Not this namby-pamby “assault” euphemism that it’s called today? Perhaps the reason sentences are so light is because we stopped using the offensive language to describe the heinous crimes.

I am taking this Toronto Star article and reprinting in full, to allow you to see just how much dancing around the facts is done to protect the easily offended, and how it ends up skewing the verdict and sentencing:

A young Mississauga man convicted yesterday of sexual assault disgraced himself and his family when he used his 16-year-old victim as his “personal plaything,” a judge said yesterday.

But by pleading guilty, Barton Reeder saved the girl from the pain of having to testify at a trial, Justice James Keaney said.

“I’m satisfied this was a one-time error in judgment, albeit of staggering proportions,” Keaney told Reeder, 19, before sentencing him in a Brampton courtroom to a 21-month conditional sentence, including house arrest for the first year.

Reeder pleaded guilty to one count of participating in a sexual assault with Philip Perry, also 19, an offence often described by police as a gang assault, in connection to an incident that occurred in the early hours of Feb. 25, 2007, at a Mississauga home.

Perry pleaded guilty to the same offence last month and received the same sentence.

Two youths remain before the court and appear headed for trial next year in connection with the case that attracted intense media and Facebook coverage when the arrests occurred.

The specific roles of the two convicted men — and the alleged participation by the youths – remain under a publication ban until evidence is presented at the youths’ trials.

Reeder, now attending college, refused to say anything before being sentenced.

But Keaney warned him he would be imprisoned if he broke any of the numerous court-ordered conditions imposed on him as well as on Perry previously.

The youths were 17 at the time of the incident. Their identities as well as the name of the victim remain protected by Canada’s youth laws along with any information that could lead to their identities.

Crown prosecutor Carrie Stoddart and Reeder’s lawyer Barry Fox yesterday submitted a joint submission on sentencing, which Keaney accepted.

At the time of the arrests, Peel police alleged the rape of the young girl had been videotaped on a cellphone and then shown to various students in the cafeteria of the victim’s high school.

Police also previously revealed that alcohol was involved and that the victim was unconscious and never knew she’d been sexually assaulted until the video of the incident surfaced at the school.

Following the first year of house arrest, Reeder will be under a strict 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew for the remaining nine months.

He can leave home for one hour, three times each week for physical activity and three hours each weekend for personal shopping.

He can also leave for employment, school and health reasons.

He must also attend counselling and perform 100 hours of community service.

Perry is attending university so his house arrest is served in his dormitory, court previously heard.

Both were ordered to submit DNA samples. Their names have been put on Ontario’s sexual assault registry.

Disgusting. The gang-RAPE of a young girl is euphemized beyond recognition, till it sounds as if she merely had her pigtails pulled in the schoolyard. Her RAPE is videotaped and broadcast, further humiliating her. And her RAPISTS get house arrest and counseling? Heck, why don’t they just get a slap on the back from the boys club, and a cool “Atta boy!”?

Justice James Keaney must not have children, or must be a bit of a sadist himself, to take this so lightly. A “one-time error in judgment”?? A girl was gang-RAPED! He is neither “Honourable” nor “Just” for these actions he has taken in punishing RAPISTS. And for the Crown to be party to this sentencing request means that this girl never had anyone on her side.

The law is an ass if we have asses practicing it. Whatever happened to lynchings, anyway?

So OJ Simpson is guilty of this bullshit robbery charge. Good. Let the rioting ensue, and let it last through Obama’s defeat in November.

In way more important news, my review of American Carol is up over at Right Pundits. Friend Krista tells me that it wasn’t playing in Toronto. Color me shocked. I hope she got in the Jeep and drove to Buffalo to see it.

The socialist powers-that-be chased the Guardian Angels out of town when they sought to set up a chapter in Toronto. We, the residents of the ailing city, were told that we don’t need such tyrants and goose steppers patrolling our streets. And so the predictable panacea of social funding for basketball courts and crack kits was provided, and the city continued to die.

Till now. Chinatown has had enough of addicts, whores and panhandlers dirtying up its streets, stealing from its businesses, and scaring away its customers. And for the last two weeks, Chinatown has been employing a private security company to do what the police won’t do: Deal with petty crimes.

