October 2008 Archives

So we got through the Canadian federal election to find ourselves in the home stretch of the American elections. And as we approach the end of that almost endless campaign, it looks like the Liberal leadership race is about to start heating up. It brings to mind the immortal words of Lowell George:

Well my telephone was ringing and they told me it was Chairman Mao
I don't care who it is, I just don't want to talk to him now

This is Little Feat with Mick Taylor sitting in on Apolitical Blues. It's the meanest blues of all.

Earlier this week it was reported that American troops in Iraq had carried out a raid that took them ten miles into Syrian territory. Apparently the Syrian government wasn't impressed. I haven't seen any reports on this in the North American media but Haaretz has picked it up from Al-Arabiya.

Report: Syria cuts diplomatic ties with Iraq over U.S. raid

Damascus has decided to cut off its diplomatic relations with Iraq in response to a deadly raid carried out by the U.S. on Syrian soil earlier this week, Al-Arabiya reported on Thursday.

Syria has also decided to reduce its troops on the border with Iraq, according to a report from Syrian television.

The Syrian government has demanded Washington apologize for the strike of the Abu Kamal border community and earlier this weeek (sic) threatened to cut off cooperation on Iraqi border security if there are more American raids on Syria territory.

H/t to markfromIreland at Oxdown Gazette who got me looking around.

The title is sarcasm in case it's not clear.

Andres Useche, "Si, Se Puede Cambiar" ("Yes, we can change")

In tribute to Marie Roget, who cared deeply for her own country and for ours, who became a friend to this blog and then left us too soon.

Raising Arizona (1987): the diaper caper

John McCain is now in danger of losing his home state of Arizona to Barack Obama, who, I believe, has not campaigned there since the primaries.

There are voices counselling empathy for the wounded old warrior, and then there's the worry of counting chickens before they're hatched. But why does that remain such a worry, given all the numbers? Mainly because so many are convinced that elections have been stolen before and could be again by the crooks and liars who have been rising from their coffins ever since the Nixon administration and who are not going to be stopped unless someone finally decides that he's not ready to make nice and is determined to stop them, for good.

Go to Arizona this weekend, Barack. This is not just a question of crushing McCain but of answering thirty years of organized criminal behaviour that has never been resisted effectively by the conciliators.

No quarter. Win as damned big as you can, and then make sure that none of the Undead can make comebacks, as they did after Iran-Contra. I'm normally a nice guy too, but the rest of the world has learned to its sorrow that your crooks and liars will not quit on their own.

Crush them.

I'm with Dr Dawg: one excellent reason for cheering Obama on next Tuesday night is the memory of the U.S. ambassadors that BushCo have sent us over the last eight years.

David Wilkins has been noisy and tendentious enough, but few have ever meddled as undiplomatically and condescendingly as Paul "The Mouth from Massachusetts" Cellucci. Or at such length, over such a time. Just this week Cellucci has been waggling a Republican finger at Canadians for liking Obama, irrational fear-mongering and overbearing scolding being what Republicans do best. Mentarch has a handy list this afternoon of some of Cellucci's greatest hits -- not to be missed.

There is, as always, deeper and more disturbing background to Cellucci's remanifestation among us this week. Yesterday Alison at Creekside and The Galloping Beaver published a splendid if disturbing update on the adventures of the faux-academic front group for the deep-integrationists of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives. Guess who was there? I urge you to read every word of Alison's priceless synthesis and follow every link. These guys won't quit: "What does it mean to be good neighbours?" indeed.

If one thing cheered me up about the canada.com article about Cellucci today, it was seeing that the funny research group that did the push-poll for CDFAI none the less reported honestly on Canadians' high opinion of Obama.

Not that the opinions of mere citizens have ever mattered to Paul and his continentalizing friends in this country. That, in fact, is the point of what they're doing -- to get citizens and representative democracy out of the way. Again, they won't quit. So we can't either.

Who do we want as a new ambassador, btw?

Regular Friday night visitors will have noticed that in recent weeks I've changed things up a bit. I've gotten away from strictly blues and the first tune in the post has been chosen for reasons that have more to do with what's in the news. Actually it's usually a tune that has been an earworm for me at some point in the week due to something I've read. Sometimes the only way I can get rid of an earworm is to find the song and listen to it all the way through.

