Seriously. It’s a brutal game. By putting your thoughts out there, you leave yourself open to all kinds of bullshit, from disagreeing critics to flamers and trolls to potential rapists. Once you put your ideas out on the web, they’re not your own anymore, and everything is up for criticism.

Which is why I don’t understand why pantywaist fairies with thin skin think they can make it in the blogging world, let alone the political world. It’s BRUTAL! Many is the night I’ve gone to bed asking myself if I have the balls to carry on with this blog. And I’ve had to remind myself that the critics only exist because I feed them.

Such is the blogging life.

The thing is, if you’re going to threaten to sue every single person who disagrees with you or makes fun of you, you’re going to ruin your life with bitterness and hate. Yes, there will always be legitimate cases of libel or valid threats to life that some bloggers have to deal with. But then you get happy SLAPPers like Warren Kinsella and Richard Warman, who get a bug up their tight little asses every time their names are mentioned. It’s pretty funny, when you consider that they made themselves public figures; Warman with his crusades and Kinsella with his political… well, whatever it is he does.

Take for example the kinds of comments he received on his most recent article for the Ottawa Sun. Some of them are pretty scathing. Is Kinsella going to call Quebecor and ask for the names and IP addresses of every negative commentator? If that’s the way he feels, perhaps it’s time to retire from public life.

Warman sues anyone who calls him a censor, effectively censoring them, but is completely devoid of irony when he does it. Kinsella sues anyone who calls him a douchebag, even though truth is an absolute defence.

No wonder they’re friends. No one else will have them.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission really oughta sell tickets for this one, with all the money going back to people who have been unfairly persecuted by Richard Warman - AKA “one of the bravest people” Warren Kinsella knows. (BTW, Kinsella, the Canadian Jewish Congress and other serial censors are strangely silent on this interesting development. We’ll chalk it up to the High Holidays.)

Ezra - speech warrior supreme - has the scoop:

Richard Warman, the hate speech complainant who is personally responsible for all but two section 13 censorship prosecutions this decade, is now being investigated by the Canadian Human Rights Commission for hate speech himself.

Keep in mind that for years, Warman has been posing as a Nazi on white supremacist websites, trying to entrap other Canadians into making racist remarks so he could slam them with a human rights complaint. And for the most part, it’s been working.

But then people - people like Ezra Levant and Kathy Shaidle - began to notice, and began to write about his use of racial slurs on these white supremacist sites. Instead of skulking away after being caught, Warman instead turned around and sued his exposers! Yes, apparently these claims that he had been doing… well, exactly what he’s been doing, actually, were libelous and defamed his “bravest people” character.

It’s been more than a year since Warman filed suit against the Canuck Six (Ezra Levant, Kathy Shaidle, Kate McMillan, the Fourniers and Jonathan Kay), and his lawyer hasn’t turned over any of the requested pre-discovery documentation. The reason of course is quite simple: He doesn’t want to case to go to discovery, because he is guilty of every claim made by the Canuck Six. And unlike in the Kangaroo Courts of the Human Rights Commission, truth really is a defense in a defamation suit.

Ezra closes out his post saying that he actually pities Richard Warman. I don’t. Karma’s a bitch, Ricky.

By his own pet Human Rights racket!

Ezra has the best write-up I’ve seen so far. Basically what it boils down to is that all these years Warman has been posting Antisemitic diatribes on white supremacist websites. He claims he did so for the purposes of “infiltration”, believing himself to be some kind of undercover sleuth. In fact, the HRT has now ruled that his remarks over these years - words he’s used to turn the Commission into his own personal piggy bank time after time - in fact expose Jews and other minorities to hatred.

Yeah, no shit. You can’t have an “anti-racist crusader” running around shooting his mouth off about the niggers and jooooos. It’s counter-productive. And this time, he gets no cash from the cash cow. He so embarrassed himself on the witness stand during cross examination - obfuscating, back-pedaling, changing stories and all but perjuring himself - that the Tribunal could not in good conscience award him any of the extortion money he requested from Jason Ouwendyk and the Northern Alliance, even thought they found Ouwendyk “guilty” (remember, they have a 100% conviction rate under S. 13.1 - they find everyone guilty). Ouwendyk didn’t have to cough up a penny beyond his own defense - punishment enough, thanyouverymuch.