So far more than two dozen “banning orders” have been issued against disruptive undesirables, reported Ross McLeod, president and CEO of Intelligarde, the company patrolling the neighbourhood. Several intoxicated individuals have been carted off by police or ambulance, and he said numerous aggressive panhandlers have been “dealt with” by his employees.

“The last guy we arrested in Chinatown had lost control of his bowels, let me say, and was covered in his own feces but he would not stop aggressively panhandling,” reported Mr. McLeod, adding that responding police officers weren’t all that happy to have to take the person off his employees’ hands.

“For the low-level disorder, the public police just don’t have time for that unless it escalates into something much more serious.”

It isn’t just Chinatown, either. Liberty Village, Emery Village, Downtown Yonge Street and Kennedy Road in Scarborough all use either security firms or off duty cops. Why? Because petty crimes, vandalism, drug and alcohol abuse and panhandling are all problems if you’re trying to run a business. They may seem like small fry to the cops and commissioners, as well as the mayor, but to the residents and business owners, these “broken windows” only serve to make their areas a little worse every day.

Naturally, the mayor has a better idea:

Mayor David Miller said this week that he would prefer to see city staff such as social workers called in to deal with panhandlers and homeless people so that they can be referred to the proper support services.

Social workers. Yup, that’ll do it. When the next vagrant shits himself on the sidewalk, some social worker can come along to help him rebuild his self-esteem. One can only hope she’ll offer him a clean tissue in the process.

And the unions are pissed off, too:

Dave Wilson, the president of the union representing uniformed officers, has complained that private, lesser-trained employees taking over duties historically delegated to police is “lowering the standards in the policing world,” and “a dangerous slippery slope.”

No Dave. The standards have already been lowered so much, that private citizens are having to raise them up themselves. They’re not waiting for your union boys to do it for them. And that just rips your knitting, doesn’t it?

For two years, a Brooklyn thug sat in an Oregon jail awaiting trial for a coldblooded murder, and all the fat felon could think about was food - a bucket of greasy chicken, a mouthful of lasagna, a slice of pizza.

So when prosecutors offered to buy Tremayne Durham, 36, a fast-food buffet in exchange for a guilty plea that would land him behind bars, likely for the rest of his life, he bit right in.

Durham’s insatiable need for greasy food - which included gorging on KFC and Popeye’s chicken, mashed potatoes, coleslaw, carrot cake, along with a pizza, two calzones, lasagna and ice cream - cost Oregon taxpayers only $41.70.

Durham is a man who has problems saying no to his impulses.

Sometimes it’s just too easy.

Mayor Miller is clutching a petition in his greedy, sweaty little palm, to have handguns banned in Canada. Ninety percent of the people who signed it are from Toronto, where gun ownership among law abiding residents is low. However, gun crime is high, especially in social housing and areas with a high proliferation of black, fatherless boys. Why not ban Jamaicans instead? After all, a gun sitting on a table is highly unlikely to kill anyone, even by accident. But a gang-banger who perceives “disrespect” will shoot first and not bother asking questions later.

Ontario went ahead with a pitbul ban - a specific breed of dog was singled out for genocide. C’mon Ontario - show us you really mean it with the gun ban. Go ahead, you soft-bellied, bike-riding, electric-car-buying, soy-munching city folk: Stand up and ban that what threatens you: The Jamaican. It makes a helluva lot more sense than banning an inanimate object.

Ah, but to do so would expose the mild city folk of Toronto for what they really are: A bunch of NIMBYs who know what the problems are but are too politically correct and inert to address them. More social housing! they cry. More basketball courts! (which is by far one of the most racist things I have ever heard). Yet, never in their lovely manicured neighborhoods. Hey, I hear ya - I don’t wanna live next door to some hair-trigger black boy with daddy issues and a chip on his shoulder, either. But I try to be honest about it.

C’mon, Toronto - step it up! You’ve already convinced the black community to go back to segregation, something we thought had gone the way of the Dodo a looong time ago. You’ve got them setting up separate black schools inside already existing white schools, so they can have separate entrances and their very own water fountains. And you even convinced them that it was their idea in the first place! Surely you can convince them to commit genocide on themselves. I mean, we’re already halfway there anyway, with the amount of shootings and stabbing that take place on any given weekend. Surely your solution is more guns, not less?

Good luck, Toronto, with this sticky little problem. But really, can’t you find a way to keep us law-abiding folk out of your little social engineering project? We have more important things to do.

