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The Liberal government will soontable a defense of its sweeping reforms on drugand alcohol-impaired driving in Canada.

The charter statement will explain why Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould believes the legislation upholds Canadians' constitutional rights. It was scheduledto be tabled in the House of Commons Wednesday afternoon, but has been delayed due to a late change in the minister's schedule.

The bill wastabled last month at the same time as legislation to legalize marijuana, and includes tougher penalties and new powers for police to demand mandatory roadside breath samples. The government has maintained it is charter-proof, but many legal experts say new provisions go too far and violatefundamental rights.

Edmonton-based defence lawyer Steve Smith expects the bill will face a swiftseries of challenges, of which many will be successful. One of the biggest will come to a proposed mandatory roadside breath sample, on the grounds it breaches Section 8 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure.

The bill could ultimately "rise or fall" undera test around Section 1 of the charter, which allows imposed limits toan individual'srights as justified for the public good, Smith said.

Right now, an officer must have reasonable grounds to suspect adriver is impaired before demanding a breathalyzer. Under the bill, anyone could be required to blow after being lawfully stopped in their car.

"They can make a demand for a breath sample without having any reason to believe there is any alcohol in the person's body at all. They can do essentially random roadside tests on drivers," Smithsaid.

The government has said the goal is to nab more people who are now managing to eludedetection, and also to reducelegal action over whether an officer actually had reasonable grounds for suspicion to demand the breathalyzer.

But Smith believes the legislative overhaul will lead to more legal action, adding to theproblem of widespread court delays.

"I find it very interesting that the government, which is apparently so concerned about courts being overburdened and cases being overturned and stayed as a result, has decided to overhaul one of the most frequently litigated and complex areas of the law, which is going to have the effect, at least in the short term, of dramatically increasing litigation in this area."

The federal government plans to make cannabis legal by July 1, 2018. MADD Canada says the problem of drug-impaired driving will become worse when cannabis becomes legal. (Jim Young/Reuters)

To confront drivers impaired by pot or other drugs, thelegislation allows police to demand a driver provide a saliva sampleif they suspect he or she is impaired by drugs.A positive reading could lead tofurther testing, including a blood test.

Smith said there's a potentialchallenge there, if scientific evidence shows having a specified level of TCH in the system may not match to level ofimpairment.

Other challenges could come to some technical elements of the bill, including one about being over the legallimit of alcohol within two hours of stopping a motor vehicle, and an accompanying rule thatputs the onus on the accused to prove what alcohol was consumed since the vehicle was stopped. They could be tested under Section 7 of the charter, which protectsa person's right to life, liberty and security.

Robert Solomon, a law professor at Western University in London, Ont., and the national legal policy director for MADD Canada, said there is no doubt the new legislation will face challenges, including "frivolous" ones. But he believes the bill is on solid constitutional footing.

Canadians are already subject to mandatory searches at airports, courthouses and border crossings, Solomonnoted.

He said many countries already allow mandatory roadside testing because research shows the risk of apprehension is a strong deterrent for drunk drivers.

"It is widely seen as the most effective way of reducing impaired driving deaths," he said.

No matter what provisions or penalties are put in place, Solomon predicts the problem of drug-impaired driving will become worsewhen cannabis becomeslegal.

"It's a huge increase in availability, and invariably there's going to be more stoned drivers on the road," he said.

The government plans to make marijuana legal by July 1, 2018.

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Liberals to table legal defence of crackdown on impaired driving - CBC.ca

What's drawn less attention is how Trump's presidency has convinced liberals that every bad thing whispered about any Republican is, by default, true. Consider that in the last week alone, liberal outrage has been sparked on (at least) four occasions by alleged incidents that simply aren't accurate.

Didn't matter! By then, the idea of Republicans cracking beers while voting to take away health care from millions of people was already surging across the Internet. (Look at how many retweets Jaffe's original tweet received versus how many the second tweet got.)

Immediately following the passage of the AHCA last Thursday, a talking point emerged: If this bill became a law, being raped or sexually assaulted would qualify as pre-existing conditions and, therefore, would make it much harder for the victim to get health insurance.

"The notion that AHCA classifies rape or sexual assault as a preexisting condition, or that survivors would be denied coverage, is false...this claim relies on so many factors including unknown decisions by a handful of states and insurance companies that this talking point becomes almost meaningless."

The Federal Communications Commission announced that it was investigating complaints following late-night talk show host Stephen Colbert's controversial comments about President Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin.

In each of these four instances -- and all of these have been in the last week! -- liberals, fueled by Twitter outrage, jumped to conclusions that portrayed Trump and other Republicans in the poorest possible light. And, on each occasion, the fuller story either totally or mostly rebutted the version of the story the left had seized on.

