Tight Budget

I don't care to join the crowds who have gathered to jeer Conrad Black in his misfortune, out of respect for his service in founding the National Post and in proving that a modern billionaire can be accomplished in other matters than making money.

But I wish I could say that I was just barely scraping by on $200,000 a month:

Conrad Black and Barbara Amiel Black have been limited to a budget of $25,000 each a month for "reasonable" living expenses, according to a freeze order issued by an Ontario court.

The 10-page Mareva order stipulates that Lord Black and his wife may apply to the provincial court for additional funds after they have each filed a sworn affidavit listing the "nature, value and precise location" of their assets, and any encumbrances that may be attached to them.

The Ontario court appears to place significant restrictions on Lord Black and Ms. Black, who had listed monthly expenses of US$200,000, according to a Chicago judge.

As well, the freeze order restrains Lord Black, his wife, and persons or entities controlled by them directly or indirectly, or acting on their behalf from "transferring, conveying, encumbering, mortgaging, pledging, assigning, donating, gifting, settling, removing or otherwise disposing" of any assets.

It's easy enough for an upwardly mobile professional couple to go through $25,000 a month in Toronto, even if they're not particularly spendthrift but just class-conscious.

I can't imagine what economies the Blacks will have to make to live on it without feeling humiliated.

But hey, I'd be glad to afford to live on $25,000 a month. But knowing my habits, I'd run out of things to spend it on after about half that.

Source: National Post

'Tis An Ill Wind

When tuberculosis was a great scourge of public health, every immigrant to Canada was required to take a tuberculin test. If the immigrant tested positive, he was denied entry.

In our more enlightened age, where respect for individual rights is much more highly regarded, we are expected to admit all the sick and diseased of the world, because it is their right to go wherever they want, without regard for the health and safety of others.

But to assuage public concerns, there is in place a practice known as medical surveillance, which does not bar persons with inactive TB or syphilis, but merely requires them to report themselves to public health authorities within 30 days of arriving in Canada.

Naturally, we dare not quarantine our own native-born disease carriers.

The result: tuberculosis and syphilis are now spreading again where they had once been eliminated, along with a host of other diseases returned in antibiotic and vaccine-resistant forms.

And now we're going to be expected to take in a group of HIV-infected "refugees" who used the International AIDS Conference in Toronto as an excuse to get treatment they couldn't get at home.

Joe Warmington has the details about what appears to have been a deliberately executed plan, aided by local immigration lawyers, to allow HIV-infected persons to get around the queue.

And we know who pays for it in the end.

Who suffers and dies on a waiting list to pay for these people's treatment?

Riddell Me This

Back in the 2004 election, Alan Riddell's campaign in Ottawa South began with high hopes when John Manley retired and David McGuinty was blindsided by brother Dalton's announcement of the $900 health care premium, and the NDP put forward Monia Mazigh (better known as Mrs. Maher Arar) in a bizarre bit of grandstanding.

Then the Ottawa Sun ran a libellous story claiming he'd been caught driving on a suspended licence (which, to the Sun's later embarrassment, it had to retract).

He was all ready to go for 2006 when someone decided to tell the press that he dressed up as Sgt. Schultz for a Halloween party when he was 17. Out went Riddell, in came Barry Turner, out went Turner, and when Riddell tried to get in again, Adscam whistleblower Allan Cutler knocked him out.

Now Riddell is out, way out, and nobody will tell him why:

The Conservative party has revoked the membership of a former candidate after he sued the organization for allegedly reneging on a deal worth more than $50,000.

Party president Don Plett confirmed Friday that the Conservative national council voted to kick Alan Riddell out of the party.

Plett said he could not provide details because the decision was in arbitration, but another party official complained last May that Riddell was an "embarrassment" to the party.

The decision comes as the party is under fire by some longtime members for disqualifying potential electoral candidates with little or no explanation.

Riddell is appealing to Prime Minister Stephen Harper to intervene and has brought his case before a party arbitration panel.

....

Riddell and the party entered into a financial agreement that would pay him up to $50,000 to compensate for expenditures to be the official candidate before Cutler arrived on the scene. In addition, Riddell would be repaid legal expenses.

When Riddell had trouble getting the money back from the party, he went public with the dispute. The party has since claimed they owe him nothing because he breached a confidentiality agreement.