This week it's in response to reading more than one Liberal supporter who has expressed a fervent hope that fellow Liberals will get past the idea that all they need do is find that one special leader who can put the whole party on his shoulders and carry it back to the promised land. I'm not a Liberal party member but I agree. What appears to be an increasing fixation on the leaders without looking further at the whole party and what it stands for — and what it would do with power if successful — isn't good for the party or the country in the long run. I'd rather see elections that are more about policy and less about personality.

And the earworm? Here's Tina Turner with We Don't Need Another Hero.

Vlad and Boris, with "Song for Sarah":

Thanks to Antonia at Bread and Roses.

If you're a North American of my age and have an ounce of self-respect, there's one line you never want to have to speak. You decided when you were ten, or fifteen, that if any paranoid parochial bigoted jerk ever asked you "Are you now, or have you ever been ...," you would remain silent, whatever you had ever been.

Mr. Welch: You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

According to Bill Sloan, the local candidate for the Communist Party of Canada, the city of Westmount (yes, it's a city within Montreal) removed CPC election posters carrying the slogans "Canada out of Afghanistan" and "End Canadian support to Israeli apartheid":

" I called their public security on October 9 and spoke to the Director, Mr. Richard Blondin. He confirmed that his service had indeed removed my posters on September 28 and 29, but did not tell me what they had done with them. He declined to explain for what reasons or under what authority they had acted."

" The next day I read a press release from Marc Garneau, Liberal candidate in the riding where he joins the Canadian Jewish Congress in denouncing the election campaign of the Communist Party of Canada, and alleges that my signs ‘may be’ illegal because of their content !"

"This is ridiculous." said Sloan, "The electoral allows an advertising message that promotes or opposes a registered party or the election of a candidate, including one that takes a position on an issue with which a registered party or candidate is associated.

" They were so sure of themselves that they filed a report with the Montreal Police (SPVM), leaving them a pair of each of the ‘offending’ posters. As though I were the criminal. Adding insult to injury."

"This is a flagrant violation of freedom of expression, which the Supreme Court reminds us is at its most precious during an election campaign."

If this story is true, then Westmount Public Security needs to be brought up short, and fast, by the courts, and Marc Garneau has shamed not only himself and the Liberal Party but all Canadians. We do not need imported hysteria and dumbing-down in Canada. If this story is true, it is an outrage, and I hope that the CPC can get it to the to the courts, who will, I have every confidence, remind the tiny minds of Westmount PS and the Liberal Party that we are still a democracy and a free people.

Marc Garneau: Have you no sense of decency, sir?

Thanks to Toedancer at Bread and Roses.

Lindsay Beyerstein at Majikthise on the rather large sum the Republican National Committee has spent buying clothes for vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin:

She wasn't really vetted, so John McCain may not have realized that Caribou Barbie's accessories were sold separately.

One of the most important things to come out of the O'Connor inquiry into the kidnapping and torture of Maher Arar was an unequivocal statement from Justice O'Connor that Arar was an innocent man and that there was no evidence whatsoever of any wrongdoing on his part. At the time, given Arar's ordeal and the part that Canadian officials played in it, I thought such a definitive statement was the least we could do. It turns out I may have been wrong. It appears that given circumstances very much like Arar's we can actually do much less.

Critics slam Afghan rape probe

The Canadian military's National Investigation Service is telling some witnesses it could take up to two years to investigate claims by Canadian soldiers that they've seen Afghan soldiers and interpreters raping young boys near Canadian bases outside Kandahar.

That would leave the problem unresolved until about 2011 – the year Prime Minister Stephen Harper has pledged to pull Canada's soldiers from the country – when the issue could well become moot.

In June, the Star reported that several Canadian soldiers had complained about the abuse of Afghan children to military officers in Afghanistan and chaplains and medical staff in Canada.

The first soldiers to complain said their allegations were ignored.

The first post to this blog was published five years ago today. It was about Belinda Stronach and her role in "uniting the right" (and doesn't that seem like a lifetime ago). If you're having a birthday too, this is for us.

I couldn't find a live version and I wasn't about to put up a cover on this auspicious occasion so you'll have to settle for the accompanying video created by some enterprising YouTube user. See you in 2013. (Though I might be back to post once or twice before then.)

