Kevin Libin makes a couple good points here first that the media will sniff out any slight perception of conservative “scandal” and then pounds. In addition in the wake of the Giffords tragedy we cannot now afford to take any threat to a public official lightly. Finally a word to the wise we now live in the digital age where lives are literally being documented online so be careful what you put out there for public consumption it might come back and bite you in the rear end one day.


From National Post 
Izzy Hirji was “one of several hundred students who gathered outside a Conservative Party campaign event in Guelph to encourage his young peers to get out and vote — for whomever they wanted — in the upcoming election,” the Toronto Star informed us on Wednesday. He was part of a “peaceful” apparently “non-partisan” group that Hirji told the Star was merely a “democratic exercise” trying to get people politically engaged. He was kicked out in one of those supposedly heavy-handed and sinister purges we’re told are being routinely conducted by Conservative goon squads.


Except, Izzy Hirji isn’t just some enthused democrat looking to energize the electorate, whatever their political stripe. As the bloggers at The Black Rod were the first to point out this week, he’s one of Stephen Harper’s more, shall we say, animated critics. In 2006, he was so angry with the Tories’ climate change policies, he posted on the Facebook Enviro Club this comment:


“…stephen harpers plan is ridiculous, 40 years without results, and death to Kyoto!?!?!?! OMGWTF im ready to like go to Ottawa myself an take him down…”


I don’t know if Hirji meant to sound like a violent menace when he said he was “ready” to “like go to Ottawa” and “take him down”—Mr. Hirji responded to bloggers by insisting “it was a joke” and that he doesn’t think comments from five years ago should “come back to haunt me” (he’s also since deleted the post)— but for RCMP officers tasked with the safety of the prime minister, when someone who has published such threats shows up live and in person just yards away from a potential target, it’s necessary to err on the side of caution. Anyway, as the Black Rod points out, this wasn’t the end of Hirji’s anti-Tory agitation. In March 2008, he partook in a rambunctious protest in Guelph against Harper, in which protesters blocked a street and climbed up on the roofs of a building. For all his protestations about being non-partisan, Mr. Hirji also has a record linking him to active support for the Green party. Perhaps that alone isn’t a good reason to shoo him away from a Tory event — though, again, they are private — but it does cast a lot of doubt on his assertions that he was only there to get out the youth vote. After all, if you’re looking for apathetic university students, there are probably a lot better places to find them than at a campaign rally.