I can see not letting a man stand for office while he's suing the party, not just because of the conflict of interest, but because of the endless embarrassment that would ensue in the press and on the campaign.

But kicking him out without explanation just looks petty, before the suit has been settled or tried.

Perhaps it would have been better not to make the deal in the first place; these sorts of deals always look bad whenever they get released, for both the candidate and the party.

Would someone on National Council please explain why Alan Riddell and other good party members are having their nominations rejected and reputations sullied? If these people aren't fit to run, the membership should know why, before putting themselves behind them and getting burned.

Source: Ottawa Citizen

Give Pizza Chants

Whatever you think of Jack Layton's political opinions, at heart, he is a reasonable man who believes that everyone else acts as reasonable men.

He shares the common myopia of Western man that has troubled him since the Enlightenment: an almost superstitious belief in the rationality of man and the desire of all men to achieve and act on same.

Which is why he can sincerely believe that the Taliban will come to the negotiating table, if given the opportunity, and see that their reasonable objectives can be achieved there, while setting aside their unreasonable ones:

Canadian troops should withdraw from Afghanistan as soon as possible, NDP leader Jack Layton demanded yesterday.

"This is not the right mission for Canada," Mr. Layton told reporters at a news conference.

Mr. Layton said the mission is not making the world a safer place and with no end in sight, he wants troops home by February, 2007, at the latest.

That's when the mission was originally supposed to end, but in May, Parliament narrowly voted to extend Canada's military presence in Afghanistan until 2009. The NDP voted against the motion.

The NDP leader wants a "comprehensive peace process" to be implemented in Afghanistan -- one that could even include sitting down for talks with the Taliban.

"We believe that a comprehensive peace process has to bring all combatants to the table," Mr. Layton said.

"You don't accomplish peace if those who are fighting are not involved in a peace-based discussion, that's fundamental."

When further asked about negotiating with the Taliban, Mr. Layton said that a cessation of violence would have to be the first step.

The NDP leader said the current mission has no clear mandate or objectives, no criteria to measure its success, no timeline and no exit strategy.

Wars must be fought according to a plan, but no war ever follows one. Set piece battles and advances along well-defined fronts do not apply in a battle against an enemy that fights neither, and does not define its success or failure in such terms.

Robert McNamara's brilliant analysts tried to fight Vietnam as if they were running Ford. The results are known to us all.

Nonetheless, there is a clear objective: destroy the Taliban, drive their allies out of Afghanistan and make way for some sort of functioning civil government that can maintain a semblance of order and keep down militant Islam. Democratic, preferably, but a military regime, if necessary.

Achieving that objective isn't going to be done according to Six Sigma or seminar.

Source: National Post

French Letters

Do French politicians screw around like old tomcats?

Does a bear shit in the woods?

Challenging one of the great taboos of French politics, a new book has laid bare the love lives of the country's amorous leaders.

Sexus Politicus, published yesterday, reveals decades of philandering, adultery and seduction at the heart of the French state, with politicians of all colours apparently sharing the same passion for extramarital sex.

According to the book, President Jacques Chirac and his predecessors Francois Mitterrand and Valery Giscard d'Estaing have juggled the fate of France, their families and a bevy of lovers with great ease, helped partly by an acquiescent media.

....

Sexus Politicus revisits the old tale of how Mr. d'Estaing was found out after a late-night car crash in Paris showed he was at the wheel with a woman who was not his wife.

It also tells how Mr. Mitterrand, an infamous ladies' man, slept with the same women as some close aides, his driver and, on one occasion, Mr. Chirac.

The current President also comes across as a veritable Casanova, disappearing on midnight rendezvous and using state funds to take a mistress on foreign trips.

The French may have guillotined their nobility, but their republican forebears certainly took on their old privileges, especially the droit de seigneur.

Would a similar tome ever be written about Canada's prime ministers and their extramarital amours? And would it be received with the same nonchalance?

Win A Date With Ruby Dhalla

If the Conservative Party were to auction off a lunch date with Helena Guergis for a fundraiser, the media would be saturated with condemnatory articles and editorials blasting the party for its sexist attitudes and treating its women like prize cattle.