I noticed I wasn't the only one in the last few days to invoke a familiar bit of song lyric. Here's The Who with Won't Get Fooled Again.

NDP candidate wants review of ID confusion

An NDP candidate in Tuesday's general election wants Elections Canada to conduct a full review after it was reported people across the country were turned away at the polls because of new identification rules.

Ryan Cleary, the New Democratic Party's unsuccessful candidate in St. John's South-Mount Pearl, told CBC News he has heard so many stories about people being unable to cast their ballots, that he believes Elections Canada is to blame.

I'd go even further than he does and ask that our elected officials review the changes that were made with an eye towards rolling at least some of it back. To repeat what's been noted on this site in the past, all the noise that gets made about thwarting voter fraud generally turns out to look more like efforts at vote suppression. In the absence of even one example of an election in this country whose outcome was changed due to voter fraud, the tighter rules look like a solution in search of a problem.

Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the election a Facebook group has been formed to support both increased education and a review of the new voting requirements. You can find out more at Rusty Idols.

H/t to writer at babble for the CBC story.

A couple of months ago it was reported that an arbitrator had imposed a collective agreement covering the eight employees in a tire-and-lube garage at a Wal-Mart store in Gatineau, Quebec. Guess what just happened? Go on, guess.

Wal-Mart is closing a tire-and-lube garage in Gatineau where workers won a major victory last August when a Quebec arbitrator imposed a collective agreement on the company.

This is not photoshopped.

OK, here we go for number three. So the question is, can John McCain turn this around? What would it take for him to do so? Would Obama have to show up drunk tonight? Pledge undying fealty to Osama bin Laden? And will McCain be trying to change it up tonight or will we see him acting like he did at the last debate?

The lowest voter turnout in Canadian history coincides with the first election with stringent new voter ID rules. You are encouraged not to draw any obvious conclusions.

When Harper let it be known that he was going to dissolve parliament and send us to the polls, I anticipated that we'd end up pretty much back where we started. If anything, I'm surprised at the further erosion of Liberal support. And things did get a little more interesting than I thought they would towards the end of the campaign. An imminent collapse of the global financial system tends to add a little spice to the proceedings.

But waking up this morning to a minority Conservative government is no shock to me at all. It appears we just spent five weeks and tens of millions of dollars so Stephen Harper's nickname could be changed from Mr. Thirty-six Percent to Mr. Thirty-seven Percent*. Things might get more interesting when parliament reconvenes and we learn whether we're in for another round of endless confidence votes and Liberal absences and/or abstentions. And should Harper decide that parliament remains dysfunctional, Michaëlle Jean may find herself learning far more about parliamentary tradition than she'd ever intended.

Meanwhile I'm left even more convinced that there are two issues that need attention: the electoral system and media consolidation. Both are tough nuts to crack but I don't see how things can change seriously on other fronts without addressing them.

* (Added on edit) I see by our Sitemeter that traffic has been heavy this morning and a few of our visitors may not be from around here so I'll explain the crack about the nickname. In 2006, Harper's Conservatives won 36% of the popular vote and thanks to the awesomeness of our electoral system, that was all they needed for their glorious leader to become the prime minister. This time around — just over two and a half years later — they've increased their share to 37%. At this rate, Harper might be Mr. Fifty-one Percent by the turn of the century, assuming both he and Canada last that long. This morning I don't regard either of those as particularly sound assumptions.

The Conservatives look certain to win enough seats that a Liberal-NDP coalition is out of the question. Now we wait to see if they can get a majority. At this moment I'm guessing no but it will be close.

UPDATE: It's looking like a no. Harper will be returned with an increased minority.

UPDATE 2: Dion's political career ended tonight. The only question is whether he resigns tonight or later this year (probably later). The Liberals lost a lot of seats (about 25-30) and most of those went Conservative, with a few going NDP. There's some speculation floating about that Harper may also choose to move on (I doubt it, although I'm sure that he was hoping for a majority and won't be happy to not have got it).

And so we've ended up pretty much where we started, but with a small twist. The Greens and NDP are up, according to the last set of polls, and the Conservatives and Liberals down. We all know that the Conservatives will get the most seats, that the Liberals will come in a somewhat disappointing second, and the NDP will produce a surprisingly strong third.

