Right now, Lisa and me are in the US, trying to get back to Canada. Trump said he’d run the government like one of his businesses, and he sure did – the government is shut down.

A year ago, however, Lisa and our daughter Emma were in Washington, marching with hundreds of other Canadian women. I was in Toronto, meanwhile, marching with thousands of men, women and children. (Some of the photos we took that weekend are alongside this post.)

It was a glorious, perfect response to President Shithole. And, a year later, the struggle continues.

Resist!

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Holy crap! Maximum Rock’n’Roll is the bible of punk and hardcore – and they like the new SFH record, Kinda Suck!

…straightforward punk rock…melodic and catchy, just like the Canadians like it…if you’re a fan of the band or just a fan of solid punk rock, you’ll enjoy this one.

Woot! You can get the record right here.

Download it now! MRR says you won’t regret it!

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We’re way down here in Florida, but we have friends in courtroom 125 in frosty Toronto. And the result is in: Judge Timothy Lipson has ruled that Laura is not guilty on both counts.

Thank God. And here’s what I wrote about why a couple years ago.

Remember that old Sixties line? You know, the one from the hippie subculture that became a movie, and even a lyric in a Monkees tune? To wit: “suppose they had a war, and nobody came?” It was a nice thought, then and now.

Well, with some minor tweaking, it’s a line that can be applied to a “scandal” now raging, er, in one-block radius in downtown Toronto. Here goes:

“Suppose they had a scandal, and it really wasn’t one?”

Now, admittedly, at Queen’s Park, some media and some Opposition politicians are in a spit-flecked fury about the alleged deletion of government emails about the decision to move some gas plants in the 2011 Ontario election. You may have read about it in the papers, even in far-flung places like Whitehorse or Witless Bay. (I doubt it, but you never know.)

So, before we get started, three things. One, we use so-called flying quotes around the word “scandal,” up above, to notify you that the “scandal” really isn’t one. At all. Two, we use the word “alleged” about deletion of emails because, well, emails weren’t actually deleted. At all. Three, full disclosure, I proudly helped out former Premier Dalton McGuinty, and I remain friends with all of his former senior staff. And I hope that disclosure gives McGuinty-haters heart arrhythmia.

Scandals, real or imagined, have a way of taking on a life of their own. Even though the voting public aren’t nearly as preoccupied with scandal as the media and politicians are – Exhibit A, the Clinton/Lewinsky “scandal” – selfsame media and politicians are undeterred. They love scandal-mongering more than, you know, talking about boring stuff like “policy.” (There’s those flying quotes again!)

As no less than the most-famous-ever Canadian, Rob Ford, will tell you: voters hear about scandals too much. They’re skeptical. And, until they see a perp being frog-marched to the Longbar Hotel in an orange pantsuit and handcuffs, they don’t care much, either.

But that’s psychology. The reality of this “deleted email scandal” (Flying quotes! Drink!) is this: none were. Don’t believe me? Take your smartphone, and pop it right now in the toilet, where you already keep your old Blackberry. Now, flush.

There! According to the Ontario Provincial Police, you’ve now deleted emails and, er, committed a serious offence, Your Honour!

Well, not quite. As we all know, if you lose your smartphone – or if your PC or Mac blow up, or if (as in the Queen’s Park case) someone wipes a few hard drives to make way for a new employee – your emails aren’t gone, at all. They all still exist on a server in Cupertino, Calif., or Guelph, or somewhere else. They haven’t been deleted. At all, at all.

That’s why the whole Mother of All Scandals now gripping, um, a few dozen folks at Queen’s Park is so bloody ridiculous. The thing the Keystone Kops (a.k.a., the OPP) are investigating isn’t a crime, or even a violation of a ticketing offence. They’re investigating missing emails which aren’t, you know, missing.

Check your toilet, if you don’t believe me. Your device may be long gone, and so too your Miley Cyrus MP3s and some cherished pix of your kitten. But your emails aren’t.