But since it's Michael Ignatieff's campaign raffling off Ruby Dhalla, the usual commentatrices have fallen silent.

But give credit to Ignatieff for realizing that nothing's better than an attractive woman for raising money: she's up to $3,500 with eight days before the close of bidding.

That's more than all time with all the other MPs in the auction combined.

Would you rather spend less and end up on a golf course with John McCallum instead?

Compare And Contrast

The Liberals prided themselves on nuanced diplomacy, moral neutrality and studied evenhandedness in its dealings with Middle East dictatorships.

Zahra Kazemi paid the price.

The Conservatives have taken sides unequivocally with Israel, the West, and liberty.

Ramin Jahanbegloo is alive, free, and unharmed.

Canada has not become a significantly stronger power, militarily, economically, or politically, during the past three years.

But showing a little more strength of character and determination gets results from people who only recognize strength.

Source: Toronto Star

Amateur Jihad Hour

You don't need to spend years training in some madrassa/boot camp in the mountains of Pakistan to become a jihadi. You don't even need to know Osama Bin Laden's third wife's brother's cousin' next door neighbours' camel driver.

Just get behind the wheel of your SUV and floor it.

Or go to the beach and beat up any woman in a bathing suit.

Your 72 virgins await!

Iggy Pops Off

Michael Ignatieff's commitment to Canada and the Liberal Party are well-known throughout the land. So great it is, that he might just decamp for Harvard or Oxford agains if he doesn't get the top job:

Toronto MP Michael Ignatieff won't commit to running in the next election if he loses his bid to become leader of the federal Liberal party.

"Depends who's leader," Ignatieff said yesterday when asked at a meeting with the Toronto Star editorial board if he would run for the party in the next election if he loses the leadership vote in early December.

However, Ignatieff, 59, considered by many to be the frontrunner in the race, denied having indicated that there are some leadership hopefuls for whom he would not run.

"No. It really is that I have to look what I am looking at," he said.

However, he said, nobody should "doubt my devotion" to the party, adding he's been a committed Liberal since he was 17.

"There are all kinds of ways you can stay committed and involved and active in the Liberal Party of Canada, believe me, without being an MP," said Ignatieff, who was elected for the first time in Etobicoke-Lakeshore riding in the Jan. 23 vote.

Liberals should love Ignatieff's sense of entitlement to power and position; it's what defines their party above all else. Ignatieff didn't come back here for any other reason except to be the man on the white horse. Becoming just another cabinet minister, or worse, another opposition MP, is beneath this great public intellectual's talents.

Thanks for the condescension, Count Ignatieff.

Source: Toronto Star

Window Dressing

Too many people must have been asking too many uncomfortable questions about the role of women in Islam, because the Islamic Society of North America has decided to stick a Canadian convert woman up there as its president:

The Islamic Society of North America (www.isna.net), the largest religious organization representing Muslims in North America, has elected Dr. Ingrid Mattson as its President. She is the first woman to head the organization.

Dr. Mattson, who earlier served as the first female ISNA Vice President, is Professor of Islamic Studies and Director of Islamic Chaplaincy at the Macdonald Center for Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary in Hartford, CT. Dr. Mattson, born in Canada, studied Philosophy at the University of Waterloo, Ontario (B.A. '87) and earned her Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from the University of Chicago in 1999.


Dr. Mattson has numerous publications exploring the relationship between Islamic law and society, as well as gender and leadership issues in Muslim communities. Her forthcoming book, The Qur’an: Its History and Place in Muslim Societies, is being published by Blackwell Press. Dr. Mattson lives in Connecticut with her husband and two children.

ISNA members also elected Imam Mohammed ibn Hagmagid – popularly known as Imam Magid -- as the organization’s Vice-President. Imam Magid is the Executive Director and Imam of The All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS; www.adamscenter.org). He is also Chair of Fairfax Faith Communities in Action, member of the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington Assembly, and Board Member of the Fairfax Youth Partnership. Imam Magid lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and five children.

Local Muslims can point to Dr. Mattson and claim, "See! We're not all misogynists who stuff their wives in burqas to hide the bruises! Look how much we respect the contributions of educated women--revert women, at that!"