The winner for weirdest Steyn/free speech post of the week (and it’s only Monday) goes to Iowahawk for this drama.

From the Maritimes to the Yukon, the Great White North was once a lawless land where cruel and offensive opinions roamed free - until one man stood up and brought them to justice. One mighty masked man, clad in the scarlet breechcoat of the Royal Canadian Mounted Human Rights Police, astride a golden disabled lesbian steed, with his faithful transgender Indian scout at his side. Together they rode from Yellowknife to St. John’s, keeping Canadians safe from the spectre of multicultural insensitivity.

The Canadian Broadcast Corporation invites you to return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear as we tell the tales of that legendary singing Human Rights Mountie. It’s time for excitement - it’s time for lawsuits - It’s time for… Warman of the Mounted!

While I was out today, the story of the RCMP investigation into the Human Rights Commission’s illegal use of a citizen’s wireless IP address broke. I was over at Kathy’s when the word came out about it being on CTV news, and she read her emails about it out loud to me.

This is a huge step forward in our fight to show the rest of Canada just how illegally the HRC’s operate. They have no codes of conduct, no oversight, and a seemingly limitless supply of arrogance that they are doing the right thing (by way of Trudeau’s work). Their policing of thought to build a utopia is social engineering that even Margaret Sanger would be appalled by. And their blatant disregard of this country’s other laws - real laws - are a worldwide embarrassment.

The victim of the CHRC’s illegal hacking, Nelly Hechme, told reporters that she was “completely shocked” by the CHRC’s conduct. Canada’s Privacy Commissioner, who has jurisdiction over the CHRC, is now investigating the matter.

But not even the CHRC’s most passionate critics could have imagined that the Mounties would be investigating the CHRC.

According to this letter written two weeks ago by the Ottawa Police Service, a criminal complaint filed against the CHRC by Marc Lemire has now been referred to the RCMP’s Integrated Technological Crime Unit. Here is the key excerpt from that letter:

After a full consideration of all aspects of the matter, it is our opinion that this matter falls within the jurisdiction of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. We have discussed this matter with the RCMP and the matter has been assigned to Cpl Stephane Turgeon.

I expect that the RCMP will be in touch with you…

This investigation will blow the lid off the criminality at the CHRC, expose Richard Warman as a con artist who has made his living playing the “hurt feelings” lottery system and off the Commission’s payouts; and it most likely expose the infamous Ann Cools post that led the the lawsuit against Ezra, Kate, Kathy, Jonathan Kay and the Fourniers.

It has taken the work of bloggers, and of course Mark Steyn and his publisher Ken Whyte of Maclean’s Magazine, as well as the tireless Ezra Levant to push the HRC’s out of the shadows and into the light.

We sat silent when the HRC went after neo-Nazis and Holocaust-deniers who lived in relative obscurity, even though their hateful speech should have stood for itself, exposing those people as the idiots they are. But we will not sit silent while the supposed “Human Rights” Commissions threaten to shut down press freedom - including the freedom formerly allotted to bloggers such as myself - in our democratic nation.

The Canuck-6, to be clear, are bloggers Shaidle, McMillan, Levant, and the Fourniers, along with National Post editor Jonathan Kay. Many of the fundraisers, including Steyn’s, omit Kay for the obvious reason that the Post is covering his six, so to speak. So they become the Freedom Five.

Steyn is offering up 24 hours of profit from books sold at his online store, beginning at midnight tonight. If you don’t already have a copy of America Alone (WTF is wrong with you??), you can get the updated paperback from the store. I noticed it in Indigo last week, and it has a “Soon to be banned in Canada” sticker on it. Cute.

In addition, Binks has some great new shirts for the Blogging Five.

Not to be mistaken for Five Feet of Fury.

Top 9 little known facts about Richard Warman.

9. Has never been able to recapture the glory he achieved after he defeated Bobby Riggs in the famous “Battle of the Sexes.”

8. Once played lead air guitar in a Milli Vanilli tribute band.

7. Only needs to file 137 more lawsuits to finally gain complete and utter revenge on the ruffians who used to steal his lunch money in grade school.

6. Performed an interpretive dance entitled, “The Genius of Alan Alda” for his high school talent show.

5. Coined the phrase, “You can’t spell ‘team’ without ‘m-e’.”

4. Is perpelexed that his former employer refuses to change their name to the Human Lefts Commission.

3. Is so sensitive that after watching prescription drug commercials on television, frequently comes down with at least two of the major side effects.