If you are contributing to the economy and enjoying a quiet meal, you will be removed and perhaps arrested. If you are passed out in the street in a pool of your own vomit, surrounded by your dirty needles and used condoms, you will be protected.

WTF?

Starting immediately, uniformed and plainclothes police will routinely patrol restaurants to kick out known criminals.

The Restaurant Watch program is similar to the bar patrols police already do to weed out undesirables, Supt. Warren Lemcke said.

“It is to send a clear message to people involved in organized crime and gang activity they are no longer welcome,” said Lemcke.

Sounds good on paper, I suppose, but when Vancouver announced this yesterday, the whole thing becomes a farce.

The complaint filed against the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association and Civil City commissioner Geoff Plant claims the program, established in May, 2000, to patrol the downtown area and address “street disorder,” further marginalizes a population that already struggles with poverty, addiction and disabilities.

The complaint asserts that by telling people sleeping or loitering on the street to “move along,” and by identifying and monitoring “undesirable” people, the security guards acting as downtown ambassadors impair the dignity of aboriginal people and people with disabilities who comprise a disproportionate number of the city’s homeless and addicts, and deny them equal access to public space.

So now some thug gets tossed from a restaurant (providing he goes in at all, given the signage) and that restaurant burns down under mysterious circumstances a few nights later. No skin off the thug, who had nothing more than a brief moment of embarrassment to deal with, while the poor restaurant owner loses his livelihood. Nice.

And while Fat Tony is figuring out where to get his next dose of Marinara, people shopping or pushing strollers have to contend with streets covered in filth, drunken harassment, puddles of biohazard and much more. All in time for the world to watch during the 2010 Olympics. Not to mention that those on the streets are once more left on the streets, instead of being put in rehab or social housing (which these poverty pimps are forever going on about, just to keep themselves in a job. no good for them to be on the streets!). And Fat Tony gets a little bit richer keeping the indigent hooked on his crack.

Excellent planning, folks.

Who is Stephen Truscott? He is a Canadian man who spent more than a decade in prison for a murder he did not commit. He has been a convicted murderer since he was just 14 years old. And now, because he was wrongfully convicted, his payout will be $6.5 Million.

Who is Maher Arar? He is a Canadian citizen of Syrian descent. He still hold Syrian citizenship. He was suspected of terrorist involvement, extradited to the U.S., who in turn sent him back to Syria. He claims he was tortured there. His payout was $10 Million. There are still suspicions regarding his ties to terrorism.

Fair?

Good gawd, how long before Cynic does something like this?

A man has been charged with killing a former soldier allegedly attacked on a bus after telling thugs not to swear in front of a lady.

Stan Dixon, 60, had been fighting for life since the attack on Saturday but died in hospital yesterday, police revealed today.

A 23-year-old man initially arrested on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm with intent has now been charged with the murder.

Mr Dixon, renowned for his traditional values, was travelling home with his 41-year-old partner on Saturday evening when he heard the group’s bad language.

He asked them to refrain from swearing in front of a woman - but the couple were met with a torrent of abuse.

To avoid any further confrontation, they decided to get off at an earlier stop than they had planned.

But as they stood at the doors of the bus, which was nearing Mr Dixon’s home in Horden, County Durham, two of the gang allegedly pushed him in the back.

The father of three fell forwards off the bus, on to the road where he collapsed unconscious with major head injuries.

Admittedly, I swear like a sailor in conversation. I know I shouldn’t. But I’m not going to kill anyone over it.

Didn’t we ban guns in Toronto? Surely these people heard about David Miller’s ban on guns!

At least six gunshots were fired into a ground-floor apartment in the city’s west end early this morning.

An 11-year-old boy, a 24-year-old man and a 35-year-old woman were inside the unit at 3735 Dundas St. W., near Scarlett Rd., around 1 a.m. when the shots were fired, Toronto police Staff Sgt. Mark Tilley said.

Someone from the unit frantically called police and once they arrived, no suspects were found, but bullet holes were found inside the apartment.

No one was injured.

“This is still fresh and it’s being actively investigated by our detective office,” he said.

Police are still investigating a similar case that occurred May 25.

An unknown number of suspects stood outside a townhouse complex and fired into three homes on Orpington Cr., near Finch Ave. and Albion Rd.

No one was hurt in that case either.

