Canada's King Solomons

It was very pleasant in the chambers of Judge Jestus. Amid the ambient whale songs coming through hidden speakers, a stereo played the song "Beautiful World" by Devo. When Tink Husbandblood, the judge's assistant, came in for him, Judge Jestus stood nude in his marble wading pool, his back to the door, arms raised, head bowed.

"Uh, Judge," Tink ventured tentatively.

The judge's body went rigid and he held up his right index finger.

Tink went to a mahogany throne Judge Jestus had had constructed in the likeness of King Solomon's throne as found in the Temple of Judah, and grabbed the towel hanging from one of its jutting, ornate flourishes. After a moment, the judge came out of the water and Tink daubed him dry.

"What adventures do I have today?" Judge Jestus said as Tink fitted the collar-and-tie bib around the judge's neck. Once clad in his black robes, the judge would appear to be wearing a shirt and tie, exuding the illusion that he was fully clothed beneath his judicial garb.

"Some vandalism, an assault, a few petty thefts, breaking and entering," Tink said.

The judge laughed. "You sound so glum!"

"Well, you're passing sentence today, sir," Tink said as he affixed shoes with sock-like booties to the judge's feet.

"Ah, everything will turn out all right," Judge Jestus said with a wink. "Just you wait and see!"

He and Tink walked to door leading to the courtroom. A few steps from the door, Judge Jestus suddenly dropped to one knee, bowed his head and clenched his eyes shut. "Lord, I pray that you give me the wisdom to temper justice with mercy. Amen."

"Amen," Tink echoed.

Outside the door the bailiff was telling everybody to stand so that the judge could tell them to sit down again. When Judge Jestus took his place at the bench, he beheld a courtroom filled with well-dressed people. Ah, if those wretched reporters and the even more wretched bloggers could only see the world from this vantage point for one minute, maybe all of the jaundiced vitriol they spewed about Canadian judges being soft on crime would dissipate like steam from the wading pool.

Judge Jestus turned his watery eyes toward the defendant: a slender man in an ill-fitting suit. He had sunken cheeks and angry eyes. The sight of the poor little ragamuffin reminded the judge of the Robbie Burns poem "To a Mouse", which he recited from memory in the alehouse each Burns Day.

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty
Wi bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murdering pattle.

The judge looked at the paperwork handed to him by Tink, which stated the defendant had vandalized his neighbor's car, bludgeoned his neighbor's dog with a broken step ladder, and then assaulted the neighbor.

Judge Jestus raised his eyes and regarded the ragamuffin once more. Pitiable little roustabout, he thought. Probably had himself a bad day. Probably feels that the world's all stacked against him. I don't need to look through these silly files to see that he has no education, no self-esteem. Why, I'd lay odds that neighbor of his goaded him into a confrontation. . . Ah well, I may as well make this look good.

"Would the defendant please rise," the judge said.

The defendant rose slowly, unsteadily to his feet.

"It's not nice hitting people," the judge began in a stern stentorian voice. "Hitting's not nice. But I have weighed the evidence carefully and I believe the odds of this defendant committing the same offense against the neighbor who lives right next door to him to be so remote that I sentence the defendant to six hours house arrest, to be served between the hours of midnight and six a.m.."

The judge banged his gavel, bringing on the next case.

The defendant was a nineteen year old girl charged with breaking and entering and theft. Says in this bloody file that the poor little waif's got a drug problem! the judge thought, glancing through his papers. Well, of course she's breaking and entering and stealing the property of others -- she's got a habit to feed! I've seen Reefer Madness, I know what it's like to have a monkey on one's back. He skimmed the file. Oh, well, ten other B&E offenses. This stray little kitten has just gone astray, that's all.

After requesting the defendant rise, Judge Jestus said, "Breaking and entering is bad. Stealing property that belongs to others is not nice. Do you want people to think you're not nice?" The waif made no answer; didn't even have it in her to shake her head. "No, I'd think not!" the judge continued. "I've weighed the evidence and believe that the odds of this defendant committing the same offense are so remote, I sentence the defendant to three days in jail -- suspended."