What we don't know is exactly how that will translate into seats, and this time around it looks like some small shifts in voting could lead to a very different government tomorrow morning. Specifically, the best estimates we have make it look that the Liberals and NDP, in combination, may end the evening within a couple of seats of the Conservatives. Either the next Parliament will look very much like the last, or we'll have a Liberal-NDP coalition.

A coalition would make all sorts of sense for both Dion and Layton. For Dion, it will save his political career--after all, he gets to be PM. For Layton, it gets the NDP in government and that positions the federal NDP to have a better shot in the future. In addition, there's a good chance in that scenario that Harper will choose to resign--he's not interested in being Leader of the Opposition--and with no obvious successor the Conservatives might get into some serious infighting as a result.

I can think of one or two reasons why the Liberals might not go for such a deal. One is that they think it's not worth the potential strengthening of the NDP--but I think the risk there is relatively low. It's worth remembering back in the 1980s that something similar happened here in Ontario, when David Peterson and Bob Rae cut a deal to take government away from the Conservatives. Now, in the end that deal led to Rae becoming Premier, but only because Peterson goofed later on. In the short term it led to a Liberal majority.

The second is that the next few years might not be a period of time where you want to be the guy in charge.

All that aside, though, we won't know until tomorrow whether this is even possible. There are a huge number of people who are undecided or soft in their support out there voting today, and the stock market is booming after weeks of uncertainty. I really don't know if that's going to move the polls (if it does it will probably help Harper).

If I had to bet, I'd bet on a Conservative minority--but I won't be shocked to wake up tomorrow to a Liberal-NDP coalition or a Conservative majority.

John McCain in prepared remarks to be delivered today: "We've got them just where we want them."

And that line comes as the climax to a recital of disasters and failures, some of them McCain's own, a terrible downer of a speech throughout. After I stopped laughing and thought of Monty Python, I also started thinking of figures like General Custer, but TPM tells me that Instaputz got there first.

I wonder why it is that Obama and Biden can talk about the things that are really hurting people and yet lift their crowds up, while that speech of McCain's just reads like more clanking chains being wrapped about his ankles.

Scratch And Sniff

The Saturday night GTMO golden oldies series has been out of action for a few weeks, and I apologize for that. It wasn't for lack of material, unfortunately. It's more that thinking about torture and injustice and the general disregard in North America for civil liberties and human rights sometimes gets to me and I need a break.

Last night, at least one PBS station in the U.S. (San Diego) premiered a chilling new documentary called "Torturing Democracy." From that link, you can watch the three-part program, a distillation of the whole story of the torture regime that grew so quickly in the dark recesses of the Bush administration immediately after 9/11. The other resources on-site are valuable, especially the annotated transcript, which pins down some of the quick references in the filmed narration, plus the timelines and the key documents. I hope that the people who built this site will continue to work on those archives.

People will already know parts of this story from the fine work that many dedicated journalists and artists have done, especially over the last couple of years, in print and on film: the ABC series on The Principals; the McClatchy series on GTMO; Alex Gibney's film Taxi to the Dark Side; Phillipe Sands' Torture Team; Barton Gellman's Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency; and Jane Mayer's The Dark Side. And there's more, of course. In some ways I'm sorry to tell you that there's more, but there is.

We always need to know the details in as much detail as we can, and then we have to do something about what we have learned has been going on -- horribly, and in our name. But it is immensely valuable as well to have documentary artists who can make sense of the whole story in a narrative that everyone can follow. I'm told that there are PBS stations in the U.S. that are nervous about running "Torturing Democracy." Now, there's something we have to defy. Go watch. As Mother used to say, "I'll show 'em nervous."

Thanks to randiego in comments at emptywheel.

When I joked earlier in the election campaign about posting Running On Empty I didn't realize I'd be doing it in honour of the banking system.

Joe Biden watches a clip from the SNL skit this morning on ABC's "Good Morning America":

Biden has been off the campaign trail since Friday; his wife's mother died on Sunday, and most of us can fill in those five days from our own experiences.

Bonus clips from his appearance in Florida today on the turn, where he took on Sarah Palin without mentioning her name.

Even when they're from Ed Broadbent. I have a lot of time for Broadbent but not when his recorded voice is interrupting me at a time of his choosing. I hope Canadian politicians on both sides of the partisan divide will get the message. But I'm pretty sure they won't.