Trump's presidency presents Democrats with lots and lots of legitimate issues on which to push back -- from the travel ban to the ongoing questions about Trump officials' ties to Russia to the president's refusal to release his tax returns.

By embracing every single tweet or whisper as yet another piece of full-proof evidence of just how terrible Republicans are, Democrats run the risk of appearing like the boy who cried wolf to the public -- and in the process taking some steam out of the very legitimate questions they are asking about the Trump administration.

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Donald Trump is turning liberals into conspiracy theorists - CNN

Fear of the Trump administrations nascent education policy has coalesced around the idea that Trumps pick for education secretary, Betsy DeVos, is the agent of a furtive movement for privatization that seeks to destroy the public-school system. Teachers unions and liberal pundits and academics claim that mass defunding of public schools is the real goal behind school choice.

Emma Brown at the Washington Post summarized the divide over language last week:

[Reformers] say they are part of a movement for school choice, for empowering all parents, regardless of income, to select the best learning experience for their children.

Others believe that fixing American education will require bolstering the public school systems that are obligated to serve every child.

To them, school choice is a code. They call it privatization.

These others are advocates of the public-school status quo, and argue that education resources should go to district schools only. They consider all the supposed choices DeVos supports charters, vouchers for private schools, and tax credits for those who want to homeschool fronts for a movement that seeks to defund public schools and leave ordinary Americans with lackluster for-profit substitutes.

The threat of privatization is a way to justify rigid adherence to the public-school system, so its no surprise that teachers unions are among DeVoss fiercest opponents. Immediately following DeVoss nomination, the president of the American Federation for Teachers, Randi Weingarten, tied her to privatization and its supposedly deleterious effects: In nominating DeVos, Trump makes it loud and clear that his education policy will focus on privatizing, defunding and destroying public education in America.

A reform movement that is simply a grand ruse needs a villain, and Betsy DeVos fits the bill. Shes wealthy. She didnt go to a public school. She believes in the power of market forces to improve educational outcomes. And she is an outspoken Christian who supports allowing states to include religious schools among the choices for families with vouchers.

At the Huffington Post, Daniel Katz wrote, With [DeVoss] appointment, the Trump administrations priorities for our nations schools are made crystal clear: to hell with quality, to hell with equity, to hell with everything except privatization.

The New Yorker published a piece by Rebecca Mead, subtly titled Betsy DeVos and the Plan to Break Public Schools, in which she cast aspersions on DeVos for going to a private Christian school, and attempted to impart spiritual meaning to public schools:

Missing in the ideological embrace of choice for choices sake is any suggestion of the public school as a public good as a centering locus for a community and as a shared pillar of the commonweal, in which all citizens have an investment.

(Liberals only seem to bust out old-timey words such as commonweal when they are defending government compulsion.)

The New York Times published an opinion piece by Katherine Stewart, which targeted DeVos by connecting her to Stewarts favorite public enemy, the Religious Right. After describing how DeVoss family has supported extremists on the right, she said, Ms. DeVos is a chip off the old block. At a 2001 gathering of conservative Christian philanthropists, she singled out education reform as a way to advance Gods kingdom. In an interview, she and her husband, Richard DeVos Jr., said that school choice would lead to greater kingdom gain.

Stewart has written books about Christianity, so she should realize that such phrases are a standard way in which Evangelicals describe a public good. Gods kingdom is no more a call for theocracy than social justice is. But not all of Stewarts readers know that, so DeVoss innocuous statement functions as evidence that she wants the state to promote Christianity. Throw in a decades-old quote from Jerry Falwell Sr. and the argument is fit to print in the Times.

Ironically, history shows that public-school monopolies are the path to imposing beliefs on others, but choice isnt. As Neal McCluskey points out, public schools were once wielded to benefit Protestant Christians, while school choice provides something philosophically opposite.

While opponents of school choice are hard at work popularizing the term privatization and enveloping it in the specter of capitalist avarice and religious zealotry, reformers should continue using the language of choice. It is straightforward, concrete, and highlights the crucial policy difference between the two groups. Choice is exactly what defenders of the public-school status quo refuse to allow and exactly what parents need. DeVos and her allies should continue fighting to provide it.

Paul Crookston is a Collegiate Network Fellow at National Review.

Read more from the original source:
Betsy DeVos & School Choice: Liberals Privatization ...

Welcome to Evesplaining, politics writer Eve Peyser's new column about why everyone else is wrong and she's right.

This weekend as every weekend, liberals on the internet were buzzing with rage about Trump. This time, it was about an FCC investigation of Stephen Colbert, the late-night host who made waves last week for a monologue joke with this punchline: "The only thing [Trump's] mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin's cock holster."

