Archive for March, 2011

The first copies of the book have been sent to the media, and my book tour begins in May. Calgary, Winnipeg, Montreal, Chicago, and Boston are the first stops. This after lots of Toronto and other Ontario media. It will be fascinating to see how all this is handled. I’m sure there will be an attempt to turn the dicussion into a debate about the abuse crisis – mainly homosexual men abusing teenage boys – but I’m not going to let uninformed journalists do what they have done on this subject over the years. The abuse was grotesque, but I’ve covered this in an entire chapter in the book. It concerned a tiny number of clergy, the numbers were the same or less than, for example, schools, sports teams, other churches, volunteer groups, and the Church has dealt with it superbly in the last few years.

The other point is that this book is about Catholicism and history, Catholicism and life, Catholicism and theology, and so much else. The abuse issue is important but in no way dominant. Frankly, Catholics have done an awful job of defending and explaining the Church in the past thirty years. I’m not a priest, I’m not a silly liberal, I’m not a constipated traditionalist. This is going to be great fun. You can pre-order at Amazon, Chapters and all sorts of places. It’s McClelland & Stewart in Canada, Random House in the USA.

In that Iggy sometimes used his official title of “Count” in the UK and even in the USA, I think it only fair that we continue to honour him with what he deserves and is rightfully his. So please, for the sake of courtesy and form, let us from now on refer to the leader of the Liberal Party as Count Iggy. Because he has spent most of his life and virtually all of his adult years living elsewhere, we need to remind him of how polite we Canadians are. Well done.

Only a few weeks to go before the launch of Sun News. I’ve received several hundred e-mails asking whether I’m going to leave CTS and join Sun. No and yes. I declined a very generous offer to host a show on Sun because I can’t leave my programme at CTS. The ratings are better than ever now we’ve moved to 11pm – we’re getting tens of thousands of viewings on the CTS website alone – and now I’m producer as well as host it would have been the wrong decision. What I have contractually agreed with the guys at Sun News, however, is to appear at least three times a week as a commentator, and to write two instead of my current one column a week for the newspaper group. The best of both worlds, and I’m extremely grateful to both networks for this.

Every day we hear of another star name coming to Sun News. Theo Caldwell, for example, is in the afternoons. Theo is a good friend and a great broadcaster. You’re going to love him. Ezra Levant, Brian Lilley, Charles Adler? It doesn’t get much better than this. Very, very exciting for anyone, whatever their politics, who cares about good television.

Britain’s Catholic Herald reports the following:

Qamar David, who was jailed in 2002 following an accusation of blasphemy but only sentenced last year, died of a heart attack, according to prison authorities. But Church leaders and human rights activists have called for the cause of death to be assessed independently.

Qamar David was sentenced to life imprisonment in February last year, but had been seeking to appeal against the ruling.

His lawyer, Pervez Chaudhry, told the BBC: “My client was in perfect condition the last time I met him. I have spoken to the family and we don’t believe he died a natural death. He had been receiving threats against his life.

“I had submitted an application in this regard in court – my client had also mentioned that prison officials were involved.”

Shahid Sagar, David’s cousin, said: “I visited him quite regularly and he had never complained of any illness.

“He was certainly not in the kind of condition that would make him drop dead all of a sudden. I can’t accept this report of him dying of a heart attack.”
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Christians are the most persecuted group in the world, and most of our political leaders say not a word. Egypt and Pakistan treat their Christian minorities horribly, with North Korea, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan and Gaza close behind.

Muammar Gaddafi is a war criminal, an international terrorist and an insane brute. He had tortured and murdered countless numbers of his own people, and even now kills anybody who opposes him. The western world, the Arab world and even former friends acknowledge what a thug he is. But the monster still has allies. Stand up leftist icons Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega. The former is worshipped by the hard left in North America and Europe, and the latter – the old Sandinista who tried to ethnically cleanse native Indians in Nicaragua – used to make socialists go all weak at the knees. Both of them have praised the Libyan gargoyle and promised to never let him down. Nice.