The broker America gets, the longer its presidential motorcade gets. If you don't got it, flaunt it, baby! But President-in-Waiting Hillary Rodham Clinton is already giving out signals that a mere 40-car motorcade may no longer be enough. This week she gave a speech in Saskatoon, which is a town in Saskatchewan, which is a province of Canada. The speech was for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, which is "under investigation from the United States for helping wealthy Americans offshore money in the bank's Caribbean accounts to avoid paying federal taxes". I'm on CIBC's side on that one: By comparison with other western nations, Americans labor under a regime of ever tighter banking constraints that are a disgrace to a supposedly free people.
So if she wants to cozy up to foreign banksters (as they say in Britain), you go, girl! Nevertheless:
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a couple paid speeches in Canada yesterday. She was reportedly accompanied by 65 agents of the United States Secret Service to at least one of the events.
The agents were presumably on hand to help keep the former first lady safe...
It's unclear what part, if any, of the security tab was picked up by Clinton -- and what part was paid for by U.S. taxpayers.
Yeah, right. Even by the standards of the US political class, Bill and Hillary are in the fortunate position of rarely, if ever, having to write a personal check.
I wonder if anybody in the Canadian government could confirm to me whether the Queen, the Governor General or the Prime Minister has ever had a 65-man personal security detail. As I mentioned a while back, the last time I saw Her Majesty there was her car plus one behind with a couple of coppers.
~This is an American journalism professor in the 21st century:
The First Amendment ends at insulting Mohammed.
His argument is the classic Heckler's Veto. Because a not insignificant proportion of young Muslim men are bananas, they killed a bunch of people in Niger over the last Charlie Hebdo cover. Whether they even saw the magazine is unclear, but at any rate we should rein in free speech just in case the crazies are minded to kill any more people.
If you're in DeWayne Wickham's class at Morgan State and you'd like to get an A, why not threaten to kill him? Indeed, it would be heartening if his entire class were to issue a mass death threat unless they're instantly upgraded to magna cum laude.
That's what Wickham's concessions on free speech do: Incentivize violence.
By contrast, here's my old pal Douglas Murray in cracking form on al-Jazeera:
Who would you bet on to defend civilization? Douglas or that J-school creep?
~Free speech, along with Canadian troops under fire from ISIS and the west's leadership vacuum in the age of Obama, were among the topics I discussed this afternoon with my old friend, radio host and piano-playing imam, Andrew Lawton. Click below to listen:
The Indigo event we were talking about takes place next Wednesday night, January 28th, at Indigo's flagship bookstore at Bay and Bloor in Toronto. I'll be talking about The [Un]documented Mark Steyn, and much else - as well as taking your questions, and doing some heavy-duty autographing, too. For more details, see here. And, for that francophone Goldfinger track we were talking about, see here.