Now, friends, this is a bad joke. There's a whiff of weird homophobia, it doesn't accurately describe the current tense state of US-Russia relations, and "cock holster" makes it sound like Putin is putting his cock in Trump's mouth when it's at rest. It wasn't long before the right-wing internet took a break from calling liberals "snowflakes" and got outraged, throwing around the rather troll-y #FireColbert hashtag. Some people complained to the FCC about the joke. And that's when liberals decided to start a cycle of counter-outrage.

An article on the Hill headlined, "FCC to investigate, 'take appropriate action' on Colbert's Trump rant," which currently has more than 101,000 shares, seems to have been the spark that ignited the left-wing firestorm. To prominent liberals like Sarah Silverman, this was evidence of a Trump administration effort to censor comedians.

"Wow. This is chilling. This kind of shit has to be fought hard at every turn," Silverman wrote on Twitter. And she was not alone in her analysis.

"This is what government censorship looks like," Teen Vogue columnist (and VICE contributor) Lauren Duca remarked, linking to the same article.

"Good thing there's no way this could have a chilling effect on speech critical of the president," Politico reporter Eric Geller wrote.

"States becoming authoritarian often go after comedians early. And remember, there's a woman serving jail time for laughing at Jeff Sessions," liberal commentator Sarah Kendzior opined, referring to a Code Pink activist convicted of charges relating to a protest at Sessions's confirmation hearing.

"When they start to take away our jokes, we should all be worried. All Americans. Regardless of party. This is not normal," comedian Mike Birbiglia asserted.

Except an FCC investigation of obscenity complaints is normal. Really, really normal.

Although free speech is protected by the First Amendment, there are still rules about what can be shown on TVthat's why you don't hear "fuck" on primetime TV and graphic sex scenes are quarantined on networks like HBO and Showtime. The FCC website is pretty clear about this, and also clear that it takes complaints seriously.

"FCC staff reviews each complaint to determine whether it alleges information sufficient to suggest that a violation of the obscenity, profanity or indecency prohibition has occurred," the organization's website explains.

So why were prominent liberals up in arms about this routine FCC investigation? In part, it had to do with how the media framed this non-story. Most people don't know how the FCC process works, and "investigation" is a scary word. Moreover, the "resistance" thinks of Trumpwho is notoriously hostile to the media and political comedyas an authoritarian trying to stifle free speech. The idea that the FCC is now engaging in witch hunts of anti-Trump jokesters is a convenient falsehood.

There are lots of legitimate reasons to criticize the Trump administration's relationship to free press and the First Amendmentthis FCC story is not one of them. And in an age of mass misinformation, especially from the conservative media, it's bad for the public to have these false stories circulating. Fighting fake news with more fake news only creates mass confusion.

The FCC investigation into Colbert's scandalous joke isn't the only questionable story the liberal media has embraced to fit its narrative. Last week, New York ran an article with the headline, "In Trump's America, Being Sexually Assaulted Could Make Your Health Insurance More Expensive," which aggregated a Mic story espousing a similar claim. The libertarian website Reason debunked these claims, explaining that the truth was a lot more mundane and complicated:

Nothing in the new Republican health care bill specifically addresses sexual assault or domestic violence whatsoever. What it does say is that states can apply for waivers that will allow insurance companies, under certain limited circumstances, to charge higher premiums to people based on their personal medical historiesthat's it. (States that are granted the waivers must also set up special high-risk insurance pools to try and help defray costs for these people.) Under Obamacare, no such price variances based on preexisting conditions are permitted.

BuzzFeed was among the few generally left-leaning websites that focused on debunking questionable claims made about the AHCA. The AHCA is a devastating bill that stands to make healthcare unaffordable for the majority of the country, but there's no clause that explicitly makes rape a preexisting condition.

Again, there are plenty of real and dangerous things to be outraged over, and plenty of ways Republicans advance policies that hurt women in particularbut fudging the truth about whether a frighteningly cruel healthcare bill categorizes rape a preexisting condition doesn't do the resistance any favors. It delegitimizes the real story, which is just as sinister as the false narratives that get spread on social media.

Follow Eve Peyser on Twitter.

Original post:
The Fake News Liberals Don't Want to Talk About - VICE

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Posted: May 08, 2017 12:01 AM

Liberals are upset theyre always upset that the evil GOP of Hate has condemned America to a return to a marginally more progressive version of the nightmarish hellscape that was our country before Obamacare passed on March 21, 2010. Once again, the lifeless bodies of those who fail to buy themselves health insurance will be piled upon the sidewalks, left to be carted away as they were in the dark ages of the 90s and 00s no doubt by industrious undocumented workers who should be paid a living wage for performing this job that Americans just wont do. And the Republicans will sit by, watching through their monocles, giggling at this grim tableau of human misery until they grow bored and return to their regularly scheduled agenda of puppy torture and crushing the dreams of young women who want only break the glass ceiling and be the very best me I can be.

