Fortunately, I can take a break this evening from whining sprucing up my house in order to blog.

Canada’s most notorious serial litigant, the exquisitely hyper-sensitive Richard Warman, has sued the National Post, reporter Jonathan Kay, and several leading conservative bloggers: Kathy Shaidle, Ezra Levant, Kate McMillan, and Mark and Connie Fournier.

The bloggers have all stated they will fight Warman’s suit to the limit and have appealed for financial assistance to that end.  More information on how to contribute can be found at their respective blogs.  Please give generously.

Today’s lawsuit is only tangentially related to the widening scandal now engulfing Canada’s “human rights” commissions.  Although Mr Warman is closely (indeed, much too closely) associated with the Canadian Human Rights Commission, his latest suit is intended to be heard in a real court with a real judge following real standards of law and rules of evidence.

He alleges that the defendants defamed him by reporting that he authored and posted a racist and sexist statement on the internet.  The post was a vile and bigoted personal attack on Liberal Senator Anne Cools.  Based on the IP address and other technical information regarding the origin of that post, one Bernard Klatt testified at a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal hearing in February 2007 that Warman posted that item.  Mr Kay reported that allegation as fact at the National Post’s website, and the bloggers did likewise at their sites.  (The Post apologised and retracted Kay’s blog post the following day, but apparently that wasn’t good enough.)

Warman maintains that the accusation that he wrote the post is false and defamatory.

The case could well turn on technical information.  In a real court, truth is a defence so, if the IP address can be conclusively verified as Warman’s own, he would seem to have no case.  (Indeed, he would be exposed as a liar.)

I find it very interesting that Mark Steyn is not named as a defendant, even though he also stated that Warman wrote the disputed post and even suggested “explicit collusion between the CHRC investigators and their former colleague, Mr Warman”.  Why was Mr Steyn left out?

Previous related post: Is fraud now a “human right” in Canada?