Now, I know that this stunning revelation – to wit, emails exist on servers, not individual computers – is a shock for the geniuses in the OPP and at Queen’s Park. But for the rest of us living in the new millennium, it’s kind of not-news.

So too this “deleted email scandal.” It isn’t news, either. In fact, it is the biggest pile of crap to plop on the Canadian political stage since “Justice” (Drink!) John Gomery turned the sponsorship inquiry into a taxpayer-funded ego circus. And that’s saying something.

Thus, our new song: Suppose they had a “scandal,” and it really wasn’t one?

Drink!

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A quick summary, also provided to Paul at CJN:

• the Criminal Code charges for promoting hatred against women and Jews are going ahead with a hearing in February
• the criminal charge for uttering death threats – initiated by Lisa and I – is also going to another court hearing in February
• the panel reviewing the ministerial order to stop Canada Post from delivering Your Ward News is still holding hearings, but has essentially become moot following the laying of criminal charges
• Lisa and I have separate civil defamation actions going against the publisher and editor of this pro-Nazi rag – out of which we hope to learn who is giving them financial support

There is a lot of other stuff going on, but that should give you an overview. The fight goes on.

Now, here’s the CJN report:

Warren and Lisa Kinsella have been among the loudest critics of Your Ward News, and they, like Farber, have often been featured in its pages.

They allege that the paper published death threats against them, and they filed separate civil actions against the paper and the people behind it.

For his part, Sears is contesting all the legal steps taken against the paper and rejecting the allegations that have been made by his critics. He told CBC News that, “Being criticized by mentally deranged Marxists has never caused us to consider shutting down our truth tract.”

The Winter 2018 edition notes that it is responding to six legal attacks and that, “We are fighting to overturn the Canada Post ban.” Meanwhile, Sears claims that 305,000 copies of the publication are being distributed by private companies and a “volunteer army.”

Warren Kinsella said that seeing a new edition of Your Ward News after its two principals were charged criminally was somewhat unexpected.

“I wish I could say I was surprised, but common sense doesn’t seem to be a characteristic of these individuals,” he said.

Kinsella speculated that they ignored the advice of lawyers not to publish, or “they have a bottomless” amount of money.

There are rumours, he continued, that the publication is receiving financial support from extremists in Germany and South Africa.

“Based on the evidence, they must be getting support from somewhere. We think it’s offshore,” he said.

According to Kinsella, who wrote a book on the racist fringe in Canada, Your Ward News is being distributed as far as Kingston and Niagara Falls, Ont.

He noted that it appears as though Sears has become something of a hero among extremists around the world who share his admiration for the Nazi cause. Photos on the Your Ward News website show German Holocaust “revisionist” Alfred Schaefer, who is awaiting trial on charges of Holocaust denial, with a copy of the paper, as well as French writer Robert Faurisson, who testified on behalf of neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel, also holding a copy of Your Ward News that was presented to him by “Canadian nationalist” Paul Fromm.

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Quebec’s bigoted securities regulator certainly thinks so.

Check out this shocking Graeme Hamilton report in the Post:

MONTREAL — Rabbi Momi Pinto has a beard and wears a yarmulke, just like the man from whom he bought his Montreal home in 2012.

According to court documents, that is where the similarity between the two men ends — and yet it was allegedly enough for Quebec’s securities regulator to conduct an “abusive” search of Pinto’s home last September.

In a lawsuit filed this month at the Montreal courthouse, Pinto and his family are seeking $230,000 in damages from the Autorité des marchés financiers and two of its investigators. They allege that in its hunt for evidence related to online gambling company Amaya Inc., the AMF relied on outdated registry information and a “grossly negligent” investigation to search their house.

Pinto’s lawyer, Julius Grey, said the “humiliating and invasive” search is a symptom of a larger problem. “It is the high-handedness of many government institutions today. They think they have a right to do whatever they want to do,” Grey said.

I was actually born on that street in Montreal. My parents told me our Jewish neighbours were thoughtful, courteous and wonderful people to live among. They loved it there.

And you know what, AMF jerks?

We could tell them all apart.

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