The Black Rod

Un-bee-lievable. The Driskell Inquiry has decided it doesn't need to hear from Ray Zanidean, the key witness whose testimony convicted Jim Driskell of murder. Harumph, he has nothing to add, declared Commission attorney Michael Code. Lawyers at the Inquiry freely called Zanidean a liar and a perjurer for weeks, and Code doesn't think he should get a chance to respond? Are they afraid he might contradict the carefully orchestrated "evidence"? Or that he might repeat the evidence he gave the jury, and nobody, but nobody, may suggest that the jury delivered a proper verdict. It's interesting to see that mainstream journalists like Winnipeg Free Press reporter Dan Lett have abandoned any pretence of impartiality towards the Inquiry. He's taken to calling anyone who challenges the evidence or the fairness of the Inquiry pawns of the police force. Of course he doesn't bother to refute any of the criticism. He's not into anything like a point-by-point analysi

More information has been trickling in about what happened at Dawson College the day of Kimveer Gill's murderous rampage. A lot of it is found on blogs, message boards, and internet forums which provide fascinating details of what went on. Here, then, is an update to our previous post Reconstructing the Dawson College Shooting Moment by Moment. Reading them together will give you the clearest account of what happened that terrible day. 1. Kimveer Gill parked his car in front of the school on de Maissoneuve Blvd., two or three car lengths from Wood Avenue. We had thought he parked on Wood because that's where the first witnesses were walking. The day of the shooting, Tip-C, one of four young men who walked past Gill as he was taking his guns out of the trunk of his car, posted what he saw on montrealracing: I saw the actual shooter!!!I think i was one of the first ppl to see him so heres my story... im walking with 3 of my friends down the maisonneuve going west! as were walking

Just one day after The Black Rod revealed that the Winnipeg Free Press used a made-up quote as the basis for a front-page story villifying retired Crown Attorney George Dangerfield at the Driskell Inquiry, the newspaper "clarified " three stories written about Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz. Free Press Editor Bob Cox admitted the newspaper ran an erroneous headline over one story, used a twisted interpretation of Katz's answers to a barrage of questions in another, and allowed a reporter's opinionated slant into a news story about election candidates. In an unprecedented column, Cox acknowledged the errors. A headline saying Katz was eyeing a tax hike was blatantly wrong, said Cox. The story by Bartley Kives clearly said the opposite. A story by reporter Carol Sanders that said Katz was willing to forgive $100,000 in back taxes owed on Thunderbird House was also wrong. Katz was being asked questions at the same time by a radio reporter and Mary Agnes Welch, the Winnipeg Free

The Driskell Inquiry has reconvened to parse the English language to come up with a solution to how a man convicted of murder by a duly empanelled jury of 12 citizens can be declared "innocent." The Inquiry has taken on an Alice In Wonderland quality where words have the opposite meaning. The press says nothing about the Stalin-show-trial aspect of Manitoba judicial inquiries because they have a stake in the predetermined outcomes. In the Soviet Union, Uncle Joe pinned a medal on your chest; in Manitoba, you vie for journalism awards. But the MSM are humiliating themselves just as surely as CBS Faker Dan Rather did two years ago. Rather used forged documents to manufacture a big story. When exposed by the Blogosphere, he created a new journalistic standard for news---fake, but accurate. Far from repudiating him, the news media has adopted 'fake, but accurate' as a valid tool. We saw it in Lebanon when, once again, bloggers easily exposed an AP photographer's Pho

Oh boy, the race for Mayor is on. At first glance, what have we got? In one corner is Sam Katz, a well-respected entrepreneur with two year's experience as Mayor. In the other corner there's: * an unemployed gay activist * an unemployed, pretending to be self-employed, publicity hound, and * a men-are-the-enemy radical feminist who quit the NDP government -- because it was too right-wing for her taste. Is this shaping up as one for the books, or what? Sam Katz stepped up to the plate when Glen Murray quit in the middle of his term-after, of course, saying he had no intentions of quitting. Mayor Sam made no bones of the fact he was not a politician. His detractors can't get around that fact. Sam Katz is a Winnipeg businessman and he's does business at City Hall the same way that business is done in this city--- quietly, behind closed doors, building a team, under the radar, without grandstanding. It was his reputation as a man who gets things done, that led him to a crus

Enough information has now come out about Wednesday's shootings at Dawson College in Montreal that we can reconstruct what happened step by step. And the evidence indicates that Kimveer Gill was a more determined, and more depraved, killer than heretofore suspected. ********** Dawson College is bordered by Sherbrooke Street to the north, Maisonneuve Blvd. to the south, Wood Avenue to the west and Atwater Ave. to the east. About twenty minutes to 1 in the afternoon, Gill drove up to the CEGEP and parked his Pontiac Sunfire on Wood Avenue. He was early. The evidence suggests he was timing his arrival with the end of noon-hour classes about ten minutes later. Maybe he caught the lights just right. Or he built-in time to find a parking spot. Whatever the reason, he arrived too soon. Another ten minutes and the halls would have been filled with students changing classes. And the carnage could have been unmeasureable. Gill got out of his car.Andrew Temple, 19, was walking along de Maione