Today, Tuesday, is the official release date of my new book "A Disgrace To The Profession". I'll be appearing with Sean Hannity later tonight on Fox News (details at right), but I'd like to thank His Holiness the Pope for arranging the ultimate promotional tie-in by proclaiming my book's launch day as the International Day of Prayer for Climate Change. Thousands of Kindle pre-order customers will find their prayers answered, as the digital "Disgrace" is magically waiting to greet them when they wake up this morning. As for the old-fashioned paper version, we're already on the book's third printing, which is a nice place to be on the first official day of sale in the United States and Canada and elsewhere. And it's Number One on the Climatology Hit Parade, with its sister book Climate Change: The Facts holding at Number Eight, and Michael E Mann's Dreary Predictions down at Number 15. "A Disgrace To The Profession" is also available in Nook and Kobo eBook format from today.
~The second highest peak in North America is Mount Logan in the Yukon, named after Sir William Logan, founder of the Geological Survey of Canada. When Pierre Trudeau died 15 years ago, his successor, Jean Chrétien, announced airily that Mount Logan would be renamed for the late Prime Minister. Given the number of women who got to mount Trudeau in the course of his life, having an actual Mount Trudeau seemed an oddly superfluous honor. But, in its insult to and obliteration of Sir William Logan, a Canadian of great accomplishments, it was a typically Trudeaupian act of historical vandalism.
So some of us pushed back against Chrétien's banana-republican name-change, and, unusually for the deranged Dominion, Mount Logan got to keep its name.
The only higher peak in North America was not so fortunate. On Monday, Barack Obama, by executive order, removed the name of his predecessor from Mount McKinley. It is a strange thing to do - the sort of public humiliation that in normal circumstances would accompany the revelation that the man was a pedophile or racist or some such. And it is an especially undeserved fate for William McKinley, who took a bullet for his country - back in the days before American presidents retreated behind the 40-car motorcade and no citizen could be permitted into their presence without a background check. It was a characteristically petty act for Obama, adding insult to injury, to fly to Alaska personally to strip McKinley of his mountain. I don't altogether rule out him detonating those guys off Mount Rushmore before his term's up.
~I regret while I was on The Tommy Schnurmacher Show in Montreal yesterday that I neglected to speak out against Quebec's appalling Bill 59, which gives the province's wretched "Human Rights" Commission the authority to launch "hate speech" prosecutions even when nobody's made a complaint. Jacques Frémont, the statist hack who heads the commission, has already signaled his intention to use his new powers to sue "people who would write against ...the Islamic religion".
Screw off, creep. Free people are entitled to "write against" Islam or any other religion whatever some state commissar in a cosy and entirely unnecessary sinecure thinks. Marc Lebuis, whose invaluable Point de Bascule website seems likely to be an early target of Commissar Frémont, provides an English translation of his very thorough evidence to the National Assembly in Quebec City:
We can never repeat it enough: the role of the State is to protect the individual freedom of expression: that is the freedom of individuals to criticize ideas and NOT to protect ideas from the criticism of individuals.
Instead, the proponents of Bill 59 argue that it is necessary to throttle freedom in order to save it:
Ironically, Lebuis says, supporters justify the bill by suggesting it will protect democracy against terrorism. They reason that "terrorism is a reaction towards people who criticize their religion," he explains, "so by banning the criticism of Islam, we would end terrorism." Such arguments have been made both by Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard and by Muslim groups such as the Association of Muslims and Arabs for a Secular Quebec (AMAL).
Shame on M Couillard for adopting as his own one of Islam's most stupid arguments: If you say we're crazy and violent, we'll go bananas and kill you.
To which the Government of Quebec adds: Because Muslims go nuts at the slightest provocation, we'll ban the slightest provocation, and therefore they'll no longer need to go nuts. Good luck with that.
If this bill passes, it will become necessary for all of us to break it and render it unworkable - and to support Marc Lebuis, a rare champion of genuine liberty in a province that could use more like him and a lot fewer totalitarian toads like Frémont and Couillard. It is exhausting to have to fight the same battle over and over and over again, but I am not prepared to let the western world retreat into darkness one jurisdiction at a time. As some bloke once said, Vive le Québec libre!
~For those who miss my old Uighur Wednesday routines on The Rush Limbaugh Show, try Hillary Clinton's actual State Department Uighur gags.