But they've left her on a tight leash with an imam from Sudan (Darfur, anyone?) who's a graduate of Al-Azhar University (the Harvard of the madrassas) in Cairo as vice-president--no doubt to make the real decisions while Dr. Mattson acts as the public relations face of ISNA.

The people who want to be fooled, and whom ISNA expects to be fooled, will be.

And from ISNA's point of view, that's all that matters.

Three Jeers For Kofi

Even considering who did it, just the fact that it happened warmed my heart upon reading of it:

UN chief Kofi Annan was booed by a crowd chanting pro-Hezbollah slogans on Monday as he toured Beirut’s southern suburbs devastated by Israel’s war against the militant group.

Dozens of men, women and children angrily waved pictures of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and shouted ‘Allah, Nasrallah and all of the suburbs’ as the UN secretary general emerged from his car to survey the destruction in the heart of the Haret Hreik area, a Hezbollah stronghold.

....

One woman, clad in a black chador, laid a portrait of Nasrallah face down on the tinted glass of one of the moving vehicles.

“To hell with the United Nations and Annan,” said Jamil Bashir Al-Abed, 31, a resident of the area whose home was damaged by the Israeli bombardments.

“Let him look at what the UN and the United States have done and at all this destruction,” he added, pointing to flattened building and tons of debris. “This is their work.”

A group of women carrying posters of Nasrallah angrily denounced the United Nations saying the world body was in collusion with Israel.

What an ungrateful bunch. The UN has done more for the Islamist cause, short of actually organizing an invasion of Israel, than any other multilateral organization, and this is the thanks it gets!

More proof that trying to play the "honest broker" only gets people thinking that you're not honest, and probably flat broke.

Source: Dawn.com

Toronto Off The C-List

The Centre of the Universe's newspaper of record is distraught and dismayed that the exemplar of multicultural tolerance and diversity (or is that tolerant diverse multiculturalism? diverse multicultural tolerance?) has been left off somebody or other's list of world class cities:

Vancouver and Victoria have the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains.

Quebec City and Montreal have history and culture.

But what does Toronto have to entice tourists from around the world? Not much, according to the readers of Travel + Leisure magazine.

Four Canadian cities ranked in the top 10 U.S. and Canadian destinations in the popular travel publication's annual World's Best awards.

Vancouver ranks the highest at Number 6, followed by Quebec City, Victoria and Montreal.

But noticeably absent is Canada's biggest city.

You mean that the world's largest collective sense of smugness isn't a sufficient tourist attraction? Or the greatest and most aggressive army of panhandlers? Not even the hottest cauldron of silently seething ethnic tensions? I'm all verklempt.

Yet another pretension to world-class status exposed along with Toronto's insecurity about same. If New York had been left off the list, would the Times have even noticed?

Source: Toronto Star

Benoit Sauvageau, 1964-2006

Bloc MP Benoit Sauvageau was killed today in a car accident, leaving behind a wife and four children.

A sad reminder of the fragility of life, at one moment busy with the mundane matters of life, the next taken cruelly away therefrom:

Duceppe said Sauvageau was on the phone to his office staff before he died asking him to attend an event in his riding. He said Sauvageau was on his way to a caterer before the accident.

Remember him, and his family, in your prayers.

Bomber's Remorse

Perhaps we were all a little too quick to call Israel's half-hearted campaign against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon a victory for the terrorists:

The leader of the militant group Hezbollah says that if he had it to do all over again, he wouldn't order the capture of Israeli soldiers that ignited the war in Lebanon.

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah in the Aug. 27 TV interview. (New TV/Associated Press) "You ask me, if I had known on July 11 … that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not," Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said in an interview with Lebanon's New TV station broadcast Sunday.

The war devastated Lebanon, where at least 850 militants and civilians died in Israeli bombardments and land attacks, while Hezbollah rockets and fighters killed at least 157 Israeli civilians and soldiers. Estimates of the cost of repairing damage to Lebanese buildings, roads and infrastructure run into the billions of dollars.

Hezbollah fighters crossed from Lebanon into northern Israel on July 12, killing three Israeli soldiers and capturing two more. Israel responded with attacks that lasted until a UN-organized ceasefire took effect on Aug. 14.

"We did not think, even one per cent, that the capture would lead to a war at this time and of this magnitude," Nasrallah said.

