Today, I am going through some of the articles from newspapers widely read in Toronto. Although many of the articles are from a few days ago, the comments to them are still coming in fast and furious. It's heartening to know that there are countless other voters like myself who are still seething with pure anger over the injustice done to His Worship Rob Ford by an unelected judge who played into the hands of one of the most manipulative lawyers representing the vilest segment of the downtown waste of skins.
Marni Soupcoff at NationalPost:
..... Maybe we’re the ones who owe Rob Ford an apology. The idea of a democratically elected mayor being turfed by a judge rubbed me the wrong way from the start. But my initial feeling about Justice Hackland’s decision, which removed Toronto Mayor Rob Ford from office for violating the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act (MCIA), was that it seemed legally sound. Sure, I was convinced it was an unfair and damaging result – and evidence of a serious problem with the MCIA – but on the surface, the legal reasoning seemed solid to my legally trained eyes.
And there were certainly enough voices out there proclaiming the decision to be “obviously” right to lull me into a sense of dismayed security about the correctness of the opinion.
But I’ve since changed my mind.....
You will have to read the above linked article in its entirety to fully get the gist of the comments below as many of them are in reply to the mad ravings of the misinformed rabid lefties.
Rethink_downtown If the legal reasoning in the column is right, then it doesn't matter that he originally failed to defend himself effectively, because the council vote that was the basis of the complaint was illegal in the first place.
Now, that doesn't mean it was a good idea for Ford to vote. At the time, he wasn't voting because he believed that the motion was illegal. But the guy was brought down by a technicality, so if he can save himself on a technicality, good for him.
Rethink_downtown That's just not accurate. Ford wasn't removed from office for soliciting the money. The only issue in the conflict case was speaking and casting the vote on the city council motion about penalizing him for it. Strange but true.
And as Marni says, remorse is neither here nor there with respect to Ford's liability under the conflict of interest law. A judge takes remorse into account in determining a sentence for a guilty offender in a criminal trial. It doesn't affect whether or not somebody is guilty. And in this case, it doesn't affect the penalty either, because the whole issue is that the penalty (removal from office) is prescribed in law, and the judge had to follow it even though he criticized it in his ruling. So bringing remorse into it is intuitively satisfying, but legally irrelevant.
wallhousewart Yes, something stinks to high heaven in this case. Ford was a councillor when this went down. The judge should have taken that into consideration as well. If this wasn't actioned when it happened, a whole voting cycle should have wiped it out. There is something scummy about some well to do activists pouring through records to unseat a politician they don't like and then getting a high profile trial lawyer willing to work for nothing to do it. It smacks of entitlement. Rob Ford has been a councillor for a number of years and it appears he never became a threat to the 1% until he became mayor. And then watch out. Toronto's Family Compact banded together to get rid of him.
Werner Blazejewski Those are the people that wanted Rob ford out; Chaleff-Freudenthaler went to school with the children of Magder and his wife Fern Mosoff – Nat and Robin — and according to a recent Toronto Star story, it was Chaleff-Freudenthaler who contacted Ruby about taking on the case.
Read more: http://www.canada.com/Behind+people+brought+down+Toronto+Mayor+Ford/7630328/story.html#ixzz2DjOeA7K6
Bob leslieville Don't try to pin a by-election on Ford. It is the line-up of Ford-haters exploiting the courts for their personal agendas that led to this. Ford is the victim of this witch-hunt, as are the taxpayers. In a democracy, you vote out people you disagree with. Why can't you people understand that?
Damn_the_Unions Charles Hackland is the one who should be vacated from the bench. How could he made such a wrong decision. His own findings don't even support it. He either lied or didn't know what he was talking about when he said he had no choice. Alas! but judges are untouchables. It's time to have elected judges.
Notconradblack It is disappointing that we allow judges and lawyers to decide who should hold public office. But I guess since they do such a great job in making sure that guilty people are always convicted of their crimes, then perhaps we should just forget about our democratic voting rights and let those judges and lawyers appoint our public officials for us.
But if we really believe this to be just, me thinks the judges and lawyers in this country will be very busy getting rid of the rest of our public officials that may also have a little bit of "conflict of interest" going on. Ya think?
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