how often they vote with or against the majority. 

Some of the data’s meaning is open to interpretation. A councillor who asks a lot of questions may be keeping a skeptical eye on the bureaucracy, or just fond of the sound of his own voice. But the point is voters get more data to interpret. The Manning Centre intends to offer this analysis for other cities, including Ottawa, and that’s pretty cool.

 The problem is that these kinds of statistics aren't overly meaningful, especially the way that the Manning Centre went about the analysis.  It was clear enough that they were trying to interpret things to draw a particular picture.  As the old saying goes:  "There are 3 kinds of lies in the world:  Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics".  Like the Fraser Institute's "ranking" of schools, you have to realize that there is a political agenda being played out, and groups like the Manning Centre are pushing their agenda.  Examine their statistics very carefully, and interpret them with a healthy dose of skepticism.

One last reminder about the creeping partisanship in Canada's municipal politics:  The Fords in Toronto are very well connected to the federal CPC.  It is no big secret, or surprise, that Rob Ford received significant help from the CPC campaign machinery when he was last elected.  Further it is no surprise that we keep seeing the Fords using the same rhetorical practices that Harper has used.

This isn't healthy, it is ultimately undermining Canada's democracy at all levels.

C-23: The Theft Of Democracy Part VII

I've more or less gone as far with analyzing the text of C-23 myself at this point in time.  I'm sufficiently convinced that this legislation is nothing more than an overt move on the part of the Harper Conservatives to undermine Canada's democracy, and should be tossed in the garbage bin sooner than later.

However, it is also relevant to discuss the revised Section 44 of the legislation.

Harry Neufeld, who wrote a report on problems in the last federal election, is warning of the potential for more abuse at polling stations if one part of the government's proposed fair elections act goes ahead. 

Neufeld, B.C.'s former chief electoral officer and now an independent electoral management consultant, wrote the compliance review that identified polling problems in the 2011 election and made recommendations on how to fix them. 

He says Section 44 of the government’s new legislation would allow all central polling supervisors to be appointed by a riding's incumbent candidate or the candidate's party.
"It’s completely inappropriate in a democracy, " said Neufeld. 

Under current legislation, central poll supervisors are appointed by returning officers, who are hired by Elections Canada. The supervisors are put in place at polling stations to make sure voting unfolds smoothly.

I don't know about anybody else, but just like the objections I raised regard section 143(3.3), I see enormous problems with having the parties appointing _any_ electoral officials at the polling station level.  There is no need for this, and in fact it calls into question the very credibility of the voting system.  Political parties already have the right to appoint scrutineers to oversee the voting and vote counting processes.  That is as far as their involvement should go.  Anything more than that steps into the realm of electoral manipulation and fraud.

There are already enormous issues with C-23 that give the Harper Party far too much ability to manipulate the voting process as it is, having the right to appoint the staff who oversee the polling station just reeks of not just opportunism, but part of a larger strategy to engage in voter suppression.

Rex Murphy: We All Know You Are A Tory Hack ...

... now just shut up about it and let the grownups talk, please.

Talk about pathetic.  In a previous column, Murphy was emphatic about how he speaks to his own beliefs and none other.  While one might almost believe that, when Murphy's "own beliefs" sound suspiciously like talking points out of the PMO, Murphy's audience needs to get a little more suspicious.

Generally speaking, the idea of political parties blending forces, making deals with one another during elections, is not a sound one. Political parties have identities, and those identities emerge from their policies and history — and from their differences with other parties.

Hmmm...I've seen this before ... back in 2011 as I recall.  It was drivel back then, and it's drivel now.  Mr. Murphy needs to look around the world a bit more - you know to countries which have routinely had coalition governments for years.  One might, for example, point to Israel whose electoral system more or less ensures that there will never be a majority government.  I don't believe that any of the parties in the Israeli system have "lost their identity" as a result of participating in a coalition, although to be sure, the parties who get pulled into coalitions find themselves living out the old adage about "politics makes for strange bedfellows".

