HORSE. BARN DOOR. And, er, a part of the horse:

CANADA’S attorney general is probing possible breaches of a publication ban set up to protect explosive testimony at the AdScam inquiry. Justice spokesman Patrick Charette said federal lawyers are looking into the Internet sites reproducing excerpts of Montreal ad exec Jean Brault’s testimony and providing a link to a U.S. blog featuring more extensive coverage of the hearing.

“We have to decide what the best course of action is,” Charette said, adding federal lawyers could charge Canadian bloggers and website owners with contempt of court or suggest AdScam Justice John Gomery issue warning letters.

(Via Capt. Ed, whom Canadians have nearly silenced by overloading his website with readers.)

Meanwhile, in the catching-actually-dangerous-people department, the Canadians don’t seem to be doing so well:

Auditor General Sheila Fraser has delivered a hard-hitting report criticizing Canada’s anti-terrorism initiatives.

Fraser says there are “serious weaknesses” in the country’s emergency response and airport security screening systems. . . .

“It’s as if 9/11 never happened,” reports CTV’s Mike Duffy in Ottawa. “This is a damning indictment of a lackadaisical approach, and it couldn’t come at a worse time,” he says, referring to new border security measures the U.S. will announce today for Canadians wanting to travel south of the border.

“Their embassy will be reading this report and shaking its head saying, ‘these guys really don’t get it,'” says Duffy.

At the risk of interfering, I suggest that fixing these problems should probably be a higher priority.

REVERSE ECHELON! Michael Greenspan has a post on Captain Ed, Canadian politics, and McCain-Feingold (“So we can comment on Canadian politics, but Canadians can’t. Absurd, isn’t it? Except that the reverse might be true in 2008, or even 2006, if restrictions on political and politics-related speech are extended to cover bloggers.”) that gave me a thought: Friendly intelligence agencies spy on each others’ citizens to evade restrictions on domestic spying. Perhaps bloggers will have to start covering each others’ politics to avoid limits on domestic speech . . . .

CORNYN ON THE LEFT? Stewart Baker forwards an email that he got from ABA President Robert Grey:

As members of the legal profession, I know you share my concern over the public’s misunderstanding of the judiciary’s role and the politically motivated criticism of the judiciary stemming from the Terri Schiavo case, and are equally alarmed about the murders of Judge Lefkow’s family members in Chicago and the attacks at the Fulton County Courthouse in Georgia. The circumstances of these tragic events require careful analysis, thoughtful leadership, and measured response. . . . I have issued public statements condemning the violence against our judiciary and the gratuitous and vicious public attacks on the dedicated men and women who are our country’s judges.

So to Grey, harsh criticism of judges is comparable to actual murder. Sigh. No, it’s not. But if it were, some of the things said about judicial nominees by people on the left should surely count, too . . . .

Plenty of idiocy to go around, it seems.

A PHIL BREDESEN SLOGAN: “He already beat one Hilleary!” Heh.

LIBERTARIAN — JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR NUTHIN’ LEFT TO LOSE? That was my thought when reading this post by Patrick Hynes, who suggests that libertarians and small-government conservatives should be worried about a “crackup” as they might lose their influence with the Republicans if that happened. I guess I’d feel better if I saw, you know, some evidence of that influence lately . . . .

But I think this is more whistling in the dark. It’s certainly true that the Libertarian Party is trivial. But libertarian-leaning Republicans and independents are far more numerous, and have less reason to stick around given that their agendas aren’t getting much attention. What’s more, if libertarian-leaning conservatives line up against the Republican agenda, it’s likely to worry swing voters far more than if criticisms come only from the usual suspects of the left.

Hey, I think I’m offering good advice to the Republicans, but they should ignore it if they want — just like the Democrats have ignored all the good advice I’ve given them. And they’re doing fine! Right?

For a more cheerful view, read this David Brooks column.

And to all those who are snarling at libertarians for daring to raise these issues, I’ll just quote James Taranto: “By contrast, fewer people have come to call themselves liberal in part because liberals are eager to cast out heretics. . . . Developing a political majority is a matter of addition, not subtraction, and the GOP’s openness to a variety of viewpoints is a strength, not a weakness.”

Let’s just hope that’s not a past-tense statement now.

UPDATE: Related thoughts here.

THE CARNIVAL OF REVOLUTIONS: A test run.

CHRIS NOLAN HAS AN UPDATE on San Francisco’s blog legislation.

JIM GERAGHTY WONDERS ABOUT TERRORIST GROUPS’ MARKETING SAVVY:

How did “KONGRA-GEL” (Kurdistan People’s Congress) ever get past the focus groups? It sounds like a hair care product.

Of course, for really bad product-naming, you’ve got to hand it to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, whose initials produce a lot of, um, non-Islamic hits on Google.

