We're adjourned for the day

I'm afraid I have to go to Calgary now so I won't be at the hearing tomorrow. I'll have some final thoughts, but for the minute-by-minute updates, please visit my friend Andrew Coyne's outstanding blog.

The lawyers are discussing timing of the rest of the hearing; though it's been painfully slow to date, I think that Maclean's will not call any witnesses or evidence. FJ will bring a few more witnesses; I predict they'll backfire -- either in a hail of contradictions, like Khurrum Awan the Serial Liar, or in honesty, like my new IM chat buddy, Andrew Rippin.

I think the case will finish up on Friday.

I've enjoyed live-blogging -- I've had 18,000 unique visitors making more than 40, 000 visits today as at 5 p.m. PT, which is a pleasant reward of its own. But, even though Maclean's clearly won the day, I can't imagine that magazine is happy about spending what I estimate has been $150,000 so far defending this joke of a case in a joke of a tribunal.

I've had a few laughs today, but they're not happy laughs; they're laughs of scorn; laughs instead of tears. Because this isn't a theatre show; it's a tribunal with the force of law behind it, and the power to censor political speech -- a power it has brutally used before.