"You're honor, I must protest!" said the Crown attorney. "The Crown believes that some punishment is in order, given the fact that the defendant is a repeat offender!"

Judge Jestus turned his moist eyes in the direction of that tiresome little man. "One more outburst like that and I'll hold you in contempt!"

The bang of the gavel brought the next case.

The man who took his turn at the defendant's table looked like a tough cookie. He wasn't wearing a tie! He had clearly spent no time combing his bushy hair and he appeared to be unshaven. Judge Jestus looked at the defendant with a sense of wonderment that quickly melted into pity. Pathetic creature, he thought. Doesn't even have the wherewithal to look after his grooming. I'd bet a hot bath and a nice bowl of soup would rouse him out of that self-defeating trance!

The judge looked at the file before him. Clearly what he read was a misprint -- the file said the unkempt man was found guilty of Weapons Danger and Attempted Murder. Judge Jestus looked at the rapscallion once more. I'll have a word with the . . . whoever looks after these files! Can't even get their facts straight!

"I refer this matter for further adjudication," the judge said.

"Uh, your honor," the Crown attorney began, "This matter had been adjudicated."

"Well, I'm referring it back for further adjudication! Is that all right with you?"

"Your honor," the Crown attorney said in his patronizing tone. "The matter has been adjudicated adequately and the defendant is now here for sentencing."

Few times in his life had Judge Jestus been spoken to in such a hostile manner. He looked at the Crown attorney with a mix of bewilderment and fury. He rapped his gavel angrily. "Then I find the defendant 'Not Guilty'!"

"But your honor, you've already ruled on this case and found the defendant 'Guilty'."

"Did not!" Judge Jestus roared.

"I'm sorry, your honor, you did."

"Did not!"

"I'm sorry, but --"

The judge cut him off with a furious flurry of gavel-hammering. Judge Jestus jumped from his chair -- his chest suddenly hot; his cheeks flushed -- and bellowed "I demand a recess!" He turned and rushed into his chambers.

Right behind him was faithful Tink. As Judge Jestus threw himself into his King Solomon replica throne, Tink approached with the oxygen tank and mask. It had been days since he'd last required it -- right after he'd asked the court recorder for her bottle of Liquid Paper (because the judge had a file before him that was patently mistaken, stating that some harmless teenager had stolen a car) and she'd told him that she didn't have any. "Well, how in the name of Thor am I going to rectify this egregious clerical error?" the judge had yelled, his voice veering into the higher registers of hysteria . . . and then it was back into chambers, and the oxygen mask.

"I want . . ." the judge wheezed. ". . . that foul, foul man . . . stripped . . . and..." he couldn't continue.

"Just breathe, your honor," Tink said, hoping the omnipresent whale songs playing on the hidden speakers would do their soothing magic.


When the judge had regained his composure, he was led by Tink back to the bench. The sight of everyone in the courtroom standing upon his entrance made it that much easier. He paused for a moment before allowing them to sit down.

The next case before him was that of Jim Pitts, tried and convicted of arson. Judge Jestus was suddenly glad he'd been driven back into chambers for a sitdown and some oxygen. He knew this case. Ole Pitts had set fire to his apartment and ended up burning down the wretched little three-story rat-trap of a building. Nobody killed, nobody hurt. But it had been a few doors down from a jewelry stores owned by one of the judges shell corporations. He was fully insured and wouldn't have suffered a moment's inconvenience had the shop burned. But still, it might have. That had sent a jolt through Judge Jestus.

Fixing the defendant with his sternest expression, the judge commanded the miscreant to his feet. He would give this trouble-maker both barrels.

"Sir, you have committed a most grievous crime," the judge began. "Arson is not only not nice, it's very, very bad! You stand before me and before your community a bad-not-nice person." The judge waited a moment to see if the defendant would brace himself against the table after hearing such a harsh rebuke. The knave didn't even blink. Have it your way, the judge thought. Here it comes!