Such deals are, of course, the enduring dreams of parties without a hope. For example, Elizabeth May’s Green party has often nursed the hope of some “strategic” co-operation with the Liberals.  

Ah yes, let's drag out the absolutist language of winners and losers.  How very partisan of you Mr. Murphy.  Canadians are supposed to disregard the reality that we elect our representatives and send them to Ottawa to form a functional government - whether that is a majority, minority or coalition is really quite irrelevant.

We all remember the ructions from the last time a coalition was sprung on the public.  It was a mere six years ago, after the 2008 election.  A "coalition of losers" ... There was a horrified recoil from the idea, which offended mathematicians and Hansard devotees in equal numbers....Naturally the thinking part of the nation was outraged.  It had all the odour of an insider's deal and, as it turned out, Mr. Layton had gamed it before the elections and was later heard to brag about his tactical prescience.  Despite the backlash over the idea they pressed on.  The very power of the idea of foiling Stephen Harper was so string in those partisan hearts, they could not resist attempt to finesse an election they simply had not won. 

Wow.  Talk about repeating the talking points, Rex.  People who actually understand how our parliamentary democracy is supposed to work were not outraged at all.  In fact, the real outrage was that our graceless Prime Minister of the day had the audacity to claim that a coalition was somehow "undemocratic" - in spite of the fact that the opposition parties in fact represented a greater percentage of the Canadian electorate than did the governing Conservative Party.

The claim that a coalition is somehow "undemocratic" is absolute nonsense.  That's language the Harperites reserve for when they aren't at the head of the proposed coalition, as Harper demonstrated in 2004.

Mr. Murphy, if you truly believe the nonsense you are spouting, at least respect Canadians enough to not so obviously parrot the talking points that the PMO is handing out.  If you are just being a shill for the CPC, kindly do all of us the favour of announcing that you are going to run as Stephen Harper's lead fluffer in the next election - that way we'll all know exactly where you stand.

 

The Future Of The CPC

Andrew Coyne made an excellent point in his column about the Manning Networking Conference that the Manning Centre is hosting in Ottawa:

So this is what a Conservative convention looks like.  After that bizarre lockdown in Calgary last fall - reporters harassed and penned in at every turn, the prime minister's defiantly empty speech, the air heavy with self-congratulation and paranoia - the annual Manning Networking conference exudes an altogether different spirit:  thoughtful, open, introspective and conservative.
...
The party that met in Calgary was not so much the Conservative party as the Harper party.  It was run by and for Harper loyalist - think Pierre Poilievre - people who are happy to do whatever the leader wants done, say whatever the leader wants said, even if that means abandoning every core conviction the party has ever held.  In its place is Harperism, less an ideology than a set of behaviours:  the nastiness, the ruthlessness, the almost universal gracelessness, of which the decision to exclude opposition parties from the mission to Ukraine was only the latest example.

If you are looking at this and wondering if I've lost my marbles - I usually don't agree with much of anything that Coyne says.  Philosophically speaking, he and I live in different worlds.  However, he is very correct in saying that the CPC has very much become "The Harper Party".  This has been emerging since 2006, and since 2011 it has become much more pronounced.

Who is not here?  No one from the Prime Minister's Office, it appears, nor any member of the party hierarchy, nor any member of cabinet, other than those invited to speak.  The speaker's list, by contrast, features Jason Kenney, the Employment Minister; Brad Wall, the premier of Saskatchewan; Jim Prentice, the form Industry and Environment Minister; Michael Chong, the backbench MP and author of the Reform Act. 

It would be hard to categorize them as a group, except that they are all from outside the circle of Harperite hyper-partisans.  And they have not been shy about expressing their discontent with the party's direction, albeit in the coded indirect language that politicians employ when they do not want to be accused of disloyalty.

I've said for some time that Harper is a totalitarian, with healthy dashes of authoritarian and fascism thrown in good measure.

