So, what would you call someone who cuts the head off a three month old baby?

Melanie Phillips calls them "savages", an understatement at best, and finds herself in the cross hairs of the PCC (the British “Press Complaints Commission”).

Let us mentally transport ourselves back to the civil rights era, and suppose that a columnist used a phrase like ”redneck savages” or the “moral depravity of Mississippians” to condemn violence against blacks. We might imagine that some would complain that this language unfairly implicated all Southern whites in the crimes of a hateful few. But there would have been no possibility of official sanction against such a columnist, as is the case with this British “Press Complaints Commission” that is investigating Melanie Phillips.

What is this commission? It was established in 1991 to stave off Parliamentary complaints about the media and is tasked with exercising “non-statutory self-regulation” in the press. I’m insufficiently familiar with the PCC to know whether it routinely acts to enforce political correctness.

So, what can you say about the barbaric attacks against a Jewish settler family?  Not much.  And that is the point of the PCC and their ideological cousins throughout Europe and Canada.  The purpose of sanctioning speech is to stifle it.  In Canada it is about stifling speech and getting rich (see Blazing Cat Fur, Ezra Levant, Mark Steyn and Maclean's and way too many others).   

Whatever the motivation the result is the same-someone sitting in a politburo deciding what can and cannot be said.  Think it can't happen here?  I've got two words for you-Al Franken.

The Sport of Suing and other threats to free speech

Welcome to all Blazing Cat Fur readers and thank you to Mr. Cat Fur for the link.

It seems that Blazing Cat Fur has committed the ultimate Canadian offense-he's caught the attention of Richard Warman.  For those of you unfamiliar with Mr. Warman, he's a weaselly snailslime of a man who makes his living suing people for sport.  Nice gig if your the type who gets off by ruining other's lives just for shits and giggles.  A quote from Warman's Wiki entry:

I’ve come to the conclusion that I can be most effective by using what I like to describe as a “maximum Disruption” approach … I’ll look at all the potential targets and file complaints against them starting on a “worst offender” basis, although sometimes if I just find people to be particularly annoying this may move them up the list a bit. The “maximum disruption” part comes in because wherever I think it will be most helpful, or even if I just feel it will be the most fun, I strongly believe in hitting on as many of these fronts as possible either at the same time or one after the other. I say this because it keeps them off-balance and forces them to respond to things that focus their energies on defending themselves.

Mr. Cat Fur found himself in Warman's cross hairs because he linked approvingly to Mark Steyn.  Warman really, really doesn't like Mark Steyn:

WARMAN WATCH

During my battles with the Canadian "human rights" regime, we relentlessly exposed the corrupt relationship between the Commissars and Canada's self-appointed Hatefinder-General, Richard Warman. See here and here, among many other places. I also spoke about him when testifying to Parliament. Almost as soon as the truth about his Nazi website postings became known, Warman began suing. He sued Ezra Levant, with whom I'll be appearing on Saturday, as well as Kate McMillan, Kathy Shaidle, Free Dominion and anyone else who got in his way. At the time, many people asked me why he hadn't sued me, both for columns that appeared in Maclean's and for posts such as this one at SteynOnline.

So basically, since Warman can't touch Steyn he is playing "Whack a Proxy" and using Canada's legal system to do it. 

You can find more at American Power, POWIP, five feet of fury, Gates of Vienna, Patterico's Pontifications and Jay Currie.  Above all, throw some money in BCF's tip jar to help with his legal costs and never forget how precious our First Amendment is.