The Canadian election is all over except for the voting. Harper called this election hoping to beat the financial crisis, and instead it hit right in the middle of his campaign. If he'd won his gamble, there's a good chance that it would have given him a majority or a minority strong enough to last him through the downturn. But he didn't.

Harper will spend the rest of the election trying to hold his ground and hoping that vote splitting among the opposition parties delivers him the lead he's looking for. It still might. For that reason, I expect the Conservatives to keep focusing their attacks on Dion, with the hope that the Liberals and NDP end up at about the same level. Dion, on the other hand, has to try to move voters concerned about the meltdown and unhappy with Harper because of it over to the Liberals. Dion's best case outcome, oddly enough, is strategic voting done effectively. His best shot at keeping his career alive is for the Liberals and NDP to have enough seats in combination to form a coalition government (even a minority one) and probably count on some informal Bloc support to keep that government alive for a while.

The prediction models, and my own intuition, suggest that Harper's desired outcome is most likely right now. But I won't be surprised if the actual election produces some very strange results.

It looks like the post-debate consensus is scoring this a win for Obama. Win or tie is a small distinction in practical terms, since Obama just needs to keep the numbers around where they are today.

But one of the post-debate polls on CNN is really bad news for McCain. Essentially, McCain and Obama are tied on foreign policy. Remember, this is supposed to be McCain's area of strength. Obama is killing him on the economy, and if McCain is tying him on foreign policy, then it means there is no substantive way for McCain to take the lead. He's got nothing, literally nothing, except Wright and Ayers and Rezko.

Here we go again. McCain needs a big win tonight. I'm half-expecting him to crack up and half-expecting him to do something awesomely stunt-tastic (note that those are not mutually exclusive). Will he announce a major new economic platform? Strangle Obama? Strangle an audience member? Take a nap? Spend the entire evening talking about some guy from the Sixties? Or not do anything especially interesting and leave us all wondering if he's just planning to quietly concede?

Answers, such as they are, will appear below the fold.

Update: There's moderately helpful video on the turn.

Update 2: Full story from the NYT on the turn.
________

I will update this squib once we have better reports; it leaves lots of unanswered questions.

But it is very good news, and could be an important decision for many of the other detainees remaining in limbo at Guantanamo. The WaPo published a good background summary of the issues in this and related cases on Sunday, where you will see how many uncertainties remain for the Uighurs.

You'll also see the continuing perversity of the Bush administration in its insistence before the courts that the president's political decisions about justice trump the powers of the judiciary:

"You can't hold people just because it's politically expedient," one of the [Uighurs'] lawyers, Susan Baker Manning, said in an interview.

The Justice Department declined to comment. But its lawyers have argued in court papers and at hearings that only the president has the authority to allow the men into the country. They also said the judge is barred from ordering their entry if they have ties to terrorist groups.

In court documents, they have contended that one of the men received training from a group that was later determined by the Bush administration to be a terrorist organization. The Justice Department is expected to make the same argument for the other 16 Uighurs, an official said.

"It's an executive branch matter, and not for some technical reason," Judry Subar, a Justice Department lawyer, said at the August hearing. "It's because that goes -- particularly in a case like this -- to very serious, important and sensitive diplomatic . . . considerations."

Let me translate that last heinous paragraph for you. The administration is arguing that U.S. law, international law, and basic human decency may be overridden at any time because a tyrant president considers that his power games with another nation justify the ravaging of any innocent life that happens to get in his way. And then there's the CYA: it has been reported that the DoD/CIA gave Chinese interrogators access to the Uighurs at Guantanamo and that the Chinese proceeded to torture them, under American auspices.

"National security" ... "may jeopardize relations with another nation ..." Gosh. Where have you heard government lawyers use those expressions to justify classifying anything, suppressing anything, abandoning anyone to limbo or worse?

Thanks to kspena in comments at emptywheel.

Canadian Political Ads:

Biden-Palin:

And can I tell you how weird it is to be laughing at an SNL skit again? Some of you kids probably won't believe me when I tell you it used to be consistently funny.

The Canadian Pacific Winter Olympics Spirit Train rolled into Winnipeg today for the fifth of its ten scheduled stops. The train features a variety of displays and free concerts. The music is provided by local bands, a group of aboriginal entertainers like Sierra Noble and Dallas Arcand and is headlined by Colin James.