"You, sir, are hereby sentenced to thirty days in jail." He paused, sure the defendant would collapse. The hardened, rough-handed hound dog of a man just stood there. Made of stone, are you? "And two years probation. You have made your bed, now you must lie in it." The defendant was taken away, uttering ne'ery a protest or epithet. Deadened imbecile.

That evening, back at the judge's mansion, Tink fed him pureed bananas and butterscotch. Once ensconced within his oxygen tent and beneath his hypoallergenic duvet, Judge Jestus settled in as Tink read him a chapter from Private Troubles and Public Issues: Social Problems in the Postmodern Era, 1st Edition. When the chapter was finished, the judge yawned. "Please be sure to leave out my knitting needles when you go," he said.

"Certainly sir," Tink said, rising and turning out the light.

Two weeks later a package arrived at the jail for Jim Pitts. It contained an orange turtle neck sweater with a note and twenty dollars pinned to the front. The note read:

I hope orange is your color. I guessed at the size. Hope all is well.

Pitts tossed the note and sweater into the nearest garbage pail and pocketed the twenty dollar bill.

Canadian Judas-Prudence and its very real P.R. problem

My good friend, Pryvett Rawgers, recently said to me in reference to himself: "I do not court popularity." The same could be said for myself.

I recently posted a blog about my disgust and disappointment (and unabashed bewilderment) with the Canadian justice system -- which I refer to as "Judas-Prudence", an expression I got from Archie Bunker -- and posted a link to it on Reddit.com. The specific case I commented on involved a man who got high one night and in a fit of rage, set fire to his apartment, leading to the destruction of the entire building in which he lived. No one was killed, or even injured from what I know. For this act of arson, the man was sentenced to 30 days in jail and two years probation. This struck me as very, very light. Nowhere in my blog did I suggest the man be flogged or killed or jailed for 100 years. But for endangering the lives of numerous people, for the massive destruction of property he caused, it's my opinion the man should have been given at least a few years in prison.

Posting this on Reddit.com, I got what I was hoping for -- other opinions. And man, these were other opinions. Only five or six people read my blog and commented on it, but 100 percent of them sided with the arsonist and vilified me to varying degrees -- one going so far and delving so low as to suggest I read a social science book. The name-calling aside, and the questions about my intelligence and comments about my "high horse" aside, one thing remains clear: Canadian Judas-Prudence has a severe P.R. problem -- there are people like myself who do not feel well-served by our justice system.

My detractors in the Reddit.com post surmised that I have never "heard submissions" or "heard arguments made at the trial", both of which are true. I don't claim to be a lawyer or a judge, but I'd love to have heard the submissions and arguments in this arson case. I imagine Canadian judges existing in a parallel reality not unlike Jim Carrey's in the film The Truman Show, where everyone is polite and gracious and good; where people excuse themselves for farting even if they're alone in the house. And these judges are brought into our reality to hear cases and pass judgment.

I imagine defense lawyers going before these judges with expressions of gravity and sincerity, arguing and submitting, "Your Honour, my client had no choice in the matter of getting high on the night in question -- his girlfriend had recently left him, and the library was hounding him about late books that she had taken out on his card. While high, my client received a call from the library -- well, actually, he hallucinated a call from the library, but that's immaterial. And this call caused him great distress, distress to the point where my client believed -- actually believed that Satan Himself was in the room with him. Well, my client merely fell back on age-old wisdom he'd heard since he was a child: 'Fight fire with fire.' Since Satan's home is Hell, and Hell is fire --"

Crown Attorney jumps to his wing-tipped feet. "Objection your Honour! Hell is fire and brimstone. Let the record reflect that is not just fire!"

"It shall be so noted," the judge intones. To the defense attorney, the judge says, "Please continue."

"Thank you your Honour. As I was saying, my client believed he was being confronted by Satan Himself and sought to battle the Prince of Darkness with fire -- by burning up all of the underwear that his former girlfriend had yet to come back and claim. My client then sought to flee Satan and the fire, and the apartment unit became a conflagration, spreading to the rest of the building . . . I won't bore you with the details."