Time is making matters clearer. Hezbollah's propaganda victory is looking increasingly hollow outside the Islamic echo chamber; too many reports of Hezbollah rockets being fired from civilian areas at Israeli civilians, and the utter devestation left behind, have started making even knee-jerk anti-Israelis take notice.

Hezbollah looks less like a brave popular resistance force and more like what it is: Iran's sock puppet.

At least among common opinion, anyway. The elites who govern us are still blithering along about "moral equivalence" and "proportionate response."

Source: CBC

Swordpoint Conversion

The two Fox News journalists released after two weeks in captivity at the hands of Palestinian militants apparently secured their release, and their lives, by apparently converting to Islam:

The kidnappers, meanwhile, released new video of Wiig and Centanni Sunday. In a written statement attached to the video, the kidnappers claimed the two men had converted to Islam.

In one segment of the footage, Wiig is seen sitting cross-legged on the floor, dressed in a beige robe and reading from crumpled notes, delivering an anti-Western speech. He also read out an Islamic blessing in Arabic, his fingers following the written text.

"The people of Gaza have suffered for many years in what is effectively a prison camp," he said in a halting voice, his face expressionless. "They have not been free to come and go. Some say this was all started because of 9/11, and of course that wasn't true.

"It is Apache helicopters firing hellfire missiles made in America that kill the residents of Gaza. America and George Bush are seen as being evil in some people's eyes in this part of the world," Wiig said. "It it's time that the leaders of the West listen to the people, take notice of the millions protesting in the streets, stop hiding behind the `I don't negotiate with terrorists' myth."

In another segment, Centanni said he has converted to Islam and raised his index finger in an oath of allegiance to the religion.

Those who remember the Vietnam War will remember how POWs used to read out anti-American propaganda statements, without enthusiasm and often withh subtle signals of hostility, just to stay alive and avoid worse tortures.

These men's "conversions" to Islam should be seen in the same light.

But their eventual renunciations will put themselves in even further jeopardy, for the penalty for "apostasy" from Islam is death.

Perhaps this will be a new method of Islamic terror: kidnap non-Muslims (especially Western Christians and Jews), publicly broadcast their "conversions" to Islam, release them, wait for them to renounce their coerced "conversions", and then declare a fatwa on them.

That way, the kidnap victims can never really escape their captors.

Source: CBS-5

Not Tonight, Dear, I Have A Headache....

....is not an acceptable excuse in Pakistan:

A woman Member of National Assembly (MNA) in Pakistan has said that married women in her country should not be treated like “buffaloes” when it comes to men forcing sex on them, and be given due respect.

Kashmala Tariq, who is also a member of the NA’s Select Committee on Women’s Protection Bill, proposed that a husband having sex with his wife without her consent “should be tried under rape charges”.

Men should not have sex with their wives against their will, the Daily Times quoted her as saying.

According to her, other members of the committee, including Mehnaz Rafi, Zahid Hamid and Wasim Sajjad, had endorsed her viewpoint.

However, Rashmala’s proposal received a jolt when federal Minister of State for Religious Affairs, Dr Aamir Liaqat Hussain opposed her idea saying that it was “un-Islamic to stop husbands from having sex with their wives even if they were doing so without their consent”.

Meanwhile, the sounds of crickets chirping and tumbleweeds blowing through windswept halls reverberate through the office of Status of Women Canada, following a hysterical crying jag about an Ottawa housewife's call to take away their funding.

Contraband

In many a courtroom, you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy--and that's just counting the lawyers and the judge.

So naturally you'd find even more of the same among the arraigned, accused and spectators in the courtroom where the man who made Pickton Farms sausage infamous will face his judgment:

They thought they had done their homework and planned for all possibilities when they introduced tough new security measures at the front door of the courthouse where Robert Pickton was on trial for first-degree murder of 26 women.

But the sheriff's office did not anticipate what they would find on belt buckles, in breath-mint containers and on chains around the necks of people going into the courthouse for other trials.

During the first six months of the trial that began Jan. 30, hundreds of people have been pulled aside for trying to bring weapons and drugs into the courthouse. The unanticipated bounty included 2,196 knives, 33 cans of pepper spray and 30 syringes. Officials seized drugs — marijuana, crack cocaine, amphetamines, crystal meth and heroin — on 54 occasions.

