A man is innocent until proven guilty, and it will be for a New York court to determine what happened in M Strauss-Kahn’s suite at the Sofitel. It may well be that’s he the hapless victim of a black Muslim widowed penniless refugee maid — although, if that’s the defense my lawyer were proposing to put before a Manhattan jury, I’d be inclined to suggest he’s the one who needs to plead insanity. Whatever the head of the IMF did or didn’t do, the reaction of the French elites is most instructive. “We and the Americans do not belong to the same civilization,” sniffed Jean Daniel, editor of Le Nouvel Observateur, insisting that the police should have known that Strauss-Kahn was “not like other men” and wondering why “this chambermaid was regarded as worthy and beyond any suspicion.” Bernard-Henri Lévy, the open-shirted, hairy-chested Gallic intellectual who talked Sarkozy into talking Obama into launching the Libyan war, is furious at the lèse-majesté of this impertinent serving girl and the jackanapes of America’s “absurd” justice system, not to mention this ghastly “American judge who, by delivering him to the crowd of photo hounds, pretended to take him for a subject of justice like any other.”
Well, OK. Why shouldn’t DSK (as he’s known in France) be treated as “a subject of justice like any other”? Because, says BHL (as he’s known in France), of everything that Strauss-Kahn has done at the IMF to help the world “avoid the worst.” In particular, he has made the IMF “more favorable to proletarian nations and, among the latter, to the most fragile and vulnerable.” What is one fragile and vulnerable West African maid when weighed in the scales of history against entire fragile and vulnerable proletarian nations? Yes, he Kahn!
Before you scoff at Euro-lefties willing to argue for 21st century droit de seigneur, recall the grisly eulogies for the late Edward Kennedy. “At the end of the day,” said Sen. Evan Bayh, “he cared most about the things that matter to ordinary people.” The standard line of his obituarists was that this was Ted’s penance for Chappaquiddick and Mary Jo Kopechne — or, as the Aussie columnist Tim Blair put it, “She died so that the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act might live.” Great men who are prone to Big Government invariably have Big Appetites, and you comely serving wenches who catch the benign sovereign’s eye or anything else he’s shooting your way should keep in mind the Big Picture. Yes, Ted Ken!
Nor are such dispensations confined to Great Men’s trousers. Timothy Geithner failed to pay the taxes he owed the United States Treasury but that’s no reason not to make him head of the United States Treasury. His official explanation for this lapse was that, unlike losers like you, he was unable to follow the simple yes/no prompts of Turbo Tax: In that sense, unlike the Frenchman and the maid, Geithner’s defense is that she wasn’t asking for it — or, if she was, he couldn’t understand the question. Nevertheless, just as only Dominique could save the European economy, so only Timmy could save the U.S. economy. Yes, they Kahn!
Mark Steyn, “The unzippered princelingand the serving wench”, Orange County Register, 2011-05-20
May 22, 2011
QotD: The rise of the “new aristocracy”
The Tory “omnibus crime legislation” overview
Kathryn Blaze Carlson looks at the likely form of the new federal government’s “tough on crime” omnibus bill:
The Conservative government’s omnibus crime legislation, due ‘‘within 100 days,’’ will mark a watershed moment in Canadian legal history, imposing many controversial changes to how police and the courts operate, experts say.
The bill is sweeping in scale and scope: It is expected to usher new mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes — growing five marijuana plants to sell the drug would automatically bring six months in jail — and for certain sexual offences against children. It will expand police powers online without court orders, reintroduce controversial aspects of the Anti-Terrorism Act that expired in 2007, end house arrest for serious crimes, and impact young offenders and their privacy.
“This bundle of crime legislation represents the most comprehensive agenda for crime reform since the Criminal Code was introduced,” said Steven Skurka, a Toronto-based criminal defence lawyer.
As always, when the government bundles together a lot of bills, there are some good and some bad ideas all headed down the chute at the same time. An especially bad bit is the preventative arrest provision that expired with the original Anti-Terrorism Act, and another one is the one allowing the police to demand internet records from ISPs without a court order (or, one assumes, notice to the people whose internet records are of interest to the police).
Apocalypse not-now: “I don’t understand it. Obviously I haven’t understood it correctly because we are still here”
The disappointed followers of Harold Camping are (as far as the media have been able to determine) still around, and there are no explanations yet from the prophet of doom:
The California radio evangelist attracted the worldwide following proclaiming that the apocalypse would come Saturday.
Some of Camping’s followers gave away all their worldly possessions in anticipation of the biblical rapture.
In Oakland, California a group of onlookers poking fun at the predictions gathered outside Camping’s radio station to countdown to the deadline.
Camping predicted an apocalypse once before in 1994 and said it was a “miscalculation.”
In New York City, 60-year-old retiree Robert Fitzpatrick was also a believer of Camping’s prediction.
Fitzpatrick said he was expecting a natural disaster. “We’ll I expected the earth quake to begin, right around 6:00.”
“I don’t understand it. Obviously I haven’t understood it correctly because we are still here,” Fitzpatrick said to the Associated Press.
Fitzpatrick is the author of, “The Doomsday Code,” and spent more than $140,000 of his retirement savings on ads about the end of the world.
Still, you have to feel a bit sorry for them: who among us hasn’t had the disappointment of a cancelled Camping trip on the May Two-Four weekend?
