Today: Sun Shines On Brute Force Of The State...

. . .but the clouds are still covering the more important story behind the Ontario Superior Court's scuppering of the law the Mounties used to rifle through the notes of Ottawa Citizen reporter Juliet O'Neill two years ago. And that story is the news media's complicity in the smear campaign against the innocent Maher Arar, who ended up being tortured in Syria because of it.

Allan Thompson gets it right:

My purpose is not to criticize the journalists who, I'm sure, acted in good faith when they relayed the information leaked to them. But if they are ashamed now of the stories they produced, based on information provided by highly placed sources, they should talk about this publicly.

Now that we know these allegations were false, journalists have an obligation to examine how they handled this information and indeed, to probe how they were handled by sources who may well have been malicious.

You want a brave Canadian journalist? Here's Kim.

And on another free-speech front, I see my friend Nav Purewal is up for an award. Good work Nav.

Still nothing out of Ottawa about Salah Chaudhury. But I see his case is getting some attention in Washington, at least. And Jeff Weintraub has his shoulder to the wheel.