AUSTIN BAY looks at high oil prices and notes that they’re already spurring searches for new sources of energy. I think it will give hybrid vehicles a big boost, which is a good thing.

SANDY BERGER UPDATE:

Martha Stewart went to jail for lying to federal investigators. But for lying after stealing highly classified documents from the National Archives — in an apparent attempt to alter the historical record on terrorism, no less — former Clinton national security adviser and Kerry campaign adviser Sandy Berger will get a small fine and slap on the wrist. He will pay $10,000 and get no jail time. His security clearance will be suspended until around the end of the Bush administration — meaningless for a career Democrat like Mr. Berger. It makes us wonder who at the Department of Justice is responsible for letting such a serious offense go virtually unpunished.

Perhaps he’s secretly cooperating in an ongoing investigation.

BRIAN MICKLETHWAIT ON THE BRITISH ELECTIONS:

Many of my friends, such as regular Samizdata commenter Paul Coulam to name but one, have said to me that Blair is about to be re-re-elected with a similar majority to last time around, just as Thatcher was. Coulam certainly said this to me a few weeks back. But governments take a long time to unravel, and what does seem to have happened is that the metropolitan media of Britain have got bored with Labour. They are now more bored with Labour than they are disgusted and embarrassed by the Conservatives, which was not true a year ago. Michael Howard may disgust many Samizdata readers by being just another opportunist political hack, but he is nevertheless, I would say, a much more impressive and consequential figure than his two predecessors at the head of the Conservative Party.

I don’t know how it will turn out, but I have a prediction about the spin: If Blair loses or does badly, the press will say that the election was a referendum on the Iraq war and Bush. If Blair does better than expected, the press will say that the election was about local issues of no greater significance. (Either way, resentment of the Blair government’s position on the EU and immigration will be largely ignored.)

UPDATE: Iain Murray, who’s going to be blogging heavily on the British elections, predicts that Blair will do worse than most expect, leading to a British version of the 2000 elections in the U.S.

JIM HAKE AT SPIRIT OF AMERICA is asking for your help in promoting Lebanese independence:

Syria is publicly acting like it is playing nice and withdrawing. Behind the scenes they are destabilizing the country, delaying the elections and intimidating the opposition. The good guys in Lebanon need our support.

Go here to find out what you can do.

CARNIVAL OF THE CANADIAN SCANDAL-BLOGGERS: It’s a huge list of links.

TAKING A SOMEWHAT MORE DISPASSIONATE LOOK at the judiciary, Richard Davis’s book, Electing Justice: Fixing The Supreme Court Nomination Process, showed up in the mail. It’s certainly timely.

“THERE’S BEEN SO MUCH DISREGARD FOR CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLES IN CONGRESS, that I wonder if it might not lead some people to want to lynch Senators in the majority?”

An irresponsible statement. So how come Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said pretty much the same thing about violence against judges?

You can see video of his statement here, and Joe Gandelman has a roundup. I agree with Ann Althouse:

It is really a shame how little people understand of the reasons judges decide cases the way they do. DeLay and Cornyn, like many others, signal to the public to think that the judges are simply out of control and the cases are inexplicable as the serious work of deeply thoughtful persons steeped in the legal tradition. It wouldn’t be wise just to assume that judges are unerring oracles of law, but to leap to the opposite conclusion and decide they are frauds is even more foolish. And for a public figure even to hint at violence as a solution is completely unacceptable.

If you need proof that some Republicans are just as dumb as some Democrats, this is it. Now if there are further attacks on judges, Cornyn — and the Republicans — will be blamed. What’s more, to some degree they’ll deserve it.

To quote Ari Fleischer’s underappreciated remarks, people need to be careful what they say. The notion — popular in some circles on the right — that dishonest or result-oriented behavior by some judges justifies an all-out war against the judiciary, or even the idea of an independent judiciary, is un-conservative, and for that matter un-American.

Plus, when you get that hysterical, you sound like Paul Krugman.

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg:

I haven’t seen the comments in their full context yet, but assuming Josh Marshall and Glenn Reynolds are being fair (and I have no reason to suspect they’re not), it seems to me the outrage is well-deserved. This is almost exactly the same logic the left used to justify or explain away inner city riots. It seems to me there’s no substantial difference. The judge in Atlanta was not murdered because he had an expansive view of the penumbra to the Bill of Rights. Neither was the murder of that judge’s family in Chicago attributable to judicial activism. What other violence is Cornyn referring to? I leave some room for the possibility that Cornyn was being stupid rather than sinister. But this strikes me as an indefensible statement.