Wow, these guys couldn’t hit water if they fell out of a boat! If only they had some place to practice…

Criminals may generally be less intelligent than the rest of us (barring some serial killers, who have frighteningly high IQs), but even they have figured out that when you ban guns, there is always something else that can be used to kill.

The Metropolitan Police Commissioner has vowed to step up police efforts in combating knife crime in the wake of the death of 16-year-old Ben Kinsella.

Speaking at City Hall, Sir Ian Blair said the community needed to reach out to teenagers and their parents.

Sir Ian expressed his “deep sadness” at the death of the teenager and said the death would see police “rededicate efforts to stop others dying”.

He re-emphasised his support for the London Mayor Boris Johnson’s overall approach, but said some factors went beyond policing.

Sir Ian said: “We need as the whole community of London to reach out to young people and their parents to get rid of the knives on our streets and provide them with alternatives to crime and gang membership.”

The folks at Henckels could not be reached for comment.

So, previous pantywaist governments in the UK have banned guns. There are still shootings. And now, the bulk of young criminals weild knives, which the current pantywaist government will try to ban.

Personal story: When I was living in Glasgow, I walked out to the shops one drizzly afternoon, only to be witness to one drunken thug being chased by another knife-wielding drunken thug (he actually stooped to put down his bottle of Buckfast) along Argyle Street. A little old lady standing near me clutched her throat and said something about should we call the police. I shook my head, and reminded her that this was a problem that was clearly taking care of itself. If one thug wants to kill another thug, then excellent! We will be less one thug! But when they start stabbing random classmates and mugging people on the street, it becomes everyone’s problem (and it shouldn’t just be because the dead kid is some soap opera star’s kid brother, either). And I just don’t think registering your steak knives will be the answer.

Operation Blunt 2 was introduced by Sir Ian Blair in response to the recent number of killings, particularly among teenagers, in London.

I have no idea what Operation Blunt 1 was, but I have this image of cops running around London with stones to dull the blades of criminals’ knives!

Toronto will never have crime again! I’m so excited! At long last, the murders will end, the sirens will be silenced, and candy gumdrops will grow on money trees.

After a long, at times bitter and widely diverging debate, Toronto city council passed a series of measures to stamp out gun violence this afternoon by a two-thirds margin.

The 31-9 vote was a victory for Mayor David Miller, who had championed the steps in order to give the city the moral authority to push other levels of government to get tough on gun crime after council voted strongly in April to ask Ottawa to enact a national handgun ban.

We’ll all sleep soundly from now on. Those pesky target shooters and gun collectors are going DOWN!

Yeah right.

2 men fatally shot in random attack in Toronto: police

This is Toronto. Our shootings are rarely “random” here. I was downtown at a friend’s last night, and heard the sirens. Another bloody night in the city. I am still rather under the weather today, so I will let one of my betters do the opining.

As for stuff in the news…. Those damn Americans have killed two more Torontonians.

Two fine fellas were sitting in an SUV last night, minding their own business, I’m sure on their way home from their university course on space administration and aeronautics when they were gunned down for absolutely no reason.

They had really turned their lives around, but then it all comes to an end because those damn Americans keep shipping guns up here. If Americans would stop doing that, we would probably have no murders at all in Toronto because everybody is nice and wonderful and squeaky clean with the best of intentions.

If only more people would listen to Mayor Miller, things would be a lot better.

My theory is that someone set up a deer blind on the corner of Richmond and Niagara, and just weren’t very good at aiming. Those pesky hunters…

A couple of years back, some friends of mine convinced me to start a MySpace page. I don’t think I’ve looked at it in more than a year. I felt then - and feel now - that MySpace exists for Indie bands, Muslim extremists, and pedophiles. Seems there’s a market for mass murderers, too.

The discovery that Canada’s most notorious serial child-killer has a MySpace web page was met with outrage and disgust Tuesday night.

Clifford Olson, who terrorized the Lower Mainland in the early 1980s, is more than 25 years into a life sentence for killing 11 young boys and girls.

I have told my friends, parents of young tweens and teens, to keep an eye on their MySpace usage. It’s a haven for assholes. And it just got a little uglier.

While in B.C. Pen in 1974, sexually attacked a 17-year-old fellow inmate. After being released he indecently assaulted a 7-year-old girl in Nova Scotia. This was the beginning of his sexually deviant and murderous criminal activity.