2. Would never admit it, but secretly wears Mark Steyn footie-pajamas.

1. Feels very inadequate because…because…well, let’s just say that if he had a blog it would be named “3 Inches of Fury.”

Richard “The Boy Named Sue” Warman has finally filed his statement of claim.

Canada’s busiest litigant, serial “human rights” complainant and — the guy Mark Steyn has called “Canada’s most sensitive man” — Richard Warman is now suing his most vocal critics — including me.

The suit names:

• Ezra Levant (famous for his stirring YouTube video of his confrontation with the Canadian Human Rights tribunal after he published the “Mohammed Cartoons”)
• FreeDominion.ca (Canada’s answer to FreeRepublic.com)
• Kate McMillan of SmallDeadAnimals.com
• Jonathan Kay of the National Post daily newspaper and its in-house blog
• and me, Kathy Shaidle of FiveFeetOfFury.com

Ezra posts further information here:

Today I was sued by Richard Warman, Canada’s most prolific – and profitable – user of section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. As readers of this site know, Warman isn’t just a happy customer of section 13 and its 100% conviction rate, he’s a former CHRC employee, an investigator of section 13 thought crimes himself. In fact, he was often both a customer and an investigator at the same time.

Being sued by Warman is like being sued by the CHRC

This is going to be costly to my friends and colleagues in the blogosphere, but it will be fought with everything they - we - have got. I stand with each and every one of these people, and I will help them any way I can. Please visit their sites and see how you, too, can help.

UPDATE: Malkin and The Nose On Your Face have rallied.

Ezra does an in-depth review (with requisite snark) of the coverage of the Kangaroo Court hearing on Tuesday. He add a lawyerly dose of information, which is mind-boggling to the rest of us, but worth the read.

But why was Tuesday’s hearing limited to just one day?

Again, this matter has been grinding on for four years, more than a year of which was in the Tribunal. Richard Warman, the nominal complainant, was given four days for his examination in chief — that is, four days to make self-serving comments, with Vigna leading him along. Why the sudden impatience? Is it because, with the CHRC’s own conduct on trial, it’s just not as much fun as shooting white supremacist fish in a barrel?

It’s long, folks. Pour yourself a fresh cup of coffee, and take your bathroom break now.

Really. Hearings of any kind tend to be boring, detailed, and an all-around yawn-fest. For those of you who expected today’s CHRC hearing to be like the last 5 minutes of a Perry Mason special, you are S.O.L.

MacLeans’ Kady O’Malley liveblogs from the hearing. Part one here, part two here. They haven’t made mention of “Lucy” yet. Maybe things will get exciting after that.

It is dull. It is virtually incoherant. It is about par for any kind of legal hearing. If it causes your eyes to cross, just go read Jonathan Kay’s piece in today’s Post instead.

If Lemire and his ilk have a secret scheme to render neo-Nazis into sympathetic figures, they could conceive no better weapon than Section 13.1.

UPDATE: Part three of the hearing is now here.

Tomorrow is the big day - the day when the kangaroo court of the Human Rights Commission is forced to publicly identify and speak to its own crimes. Entrapment, provocation, abuse of the system…

Some people watch Ultimate Fighting. I will be watching this instead.

Blazing Cat Fur has some amusing predictions:

A guide dog will pee on someone’s leg - CHRC lawyers will explain that it’s raining.

Richard Warman will be late claiming CHRC staffers forgot to cc him on the e-mail. He will later deny under oath that he is Richard Warman stating that Space Lizards have taken over his body.

Canadian Jewish Congress representatives will object to the proceedings stating that the proper rules and procedures of Sharia courts are not being observed.

Steyn:

Nevertheless, in recent discussions on TVOntario and the CBC, there’s been a curious urge to conflate the Maclean’s/Ezra Levant cases and Bill C-10. My natural urge is to tell Cronenberg, hey, butt out, man, I’m the free-speech martyr round here. Yet surveying the apparently endless parade of CanCon panjandrums lining up to denounce the to-date entirely hypothetical possibility of losing their government dole as the dawn of the Fourth Reich, I found myself glumly concluding that these freeloading pseudo-martyrs speak to something deep in the Canadian psyche that a notorious hate-monger such as myself can never reach. Most Canadians don’t want to see any of these Canadian films, but even as they grab the popcorn and head for Spider-Man 3 or Harry Potter, they quite like the idea of public funding for all this stuff they’ll never go within a hundred yards of. Why? Because we think it speaks well of us. In a sense, the willingness to support state funding of “Canadian cultural identity” has become a substitute for having a “Canadian cultural identity.”