I’m willing to hold open the “stupid” possibility too — though then he’s a (really) stupid member of the Judiciary Committee, which is troubling enough — and I suppose that there could be context that I haven’t seen. But Cornyn’s remarks do seem to be indefensible to me.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jon Henke thinks we’re being way too hard on Cornyn. His Daschle analogy seems in apposite to me, though.

So does Beldar, who says that we’ve all been suckered and that Cornyn’s speech, taken as a whole, gives a very different impression. Here’s a link to the speech, which is sufficiently rambling and unfocused that Beldar may have a point. Perhaps Cornyn is just asinine. But why drag in the violence-against-judges thing — when, as Jonah points out, there’s no reason to associate any of these events with the kind of stuff that Cornyn is complaining about — at all?

Ari Fleischer’s advice was good advice, and it’s especially good advice at a time when usually-respectable people have been urging a President and a Governor to call out the troops in defiance of court orders. If Cornyn’s being misrepresented here, perhaps he should come out and explain just what he did mean. . . .

MORE: Jonah Goldberg is unconvinced by these defenses of Cornyn.

SCOTT KOENIG’S WIFE IS IN THE HOSPITAL, after a nasty accident. Send him your thoughts and prayers.

SO NOW THERE’S A vast Left-wing conspiracy, too? I feel so left out.

MICKEY KAUS says that Howard Dean isn’t quite there yet — but it’s all according to plan!

UPDATE: Hmm. I wonder if it was Howard Dean that Phil Bredesen was talking about when he said this:

Bredesen, a former mayor of Nashville, believes his party has “somehow gotten itself divorced” from the blue-collar constituency it has always relied on for presidential success: “I’ve always felt the Democratic party was a kind of alliance between the academics and intellectuals and working-class men and women. I think what happened is that in my lifetime, the academics won.”

As a result, the governor said, the party had lost its broad appeal. He mocked other Democratic candidates who think connecting with middle America means quoting a few verses from the Bible or being photographed with guns. . . .

He added: “I think a lot of the time the answer they are looking for is ‘Oh, if you just quote Matthew, Mark, Luke or John once in your speech’ that somehow everyone will think you’re one of them.”

If that worked, we’d be talking about President Kerry now.

RICH, BLOGGY GOODNESS: This week’s Carnival of the Vanities is up.

LIVING AND DYING IN THESE MODERN TIMES: My TechCentralStation column is up.

YOU CAN SEE ME, EUGENE VOLOKH, RANDY BARNETT, Akhil Amar, Bob Cottrol, and a host of other law professors, in this trailer for Dave Hardy’s forthcoming Second Amendment documentary.

ANN ALTHOUSE POSTS pictures from a nice day in Madison. Note that, even though in this case the photographer is female, women still dominate the scenes. Why? Because that’s who goes to college, these days. . . .

No, really.

Non-campus photoblogging here.

CAPT. ED MAKES THE CBC for his publication of banned-in-Canada information on the scandals that may bring down Paul Martin’s government. Video clip here, text here, more background at Dust My Broom.

Meanwhile, Capt. Ed has more on the scandal, which should excite his new legion of Canadian readers. And Jeff Quinton reports that his site is being deluged with Canadians searching for “Instipundit.”

Meanwhile, Nicholas Packwood writes:

It is beginning to look to me that the Liberal Party of Canada has more to worry about than remaining in power. If comprehensive, wide-ranging criminal charges are not laid soon and all the way to the top of this thing we may be looking at the collapse of the federal party for a generation. And if that happens we may be at the mercy of the fundamentalists who have taken control of the Conservative Party of Canada in which case I say with no irony, “May God help us all.”

Canada under the control of fundamentalists? Hard to imagine.

UPDATE: More Canadian scandalblogging here and here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Still more, here.

MORE: Ed explains why he thinks this is important:

One of my commenters last night asked why Americans should be so offended by a publication ban, considering that grand jury testimony is often kept secret here. However, grand jury testimony is truly held in camera, meaning closed off to the public. As Taber reports, that’s hardly the case with the Gomery Inquiry . . . In other words, every politician has access to the testimony, and even most reporters can get the transcript or at least hear it as the witnesses reveal their secrets. The only people whom the publication ban affects are the Canadian voters who elected these people and whose money got siphoned off. It has no analogy to grand juries whatsoever.

Read the whole thing, as well as this interview with Capt. Ed from The Globe and Mail.

And there’s more on the ban here, from the Montreal Gazette.

I’m kind of surprised this routing-around-censorship story hasn’t gotten more play in the United States. Is it just because any mention of Canada puts American editors to sleep? Bloggers know better.

I’M A “BRAHMIN BLOGGER?” Er, okay.

HERE’S VIDEO of Donald Sensing’s appearance on O’Reilly earlier tonight.

UPDATE: Austin Bay blogged it.