To which the judge finally passes judgement: "Although the defendant was battling Satan Himself while already suffering great emotional strain, I cannot overlook the loss of property, the endangerment of citizens and fire personnel. For this reason, I have no option but order the defendant be confined to a penal institution for a period of thirty days, as well as two years probation." After which the judge shakes with the adrenalin rush of wielding such god-like power.

The point of my blog was that as a layman, Canadian judges' handling of criminals does not make sense to me. I understand mitigating circumstances, I don't propose that defendants in court be given ten-minute trials and then be thrown in front of firing squads. I can understand everything about the trial process (as I demonstrate above) -- except the sentences judges hand out to criminals.

Some examples of what I'm talking about (by no means complete or exhaustive; it's the merest smattering):

Meet Pedophile DALE OSWALD

Ontario a man who was convicted of sexually assaulting a woman was given a sentence of thirty days house arrest

Out-of-touch Judges are to Blame for the Toronto Shooting?

A woman who admitted to concealing her pregnancy and later placing her newborn baby in a garbage bag was spared further jail time Thursday.

Canada Judas-prudence is based on clairvoyance

I don't live and work in a vacuum. When I'm curious about something, I ask others what they think about it. Everyone and anyone I've personally spoken to about Canadian court cases in the news, especially when a sentence has been announced, has expressed the opinion that the sentences are not only weak and lacking, but grossly lenient. Among the people I've spoken to are street cops. These are the people who catch the criminals, and often at great personal risk. Yeah, it's their job; they knew what they signed up for.

Law and order, a justice system, is the foundation of society. If people don't have any satisfactory recourse when crimes are committed against them, great roads, titanium sewers and world class schools don't mean much. Humanity has proven the honor system is dead. Fine. That's why we have laws. The laws are great. I remember taking a high school law class and hearing the maximum penalty for breaking and entering was life in prison. I thought to myself, Holy shit! I guess I won't be breaking and entering anywhere! Laws are great, but they're useless if they are not enforced, or are enforced in the most weak-kneed, wincing, hand-wringing way.

The startling thing I learned today was that there are people who are not only satisfied and happy with laughably lenient jail sentences, they're quite willing to defend the seemingly indefensible. As mentioned above, I do not court popularity. Clearly, my ideas about right and wrong and the need for deterrence in a judicial system are completely out of step with some of my fellow Canadians.

It would be interesting to put all these lofty, philosophical social science adherents to the test. I wonder how magnanimous they would be if the deities deigned that I stay in the same hotel in which they were staying one night. And if I were to get high at some point during the night -- not only high, but also very angry. And, if I somehow set fire to the hotel with such proficiency that everyone had to flee and all of their possessions were burned up (though with no one being harmed). And if I received 30 days in jail for my efforts. As a writer, I'd almost consider that a working vacation, though I'd insist on paying for my meals in jail so that I could claim them on my income tax.

Who needs the Magna Carta or the Code of Hammurabi when we've got social science books?

Update

After reading the comments posted on my Reddit.com link about the 30 day jail sentence given to a Canadian arsonist, not a single commenter offered a coherent justification for such a lenient sentence. Commenters offered insults, but no reasoned arguments why a person who purposely burns down an apartment building received a month in jail. So, I'm left to conclude that it was only a gaggle of cranks who fell upon my post; people who root for criminals. Which they're free to do, but Canadian Judas-Prudence's PR problem remains. Cheering for criminals is not the same as explaining or justifying the noxiously lenient sentences Canadian judges hand out.

I believe the most insulting commenter is either a pimpled 19 year old idealist who thinks the world has been explained in his first sociology class, or he's a 45 year old anal retentive who irons his underwear. Either way, he was uninteresting and gave no evidence to being the least bit informed about anything. But that's the Web.

