Harper sends in the lightweights

If you haven't listened to CBC's The Current today it's well worth the time if only to realize that Barry Cooper, one of the Calgary School feeding Harper-government policy, is still peddling a line which flies in the face of rule of law, shows a distinct lack of respect for established convention and thinks people are worth wasting in the name of, what he described as, "foreign policy".

It doesn't matter what you think of Omar Khadr or his family. The question put before the Federal Court of Canada was, "Did Canada participate in the violation of rights of the individual as protected by the Charter of Human Rights and the Constitution of Canada?"

The court said "Yes," to that question and, for the sixth time, ordered the Government of Canada to present a plan to remedy the violation in which Canada actively participated.

When questioned about the Federal Court decision on today's The Current, Cooper, dismissed rule of law and tried to make it a foreign policy issue in which he says the courts have no jurisdiction. That would be egregious enough, but then he played his Karl Rove by stating that Justice Russell W. Zinn, the Federal Court judge who issued the order and the deadline, was an activist judge who should keep his opinions to himself.

Really?

Either Cooper thought he could pull one over on the listeners or he simply wasn't prepared to be speaking in such a public place because Nathalie Des Rosiers of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association nuked him on the spot.

Justice Russell W. Zinn was appointed to the Federal Court on 20 February, 2008 - by Stephen Harper.

Throughout the rest of the piece Cooper did little more than duck and weave in an attempt to turn a legal matter into something it isn't.

Listen to the whole thing. It's really worth listening to Cooper make himself irrelevant.