On Wednesday morning Ralph Whitfield Morris, 73, became the second prisoner in the past two weeks with a history of escaping from custody to be placed in a minimum-security jail and to simply walk away.

“Staff discovered [Morris] missing during the early morning hours,” said Dave Lefebvre, a spokesman for Corrections Canada.

Morris has a lengthy criminal record with convictions including:

* Second-degree murder in 1982
* Armed robbery in 1975
* Escaping from custody in 1988, 1990, and 1993

Prison officials defended the decision to put Morris in minimum security.

“Every offender that presents a low risk to public safety is allowed in a minimum-security institution,” said Lefebvre.

But in 2005, the parole board wrote a report on Morris, saying, “You have been shot by police… you are still considered a high risk to escape.”

Even then, the Parole Board granted him parole and later revoked it when he failed to return to a community residential facility.

Incredible. Bureaucratic procedure that says “every prisoner gets” has allowed not one but two murderers to escape from minimum security facilities in the past month. Why even have a parole board if all cases get cookie-cutter treatment?

It was a similar story less than two weeks ago, when Blane MacDougal, a 60-year-old convicted rapist and killer, walked away from Ferndale Institution near Mission. He has yet to be found.

Wonderful. You could put shaved monkeys in charge of the prison system, and you’d still have a pretty decent shot at faring better.

A 17-year-old boy was rushed to St. Michael’s Hospital today after he was stabbed multiple times on the basketball court of a downtown high school.

Police say the boy was stabbed in the schoolyard at Parkdale Collegiate on Jameson Ave. just before noon.

The boy will survive, but sadly, the irony will be lost.

Jamaica poor ‘at mercy of gangs’

Jamaica’s poor have been abandoned by the government and left to the mercy of violent criminal gangs, Amnesty International says in a new report.

Jamaica has one of the region’s highest murder rates, with 1,500 homicides in 2007 and 272 police killings.

“Criminal gangs… keep thousands of people living in constant fear,” Amnesty’s Fernanda Doz Costa said.

The human rights group urged Jamaican authorities to address the underlying causes of what it said was a “human rights crisis”.

It said the government should act to reduce murder rates, introduce human-rights based policing and reform the judicial system.

Clearly they need more basketball courts and afterschool prgrams.

More proof that Canadians have “polited” themselves into docility.

A gang of 10 teenagers violently robbed scores of subway commuters yesterday afternoon during the peak of commuter rush hour.

The youths, all aged about 15, robbed numerous people — sometimes punching victims in the face — between 4 and 6 p.m. in the stairwells and platforms at stations along the Bloor St. and Yonge St. lines.

In Toronto rush hour, there are thousands of people teeming through the subway system. You mean to tell me that no one could put down a gang of pimply-faced thugs? They just handed over their belongings to a bunch of brats without any kind of protest?

Unacceptable. Were they waiting for the government to step in and pass a resolution or something? If we can’t defend ourselves on the personal level, how can we be expected to defend the rights and interests of our entire country?

Hidden camera footage broadcast on television in the Netherlands on Sunday showed Dutch student Joran van der Sloot saying he was with Natalee Holloway when she died on a beach in Aruba, and that he asked a friend to dispose of her body at sea.

“She suddenly didn’t do anything any more,” Mr. van der Sloot said of the 18-year-old Ms. Holloway, in a conversation with a man he believed to be his friend.

Greta has been all but stalking this kid since Natalee’s disappearance. Perseverance. But it was a Dutch reporter who got the scoop.

The exchange, in Dutch, was recorded in a Range Rover that had been rigged with three hidden cameras by Peter de Vries, a Dutch television crime reporter who claims the footage solves the mystery surrounding Ms. Holloway’s disappearance. It was shown on Dutch television.

The number of high-risk offenders being monitored in the community by the probation service who committed a murder, rape or other serious offence rose by more than a third last year, according to figures published today.

Eighty-three criminals released from jail were charged with a further serious offence, compared with sixty-one in the previous year.

Twelve of the criminals who committed further offences were among 1,249 assessed as the “critical few” and who were assessed as having a high risk of harming the public.

So why are they getting released? If the law is to protect the greater public, that’s who should be kept in mind during sentencing and parole. This isn’t just an issue in the UK, but in all civilized countries. We give criminals too many rights, to the detriment - and sometimes death - of others.