Or something.

Because, for Democrats trying to appeal to their Partys base of unaccomplished coastal snobs and indolent, welfare-grifting morons, Armageddon is always just around the corner whenever conservatives do anything. Or whenever conservatives dont do anything. Its sort of, heads you lose, tails you also lose, now give us more power and all your money.

The GOPs recent first baby steps toward the repeal of Obamacare set the liberals to rebooting their utterly predictable script. This isnt just about some changes to how health insurance is sold. No, instead House Republicans vote[d] to sentence millions of Americans to death. Yeah, someone wrote that headline on purpose.

When in doubt, deploy the hyper-hyperbole. How many of us Americans will die because we are transitioning back to a slightly more liberal version of the healthcare system of seven years ago? All of us! But then, well all die anyway even if we stay with Obamacare, but thats not the point. There is no point its all a lie and everyone except the very stupidest among us (who all vote Democrat anyway) knows its a lie, yet the Dems spew it anyway. This is about ginning up their base.

So, off we go to the Numbskull Olympics. Taking the gold for Freestyle Idiocy is California Democrat Senator Kamala Harris, who is incredibly stupid even for a California Democrat senator. She tweeted that 129 million people are going to lose their health insurance and presumably die. This is surprising, both because the 129 million figure is so insanely dumb that merely seeing that figure drops the readers IQ into freefall, and also because Kamala somehow managed to count past 10 without taking her shoes off.

Kamala also announced, without citation, that health care is a right for all. Those of us familiar with the Constitution are confused, since that document is entirely free of any such right, nor of any other right to force others to toil to provide you with things you want for free. What is in there are the rights to speak freely and petition, but Kamala discovered a footnote that says those enumerated rights dont apply to citizens who dare doubt the other great Mystery Right, the penumbraed and emanated right to freely kill babies. And dont bother asking about the Second Amendment either; sophisticated folk like Kamala arent restrained from indulging their limitless appetite for petty oppression by the express enumeration of rights.

Apocalyptic liberalism is the natural consequence of power-centered politics unmoored from principle. Its not persuasion; its manipulation. After all, its hard to persuade people to just give you power and money simply because you covet them. So why allow yourself to be limited some phallocentric document of pallor like the Constitution, or by the results of the bourgeois process of drawing conclusions from facts and evidence, when you can wield raw emotion to compel your preferred result before the marks can actually think through the consequences?

For example, theres the viral celebrity sob story. Jimmy Kimmels baby got sick but got better, so the same kind of people who made the VA a festival of success must take over your healthcare. Wait, what? A kid got sick why do you hate sick kids? All kids are going to get sick and die because you reject single payer!

And we must call it single payer health care because the more accurate term, taxpayer health care, fails to adequately distract the listener from the reality. And only the Kamala-dumb think that theyll see ever rich libs like Jimmy Kimmel sitting next to them in the endless lines waiting for the doc when DMV healthcare fires up.

The climate change scam is another classic dystopian distraction. No time to think! You must all immediately cede us power over you and give us all of your money or everyone is going to die die die!

WHY DO YOU WANT ALL THE CHILDREN TO DIE!?

Of course, one might think that the fact that the oceans didnt swallow us in 2009 like Al Gore promised would be an inconvenient truth, but no. Your citation to observable data merely identifies you as a denier. Liberals sure freakin love their #science, but #hashtag #science methodology doesnt involve objectively analyzing data, then refining or discarding the original theory when the evidence does not support it. #Science involves liberals shrieking until they either terrify or bore the normals into submission and the normals finally hand liberals their power and money. #Science isnt a process its a pose and a grift.

But, heres the problem you look really, really lame if you scream about how the end of the world is coming in just a few short years, then a few years later theres no mushroom cloud at the end of the rainbow. The weird weather religion cultists cant translate their jeremiads into actual legislation in large part because normal people expect that if theres really global warming it will actually get hotter. Every froth-lipped paranoid who screamed that we have just five years left back in 2007 has to contend with the troublesome fact that we havent been baked, drowned or frozen. False alarms are a bad look 1970s ice age rage, anyone?

The same with the Obamacare repeal. What happens when 2018 rolls around and the streets arent littered with the corpses of hard-working Americans deprived of coverage by the malignant Thurston Howells of the GOP? Probably the same thing that happened in 2014 the Democrats will look stupid, again, and get righteously pummeled. So bring on 2018, you paranoid prediction pinkos. Your lying about an apocalypse now will lead to your apocalypse then.

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For Fussy Liberals, It's Always Apocalypse Right Now - Kurt Schlichter - Townhall