The Black Rod

The Winnipeg Free Press thought that the recent death of a respected Crown prosecutor was a pefect opportunity to malign and defame him with impunity. They didn't anticipate that the vile effort would damage an innocent victim- one of their own. Katrina Clarke is listed on the FP website as an "investigative reporter." She hasn't made much of a mark at the paper, so when offered a juicy story, it looked irresistable . "... the late prosecutor is linked to five wrongful convictions involving eight men who collectively spent more than 100 years in prison for crimes they did not commit." read the story.  "... the cases have left a trail of various forms of misconduct — undisclosed evidence, a reliance on junk science and secret deals with Crown witnesses. They have also spawned two commissions of inquiry and required payments of millions of dollars in compensation for victims." "Dangerfield was an outlier, a driven prosecutor blinded by tunnel vi...

  Canada has a new hero. He's Artur Pawlowski, the pastor of Calgary's Street Church. On Easter weekend a band of six government thugs showed up at his church to stop the religious service declaring they were there to prevent the spread of Covid-19. For Pastor Pawlowski, it was too much. Sacriligious government intrusion into a church on the holiest days of the Christianity was a red line not to be crossed. Like an exorcist driving out demons, he confronted the menacing gang of officials. "OUT!" "OUT!" "GET OUT!" "GESTAPO IS NOT ALLOWED HERE!" "NAZIS ARE NOT WELCOME HERE!" "GET OUT!" "DO NOT COME BACK WITHOUT A WARRANT!" At first, the authorities thought they could intimidate Pastor Pawlowski by standing their ground. But with parishioners rushing to his defence by filming the confrontation with a sea of cell phones, they conceded defeat, but not before showing their contempt by saunte...

It's shaping up as the biggest news story in Manitoba in 2012. And the timing couldn't be more perfect. On the eve of the resumption of the Manitoba Legislature, former MLA Robert Wilson has come face-to-face with the exoneration he's chased for more than 30 years , from the day he was arrested in 1979, to the day he was convicted in 1980, to the day he was expelled from the Legislature in 1981, stripped of his pay and pension. And his honour. Above all, his honour. For literally a generation, Bob Wilson, now 78 years old, has professed his innocence of the charges of conspiracy to import and traffic marijuana that destroyed his life. He became the monomaniacal Captain Ahab of Manitoba jurisprudence, hunting his personal white whale--- Ian Jackson "Whitey" Macdonald, a former friend and drug dealer whose surprise visit one evening enmeshed Wilson in an endless nightmare of accusations, prison, shame and regret. Wilson was arreste...

Even as month-old information is passed off as "news" by the Winnipeg Free Press, the biggest crime story in Winnipeg languishes untouched by the city's "professional" journalists. Crime reporters have been trying to put the latest outbreak of shootings and home invasions into context. CTV on Friday blamed it on a clash between two street gangs---MOB and Indian Posse. Trying to advance the story in Saturday's paper, FP reporter Mike McIntyre breathlessly wrote that "police and justice sources tell the Free Press the M.O.B. is no longer a united front and has broken into two factions..." http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/mob-breakup-is-bad-news---edited-166628926.html Uh, yeah. That's what the Winnipeg Sun reported ONE MONTH AGO after the details were revealed in open court. http://www.winnipegsun.com/2012/07/17/street-gang-splinters-into-two "A mysterious rift among members of a notorious Winnipe...

What the hell was that all about? After seven weeks of testimony one fact is crystal clear---authorities don't have a shred of evidence against Mark Stobbe for the murder of his wife Beverley Rowbotham. Not A Shred! When the trial started, Crown attorney Wendy Dawson painted a horrific picture for the jury. A woman--a loving wife and a mother of two young sons--- butchered in her back yard. A heartless killer stuffing her bloody body into her car and abandoning both like garbage in a dark and empty parking lot miles away. A trail of circumstantial evidence leading straight to her husband. Dedicated police investigators ripping away the mantle of grieving spouse to expose the maniacal killer inside. She was going to produce a mountain of indisputable evidence to build the circumstantial case---videotape, eyewitnesses, photos, charts, audio tests to prove that a woman's screams from the backyard could be heard in Stobbe's living room where he said he was wat...

The howling mob had free rein for two weeks to vilify a decent man. They screeched and marched and chanted their kneejerk slogans at will. Prominent journalists like Winnipeg Free Press columnist Lindor Reynolds and Winnipeg Sun writer Kevin Engstrom jostled to get to the head of the lynch mob as they dropped their oh-so-clever bon mots. No means No, they bellowed as they demanded the immediate termination of Court of Queen's Bench Justice Robert Dewar. His unpardonable sin? Doing his job without bowing to political correctness. And then, this week the swarm was stopped in its tracks--- by 88 pages of print---the transcript of the sentencing of a Thompson man, convicted by Dewar of rape, but sentenced to house arrest instead of the penitentiary term demanded by the Crown---aka, the truth. "Kenneth Rhodes, rapist, won't be going to jail because Dewar feels the victim was sending him signals that he was going to get lucky. She was sending them, presumably,...

The lynching parties were out in full force this past week. You almost needed a traffic cop to separate the mobs and keep them from stepping on each others' toes, which is ironic since one of the lynch mobs was determined to string up two police officers who had seen serious charges against them tossed out of court. The rush for the pitchforks and nooses started Tuesday afternoon when a judge dismissed perjury charges against the two Winnipeg city policemen. Police officers, you have to understand, have become the new criminal class in the eyes of the NDP government. They have devoted a decade's worth of resources to demonize the police through a series of show trials disguised as public inquiries (Sophonow, Driskell, Unger) while rewarding men convicted of murder, by juries, with millions of dollars. The only thing missing in the government's scheme of things is the successful prosecution of a police officer for ... well, anything. They need at least...

We don't know who's more insulting, politician Andrew Swan or reporters Mike McIntyre and Gabrielle Giroday. But its clear that this trio is guilty of grossly misleading the public. The team of McIntrye and Giroday should have been collecting accolades for their revelation that the teenager charged with killing a motorist by smashing into him with a stolen Hummer was a car thief previously convicted of involvement in another car crash where a taxi driver was killed. http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/accused-thief-has-a-dark-past-79392032.html Instead, by simply regurgitating the political lies of Justice Minister Andrew Swan, they negated their good work and deserve to share the disgrace. Their Wednesday story concluded with the obligatory search for a solution: "Attorney General Andrew Swan said provincial governments have been pushing Ottawa for changes to the Youth Criminal Justice Act that would allow judges to take deterrence into account when sentencing young o...

Unions claim they exist to improve the lives of employees. Tell that to Gail Eckert. She had been working for Canstar Community News Ltd. for 15 1/2 years when the company was unionized by Media Union of Manitoba. She had worked herself up through the organization and held the position of manager of sales development. She earned a base salary of $85,000 a year plus commissions. The bargaining unit didn't include Eckert's job. But her Spidey sense tingled and, fearing the worst, she asked to attend the ratification meeting. She was barred by the Media Union . And, you guessed it, at the eleventh hour Canstar and the Media Union added Eckert’s position to the bargaining unit. They changed her title to account executive at a base salary of $42,175, with a right to earn an additional $16,000 per year if certain sales objectives were met. Canstar guaranteed Eckert the additional sum for one year only. In March 2008, she quit, claiming that she had been constructively dismissed witho...