I have been a Colin James fan for a long time. I first saw him perform about 20 years ago, as I recollect, opening for ZZTop on their Recycler Tour. And I haven't passed up many opportunities to see him since. Tonight's hour long concert ran almost 90 minutes and touched all the bases from an instrumental tribute to Jeff Healey to Voodoo Thing and his excellent version of Van Morrison's Into the Mystic.

There are five more stops for the Spirit Train - Thunder Bay (Oct. 8), Sudbury (Oct. 11), Mississauga (Oct. 13), Smiths Falls (Oct. 16) and Montréal (Oct. 18). The lineup changes from stop to stop - except for Colin. Details are here. If you are a Colin James fan and one of these stops is nearby, don't miss it.

Is it over yet?

This is Pretzel Logic. It seemed appropriate.

Harper was the big winner last night.

It wasn't a perfect evening for him, not by a long shot. His insistence that everything that can be done has been done about the economy is likely to wear somewhat over the next couple of weeks. I think Harper's likely at his peak in the polls and is unlikely to go much higher.

But he may not have to.

The really important thing for him last night was Dion's failure to emerge from the pack. Instead, Layton and May did most of the talking and got most of the attention. Given that Layton needs to keep pushing against both the Liberals and Conservatives to get seats, and May desperately needs to her 10% support into actual MPs, there seems to be little chance of a "keep Harper out" movement uniting behind a single party. That's especially the case given Dion's lackluster performance.

With three viable opposition parties (or two in Quebec, given that Dion did well in the French debate), Harper may not need much more than a third of the vote. I think he did well enough last night to guarantee that.

Watching the VP debate now. Palin is talking. OH MY GOD THE STUPID IT BURNS.

8:30 - This picture on the Star's site makes Duceppe look like a serial killer.

Also, what's with the thumbs-up from May?

Pre-debate rambles will go here above the fold. The actual debate commentary will go below it.

8:35 - You know, I liked the Bourne movies and they're probably the most entertainment I'm going to get tonight, given that I decided not to watch Biden vs. Palin. Although I would pay real money to see Biden say this.

8:44 - It occurs to me that as a representative of the core Conservative targeted demographic (white male, Catholic, executive/consultant, live on the edge of the suburbs), I should be getting some solid pandering from Harper. Let's see if he lives up to that expectation. Hey, NDP ad! (I'm watching the debate on CBC in HD).

8:54 - To be fair I will award each of the leaders WIIFM points when they directly pander to me, not just Harper.

8:57 - CBC is showing something on nanotech and the Singularity (AKA the rapture for Nerds). David Suzuki seems skeptical.

9:00 - OK, looks like we're off. Continued below.

I'll be here again tonight to liveblog the English Leaders debate. I was tempted to watch the Biden-Palin debate, but frankly I decided to pay attention to the election I can actually vote in. For the record I am going into this as an undecided voter--I could potentially end up voting Liberal, NDP, or Green, although I have confidence that the riding I live in is going Liberal.

My wife has already decided how she's voting and has decided to watch the VP debate instead. As far as that one goes, I expect Palin to beat the awesomely low expectations that have been set for her and also expect that it will have almost no impact on the outcome.

As for ours, Dion and May have (obviously) the most on the line tonight. It's the first time in English for both of them and they really need good performances tonight. From what I understand both did well in the French debates, so they have to be feeling better about their chances. A good performance by Dion might shore up his numbers and get the Liberals to an acceptable result. May has a chance to get some actual MPs elected.

Harper and Layton both need to keep the momentum going but can be expected to turn in competent performances. As for Duceppe, he just has to outperform Palin to avoid hurting his chances (since it's not like his voters are watching anyway), which means that he can be expected to continue his tradition of trying to screw up everyone else in the sure knowledge they won't waste time on attacking him.

Back in March it was reported that Canada's Military Police Complaints Commission intended to hold public hearings into allegations that Canadian troops in Afghanistan were handing detainees over to Afghan authorities despite evidence suggesting that those detainees would be tortured. Commission chair Peter Tinsley indicated that the decision to do so and thus gain the power of subpoena was a direct response to government stonewalling.

About a month later it was reported that the federal government was using the courts to try and prevent the hearings on the grounds that the matter was outside the commission's jurisdiction.

It seems Peter Tinsley doesn't have a lot of time for the government's position.