Mr. Prentice, for example, admonished Conservatives to "take back the environmental debate," saying "we cannot be in the business of providing our rivals with the opportunity to portray us as being out of touch" with environmental concerns. 

Sounds eminently reasonable, and in fact Mr. Prentice is one of the more reasonable members of the CPC.   That said while Mr. Coyne's article suggests a more reasonable wing of the party is meeting in Ottawa this weekend, there's a little more to it.

As PressProgress points out, the far right groups are very much in evidence too.  "WeNeedALaw.ca", Campaign Life (the people behind LifeSite News), Focus on the Family and The Institute of Marriage and Family Canada are all represented at this get-together.  There is no secret that Jason Kenney is closely affiliated with the "pro-life" social conservative wing of things (and was no doubt a key player in connecting these groups with the Manning Centre and its organizing committee for this conference).

Do not be fooled, once Harper's iron-fisted grip on the party weakens, I fully expect the coalition of fiscal and social conservatives that he has welded together by sheer force of will to once again start openly pushing for their particular agendas much more vocally.

Just because Harper has not been willing to open the Abortion debate, or touch gay marriage since 2006, does not mean that others are satisfied with that stance.  The far right desperately wants to push a social agenda forward that is just as insane as the Tea Party wing of the GOP is currently trying to sneak in.  I fully expect the upcoming prostitution law from MacKay will turn out to be a piece of "red meat" to the social conservative base.  It won't criminalize prostitution per se, but by criminalizing the consumption of paid sex, it will reinstate exactly the same conditions that made things dangerous under the laws the Supreme Court just struck down.

The post-Harper CPC may not be as authoritarian as Harper has been, but I would not be optimistic about it returning to the much more moderate roots of the PC party under more adult parliamentarians such as Joe Clark either.

Pat Buchanan: Civil Rights Laws Have Served Their Purpose

Wow.  I've known that Buchanan had long since fallen off the rhetorical cliff of the far right, but today's column is a real prize winner.

A radical idea: Suppose we repealed the civil rights laws and fired all the bureaucrats enforcing these laws. 

Does anyone think hotels, motels and restaurants across Dixie, from D.C. to Texas, would stop serving black customers? Does anyone think there would again be signs sprouting up reading "whites" and "colored" on drinking foundations and restrooms? 

Does anyone think restrictive covenants against Jews would be rewritten into contracts on houses? Does anything think that bars and hotels would stop serving blacks and Hispanics?

Having travelled in parts of the US, and long since learned that although the Civil Rights movement successfully broke down the legal barriers which stood between blacks and legal equality, the wounds of racial segregation still run deep in the national psyche on both sides.

Buchanan might think that civil rights laws have "run their course", but he is profoundly mistaken in his thinking.  I would suggest that the demonstrably uneven application of the so-called "stand your ground" laws and the laws being proposed in Arizona which create a hierarchy of rights with religion at the top are clear indications that the need for civil rights laws continues to exist.

And, indeed, some bigots might revert to type. But so what? 

Cannot a free people deal with social misconduct with social sanctions? 

And isn't this what freedom is all about? The freedom of others to say things we disagree with, to publish ideas we disbelieve in, even to engage in behavior we dislike?

As for the Christians of Arizona and same-sex unions in Arizona, if they don't like each other, can they not just avoid each other? After all, it's a big state. 

Funny.  I would imagine that more than a few people who have been on the receiving end of bigotry might just see it a little differently.  The couple that a baker refused to make a cake for comes to mind as an example, and yes, I can imagine the reappearance of signs in restaurants saying "No Service for ...".

The point is not that someone might publish something objectionable, or that a restaurant might decide to deny service to others.  Rather, it is that too often those tools have been used to marginalize and demonize other human beings.  If Buchanan truly understands the concepts of liberty, justice and equality, he will understand that there are those who will always try to limit the ability of others to access rights.

One wonders how long it will be until we start hearing this same argument from so-called "Free Speech Warrior" Ezra Levant?