Canada's Dragon Den -- The Pit of Businessman Cliches

"Mean TV" is all the rage. Simon Cowell has made a career out of being an irredeemable cocksucker. Judge Judy has become a celebrity by demonstrating, episode after tiresome episode, that she's an irredeemable cunt. Show me a show where there are judges or a "panel" of some kind, and I'll show you a gaggle of shitheads working out their adolescent hostility because they weren't picked for the yearbook staff or didn't make the wiffle ball team in high school.

Enter CBC's The Dragon's Den on which Canadian inventors and entrepreneurs, as well as crackpots and morons take the stage, show their wares, air their money-making ideas, in hopes of impressing the panel of "dragons" -- successful Canadian business people -- to give them substantial dollars in venture capital.

I normally hate such shows, but found this one morning while channel surfing and thought it would be cool to check out some of the inventions and business ideas of ordinary Canadians. What I found, instead, was a painful, awful showcase of all that's worst and most hated about business people.

Right off, watching The Dragon's Den is like watching a series of job interviews. Yeah, there's something terrible and morbidly compelling about that, but if I want the morbidly compelling, I'll go to Rotten.com. On The Dragon's Den, I wanted to see some Canadian ingenuity. I didn't find any. What I did encounter was unneeded evidence that Canada's wealthy and successful can be just as shallow and nasty as people of wealth from anywhere else in the world. I wasn't seeking, and sure didn't need that confirmation. Having money doesn't make a person an asshole, but people with money are often all too happy to demonstrate their proficiency at being assholes. It's a rule like Occam's Razor.

Although the Plebeian money-seekers come out smiling and hopeful, some cocky, most deluded, most amiable and eager to please, they are uniformly received by the "dragons" as the producers had told the panel off-camera that each entrepreneur had raped the dragons' mothers and ate the dragons' family pets, raw, on a baguette.

I realize the name of the show is the The Dragon's Den and not Petting Zoo or Cavalcade of Tickling and Cookies, so the panel is doing their best to appear and conduct themselves in a manner deemed by the CRTC as "dragon-like", but really, they're only acting like a gaggle of douche-bags I usually have the misfortune of standing behind in line at Starbucks; who berate a barista for fifteen minutes because their Pseudo-Double-Spritz-Half-Caf-Soy-Sprinkle-Pedanticcino, had 0.002 less sprinkles on it than the one they had on Bloor Street four months ago. And then they proceed to pay for the $17.47 drink with a debit card that won't swipe.

Rather than being a showcase of Canadian entrepreneurship and innovation and screw-ball-invention, The Dragon's Den is a venal pageant of cuntery and douche-baggery. Doing their best, feeble impressions of the socially retarded talking heads on their favorite business TV shows, the "dragons" are forever snarkily interrupting the Plebeian presenters with sarcastic questions, acerbic, humorless guffaws and an assortment of other rude, parliamentary grunts, huffs and groans. When they're not asking questions-- like "Did a stupid tree fall on you as a kid and puncture your brain with stupidness?" -- they're being outright insulting, simply saying the Plebeian presenter's idea sucks.

I'm all for blunt feedback. I'm all for the unvarnished truth. But the The Dragon's Den offers cliched vitriol, middle-school snark and a solid gold example of rich people in love with their money, in love with themselves, doing what they do best: conducting themselves as complete and utter fucksticks. The Dragon's Den is a bunch of angry millionaires; that group in society with which more ordinary, television-watching people can relate and empathize: My gosh, the responsibility and weight of being a person so great that you've actually swindled, insider-traded, and bullied to get. The weight of being so important! Right.

Hey, if you're loaded and you've got some putz hitting you up for money, turn him down. It's your money; that's your right. If the putz gets pushy, sure enough give him the executive brush-off. If the putz is nasty, tell him to fuck off. But all this angry millionaire bullshit, all of this hating others because they're not as rich or dynamic or cutthroat and sleazy as you are to make a fortune is about as entertaining as Amish porn.

Dragons, you're assholes. You've got money. Great. You've some heartwarming "rags to riches" stories. Wonderful. Too bad you forgot what it is to be human beings. By the time you pass from this world into the next, I hope some investment bank or mutual fund manager has figured a way to send your assets with you. Because, left to your charm, charity and humanity, you're fucked.