They found six items identified as ammunition, explosives and/or gun parts, including one box of ammunition with 50 bullets for a .22-calibre gun.

The weapons came in many guises, including a belt buckle, a pen and a crucifix. The sheriffs found a knife, called a push dagger, in a black square designed to fit in a wallet. They discovered drugs in inconspicuous places, such as cigarette packages and breath-mint containers.

Sounds like people are anxious to finish Pickton off because the courts won't. Let the guard down for half a day and he won't be alive at the end of it.

Source: Globe and Mail

She Is Woman, Hear Her Roar

I've met the lady who runs Big Blue Wave; I can say that she is one of the most unlikely people to strike fear and terror in the hearts of the establishment.

Yet her campaign to pressure the federal government to shut down funding to the National Action Committee on the Status of Women is causing many an MSM reporterette and feminist blogger to break down in hysterics at the thought.

One wonders what exactly SOW has been doing with its $23 million a year to improve the lot of Canadian women. The only women's lot who have been improved, it seems, would be those who work for SOW and get grant money from it.

If SOW were to close up shop tomorrow, would women be forced en masse back into the kitchen to cook, clean, and breed? Would their rights to vote and hold property in their own name be taken away? Would they never be permitted to hold a thought of their own without their husbands' or fathers' permission?

What has SOW done for women lately except to advocate policies that treat women as the helpless weaklings or sexual playthings things SOW claims that they aren't?

Well done, Suzanne.

You, a supposedly downtrodden housewife, have shown yourself to be a stronger and more independent woman than the feminists who wring their hands and weep at the threat of losing their government sugar daddy.

Garbage Power

Halton Region is going to turn its excess garbage into electricity.

And if it works, they'll use Garth Turner as a hot air heating source too.

Pluto Voted Off The Solar System

Definitions are no longer constant any more, it seems.

Up is down, black is white, good is evil, and Pluto isn't a planet anymore:

Leading astronomers declared Thursday that Pluto was no longer a planet under historic new guidelines that downsize the solar system from nine planets to eight.

After a tumultuous week of clashing over the essence of the cosmos, the International Astronomical Union stripped Pluto of the planetary status it has held since its discovery in 1930. The new definition of what is — and isn't — a planet fills a centuries-old black hole for scientists who have laboured since Copernicus without one.

The gathering in Prague has decided that Mars, Venus, Earth, Mercury, Jupiter, Uranus Saturn and Neptune remain planets, but Pluto becomes the first member of a new category, known as dwarf planets.

The historic vote officially shrinks Earth's neighbourhood from the traditional nine planets to eight. But the scientists made clear they're as sentimental as anyone about the ninth rock from the sun.

....

Much-maligned Pluto — named for the god of the underworld — doesn't make the grade under the new rules for a planet: “a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.”

Pluto is automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune's.

Instead, it will be reclassified in a new category of “dwarf planets,” similar to what long have been termed “minor planets.” The definition also lays out a third class of lesser objects that orbit the sun — “small solar system bodies,” a term that will apply to numerous asteroids, comets and other natural satellites.

But fear not for Pluto: all it needs is someone to make a Charter challenge on its behalf and the courts will redefine it as a planet again.

In fact, there may already be an argument that calling it a "dwarf planet" is discriminatory, according to one perspicacious (if politically correct) Globe and Mail combox commentator:

keith stringer from Cincinnati, United States writes: Actually, the newly proposed terminology might be troubling from a social perspective. Under the new terminology, it is to be accepted in elementary school classrooms that 'dwarf planets' such as Pluto are not real planets. This terminology sets up the obvious possibility of childhood verbal cruelty, along the lines that a dwarf human is therefore not a real human. Dwarfism is a condition that impacts thousands of human families - perhaps after receiving those corrective opinions from geologists, the astronomers should have consulted pediatricians in their search for an appropriate term. There must be other terms besides 'dwarf' that could be used to describe small size.

You see? Just as the concept of "civil union" was considered derogatory to homosexual couples, so too the concept of "dwarf planet," with the bonus of being insulting to persons with human growth disabilities.

Pedants may point out that the Charter does not apply to celestial bodies, but our learned justices are capable of trying to shape the laws of nature to their ends as they do the laws of the land.