Don’t it always seem to go…?

Hands up, anyone who isn’t being censored by Richard Warman for calling him a censor.

Anyone?

***crickets***

Some lefty sites were encouraging their readership to head on down to the U of T for Kathy’s Lunch n’ Learn today, to cause disruption or throw pies or somesuch. (Oh wait, only the super-cool Richard Warman encourages whackadoos to throw pies… nevermind)

They didn’t show. It was instead a lively room of conservatives, Conservatives, and general members of the population who are concerned about the stripping of our most basic right: The right to free speech.

So where were the provocateurs? Well, as Kathy told us:

They’re lefties…. they couldn’t afford the $20 to get in.

I was pleased to note that there was a reporter there from Eye Weekly. At first I was annoyed - they tend to be over-the-top liberal and rather unfriendly. But then I realized that with the kind of content they promote - homosexuality, virulent anti-establishment and anti-Americanism, anarchy, atheism and more - that they have a vested interest in not allowing publications and individuals to be silenced for their views and beliefs. And while they no more want to throw their lot in with conservatives than we want to throw our lot in with Stormfront, this is an issue that transcends political beliefs. Or at least it should.

This time, he’s adding fuel to the fire that has threatened to consume Ezra Levant for the past two years.

Just before the weekend, I received an e-mail from Richard Warman, the former investigator for the Canadian Human Rights Commission, who quit the commission in 2004 to become the commission’s biggest customer. Approximately half of all complaints filed under the Canadian Human Rights Commission’s section 13 “idea crimes” provision have been filed by Warman. The CHRC has a 100% conviction rate under that section, and besides ordering the poor shleps Warman complains about to pay fines to the government, they’re often ordered to pay thousands of dollars to Warman himself, too, for his “hurt feelings”. Unlike the paycheque he got when he used to work there, the cash he gets from commission fines is tax free.

But Ezra is not backing down, and not willing to bend in the slightest:

Dear reader, I don’t think I’m going to be like the easy pickings that Warman is used to fighting. While my top gun lawyers are taking care of business in the court of law, I’ll be working vigorously in the court of public opinion. I’ll ensure that every legal document, every piece of interesting testimony, every embarrassing admission I exact from Warman and the human rights commission will be shown to the whole world (subject to any legal restrictions). Unlike human rights commissions, where only the victim of the complaint is grilled, defamation lawsuits are two-way streets. It’s Warman who’s going to be famous. I’ll use every interlocutory application, every motion, every pleading and every day of the trial to shed light on the commission’s shenanigans. I wonder if Warman has thought through the idea of giving me a forum; I wonder what his friends at the commission will think when they start getting subpoenas; I wonder what advice Shirlene McGovern would offer them about engaging me in such a process.

Looks like he has some competition for being the jackpot winner at the Canadian Human Rights kangaroo courts. His competition is a transexual.

A lawyer from Quebec City says she was dumped as a federal New Democratic Party candidate because she is transgendered.

Micheline Montreuil alleges she was told by an NDP official that her sexuality hindered party attempts to woo new Quebec candidates into the fold.

When I began reading, it looked as if Layton & Co. may have some hypocrisy omelette stuck to their faces. But alas, turns out this “lady” has played the HRC Wheel of Fortune before:

Meanwhile, if Ms. Montreuil heads to court, it wouldn’t be the first time.

Last month, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruled the Canadian Forces discriminated against Ms. Montreuil in 2003, when it passed her up for a job as a grievance officer.

The tribunal ruled Ms. Montreuil’s sexuality was the real reason she didn’t get the position and awarded her $40,000.

She won a similar case in 2004 when the same tribunal ruled against the National Bank for failing to hire Ms. Montreuil as a customer service representative.

Good thing, too. Sex changes and hormone treatments can be expensive, and s/he seems to have a good plan for getting it all paid off…