In the meantime, I'll look for you in the line at Starbucks and hope that you're all audited by Revenue Canada in 2009.

Dion Debacle -- The Liberal Party is trying to press Play, but is stuck on Pause

How Dion's address went horribly wrong

A Canadian voter's note to The Liberal Party

Excellent work on the Stephane Dion's address to the nation the other night! Are there no adults supervising you? Is there no one among you who is even the least media or technology savvy? Or, do all Liberals have VCRs at home with the time flashing 12:00?

Regarding the debacle of Mr. Dion's address, he is quoted as saying, "I was the most angry of anyone." That's not true. No one is more angry than the Canadian people watching a horde of monkeys fucking footballs attempting to derail our government.

I don't like Stephen Harper, and for this reason I resent the Liberal Party immensely because it's pushing me toward Harper's party. I think public funding of political parties should end -- yesterday. It wasn't until Mr. Harper spoke about this funding that I even knew it existed. Many people I know were in the same boat.

The Liberal Party is the party of corruption, patronage, incompetence, no accountability and higher and higher and ever higher taxes. The Liberal Party is a non-starter.

Mr. Dion's address to the nation -- and it's ridiculous, inexcusable lateness and its laughably poor quality -- communicated more to the Canadian public than any speech the Liberal Party could cobble together.

My recommendation is that you all give up and go home. Clearly, no one in the Liberal Party has a clue about what's going on.

Eh?-Coup-Tay Liberal Party -- No More Dions

A Canadian voter's note to The Liberal Party

You are the party of Jean Chrétien, a hated, duplicitous politician who handed off the ugly end of his leadership to a bumbling, bewildered Paul Martin. After all the breaches of trust, after all of the scandals the Liberal Party has brought Canada, you then select as your leader the inarticulate, deer-in-headlights Dion. I've heard from people I trust that Dion is a brilliant man. Bogus. Truly brilliant people can articulate their brilliant ideas so that the less brilliant can understand. If an auto mechanic is worth anything, he can make me -- who is utterly ignorant about the workings of auto mobiles -- understand what is wrong with my car.

The Liberal Party proposes a Green Tax. Wonderful. As if Canadians are not burdened enough with taxes. Dion traveled the country looking as though he expected to be swept up onto citizens' shoulders for proposing a new tax. "It is green!" he trumpeted. Yeah "green" is in at the moment, but taxes never are.

Offsets, you say. The green tax would be accompanied by offsets? Right. And Jean Chrétien once promised to repeal the GST. You wave that away, I have no doubt, as one trifling example of a minor miscalculation -- and that's why your efforts to regain power continue to fail. The Liberal Party has a serious credibility gap that it's not addressing. We don't believe you. That's an important consideration -- probably the most vital facing the Liberal Party, and I don't think you're taking it seriously. I don't believe the Liberal Party has the maturity, integrity, or the insight for the kind of self-reflection it needs to do.

Personally, I hate the Harper government. Steven Harper's "every man for himself" brand of conservatism is an abomination. His distaste for the arts is inexcusable. His devotion to big business is ugly and unacceptable. His religiosity is intolerable.

And yet I prefer seeing him in power at this moment than the Dion-led Liberals.

Are you getting the picture?

Canadians are sick of Liberal hypocrisy, entitlement, patronage and especially the total lack of accountability the Liberal Party represents.

Now, as you seek Dion's successor, I can't wait to see the walking wounded you choose as leader. Is there no one in the Liberal Party with any sort of vision that rises above "tax! tax! offset! tax!"? Is there not a single Liberal who possesses charisma? Your Christmas parties must be murder! I'll tell you, I see no use for a political party that stores its brilliance within inarticulate, gray-upon-gray politicians who have all the charisma and personality of a parking meter; someone so dense and detached as to think a carbon tax "with offsets" would be embraced by a populace exhausted and outraged by the level of taxation it already suffers and the requisite incompetence and carelessness with which those taxes are wasted.

As the Knight Templar says to Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: "Choose wisely."