I think raising your child in Canada now officially qualifies as child abuse

Why, in God's name, would any person who cares two cents about his children's character, or their access to religious viewpoints that do not suit the political prejudices and personal antagonism of unelected government officials, raise his children in the lunatic asylum that Canada has become? Just move already. How hard can it be to escape from Canada?????

Just to be clear on that first story -- and by the way, this is an updated version now that Ace has directed me to this fuller account, which just makes it even more appalling, but much more understandable (he can't move out of Canada because it's a divorce situation, I'm sure; so he's stuck with an ex-wife whose behavior is, shall we say, not what one would hope to see from a responsible parent):

1. He told his daughter -- his TWELVE-YEAR-OLD daughter -- to stop chatting on the web and posting inappropriate pictures of herself on MySpace.

2. She did it anyway.

3. He grounded her and told her she couldn't go on a school trip.

4. She ran away to go live with Mom, who had lost the custody battle and yet told the kid she could stay with her instead of making her go back to her dad, and also told her to go ahead and go on the school trip in defiance of Dad's wishes.

5. But the school said, "Look, we can't take her without her dad's permission."

6. So Mom gets her lawyer to take it to court on the grounds that the punishment was too harsh because "This was something that would never happen again in the child's life," and it was "really important," because "it was the end of a stage in her life." What stage of life was that again? Oh, yes -- she was graduating from ELEMENTARY SCHOOL!

7. So what does the judge do? She -- forgive the sexism but I was pretty bloody certain just from the screw-the-dad lunatic outcome that the judge was a woman even though the story didn't say so; so I searched the internet until I tracked down the name of Quebec Superior Court Madam Justice Suzanne Tessier -- she said pretty much, "Hey, the hell with the dad, he's being unreasonable; the kid can go."

I'm telling you, these Maple-Leafers have gone downright certifiable.

By the way, in case you didn't realize it, divorce sucks.