Less than a generation ago, Canada was a world leader when it came to the fundamental democratic freedoms of assembly, speech and information. So perhaps it is time for us Canadians to wake up and smell the suppression -- no longer are censorships solely the purview of tin-pot dictators in far away regimes.

A dreadful murder in Toronto where the suspect was on bail has, once again, led to media outrage. Calls to restrict or even prohibit bail have been made. What is striking about the media outrage is how ill-informed the response seems to be about bail itself.

It is painful to be called an anti-Semite by a deceased saint. Yet the dead speak, even when we wish they'd keep their thoughts to themselves. There is a tremendous effort to deny that Martin Luther King ever said these words: "When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You're talking anti-Semitism." Unfortunately, he did.

Occupy Wall Street is, like the Tea Party, a messy populist movement. The concern is real that it refuses to recognize an essential tragic component of human affairs: unfairness is the abiding fact of our condition