I’M SENSING A THEME HERE: The San Francisco Chronicle of all places reports, “‘Social justice’ in contracts costs S.F. millions.” — huh; I thought the Chronicle was rather copacetic with that sort of thing.

Meanwhile, up north, Canada’s Small Dead Animals blog notes:

SDA reader, David, provided a link to a very interesting article. Even though the Vancouver School Board has an $8.4-million funding shortfall, they have to buy $405,725 worth of carbon offsets as per provincial government legislation instituted by BC’s last premier, Gordon Campbell.

Lest anyone forget, the Greens among us have frequently said that “going green” won’t cost us anything. Well, in this case 5 teachers are going to lose their jobs in order to pay for these absolutely ridiculous carbon offsets.

Oh and speaking of Canada and “social” “justice,” Mark Steyn alerts us to “The Criminalization of the Link” — the hyperlink that is:

If you wanted to confirm the notion that elections are a waste of time, you could hardly do it more swiftly than the new Canadian Conservative majority government is with its omnibus crime bill. Clause Five criminalizes the “hyperlink” — that’s to say, if you include a link to a site “where hate material is posted”, you could go to jail for two years.

I don’t recall this figuring as a policy proposal during the election campaign. I would imagine that almost no Tory voter is in favour of the proposal: The vast majority would be either opposed or indifferent, or bewildered as to why it’s happening at all. After all, at the last Conservative conference, the vote to scrap Section 13 was unanimous.

That last one — why’s it happening? — is easy to answer. It’s happening because it’s the kind of remorseless incremental annexation of individual liberty to which the permanent bureaucracy has become addicted. And, as I always say, the lesson of the post-Second World War west is that you don’t need a presidency-for-life if you’ve got a bureaucracy-for-life. It’s an outrageous law, poorly written.

Read the whole thing. While it’s still (more or less) legal.