Mexican held in Canadian's beating was drunk, on drugs

Mexican held in Canadian's beating was drunk, on drugs

Sheila Nabb and her husband Andrew are shown in a family photo.

A Mexican man arrested in connection with the brutal beating of Canadian tourist Sheila Nabb says he was drunk and had been using cocaine on the night of the attack.

Authorities trotted out Jose Ramon Acosta Quintero, 28, and he spoke to reporters in both English and Spanish on Saturday. The state attorney from Sinaloa said Quintero accepted his guilt in a statement to authorities, admitting that he beat Nabb at a five-star resort in Mazatlan last weekend.

His statement about his alcohol and drug use was delivered in Spanish and reported in English by a translator.

On Friday, state attorney Marco Antonio Higuera Gomez said they had arrested a man who was identified through a blood sample.

Nabb, 37, was found unconscious last weekend in an elevator at the Hotel Riu, where she was staying with her husband.

Gomez said on Saturday that Quintero had stated that he and a Canadian friend had spent the early hours of Jan. 20 drinking heavily. When the beer ran out, they decided to head to the resort to keep drinking at the 24-hour bar there.

At Saturday's new conference, Quintero said in English that he took a separate elevator in the hotel and on one of the floors, a female guest entered. She was naked, he said.

Quintero said that he tried to talk to the woman and she answered normally and didn't seem to be angry or afraid.

But the two then argued, apparently because the Mexican man would not let her leave.

"When the elevator doors opened so she would step out, I put my hand on the door," the suspect said. "I wanted to keep talking to her.

"She got afraid when I wouldn't let her out. She started yelling, 'He won't let me out.'"

When she began to scream and call for help, the accused said he became scared. Quintero said he told the woman he was leaving, but she wouldn't stop screaming.

"I covered her mouth and said, 'Please don't yell,"' the suspect said. "But she continued yelling. She got more afraid when I covered her mouth.

"And then I hit her four or five times in the face with my fist, and then I left."

Through a translator, Quintero said, "I was very, very drunk." He also said he had been using cocaine.

Gomez said Quintero would likely be charged with attempted homicide. The suspect must be brought before a judge within 48 hours of being detained. There were no indications the victim had been sexually assaulted, the attorney general said.

The accused was known, according to police, to visit tourist establishments and become friendly with foreigners.

"This person was discovered by investigators," Gomez said. "[The suspect] has the ability to speak English very well, and often stays in the hotels and mingles with the tourists. That is [the theory] we are working on and fortifying."

Authorities are trying to find out whether Quintero was involved in other attacks on tourists, Gomez said.
Nabb now in Calgary hospital

Robert Prosser, Nabb’s uncle, said she arrived in Calgary on Friday morning via air ambulance, according to the Calgary Herald.

Prosser said her family is relieved she is back in the country and thanked everyone for their prayers. Nabb, who was raised in Nova Scotia, now resides in Calgary with her husband.

Investigators were unable to speak with Nabb, who can't talk due to her injuries.

"The victim could not identify the suspect," Gomez told Friday's news conference. "[Thursday] night she was transported with injuries to the chin and jaw bone while under sedation."

Sandusky asks judge to let him visit with his grandchildren

Sandusky asks judge to let him visit with his grandchildren

Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State assistant football coach accused of sexually abusing boys, is asking the judge to grant visitation with his grandchildren.

(CNN) -- Despite being accused of child sex abuse, Jerry Sandusky is asking a judge to modify the terms of his bail so he can see his grandchildren, according to court documents.

Sandusky, a former Penn State assistant football coach, was charged in November with sexually abusing young boys over a 14-year period. Prosecutors contend he met many of the boys through his charity, The Second Mile.

Sandusky, who has denied the charges, was released on a $100,000 bail in November and barred by a Pennsylvania judge from having unsupervised visits with his grandchildren. The judge also prohibited the children from staying overnight at Sandusky's home.

This week, Sandusky's lawyer filed a motion urging a judge to allow him to visit with his grandchildren because his "eleven minor grandchildren... have expressed their sadness to their parents about not being able to visit or talk" with him, the court documents said.

Sandusky is asking the judge to grant visitation with his grandchildren at his home and to allow him to communicate with them via phone, email, text and Skype, the documents said.

The motion also requests that Sandusky be allowed to have his friends visit his home, and that he be allowed to travel to meet with his attorney and private investigators work on his case.

A hearing on the issue is scheduled for February 10 at the Centre County Courthouse in Pennsylvania, authorities said.

Longshot presidential candidate to put abortion in your face during Super Bowl

Longshot presidential candidate to put abortion in your face during Super Bowl

Randall Terry will be on the Democratic ticket in several states this year.

(CNN) -- It was tongue in cheek, blogger Sophia Brugato said, because let's be honest: Tim Tebow, for all his athletic attributes, isn't the biggest scorer.

A sports buff who typically writes about basketball and women's issues, Brugato didn't expect her quip to be taken so seriously that death threats would follow, that the national media would look up from elections or that ads featuring aborted fetuses would air during the Super Bowl on February 5.

Brugato sparked the firestorm when she asked her fellow supporters of abortion rights to kick some cash to the cause when the Denver Broncos quarterback scored. The long-shot presidential candidate now funding the Super Bowl ads was incensed she would invoke Tebow, an adoptee of the Christian right, in a pro-choice campaign and considered her column a call to murder.

"She was raising money to kill babies, and we're raising money to save them. Fight fire with fire," said lifelong Republican and anti-abortion activist Randall Terry, who in January 2011 put his name on the Democratic ticket in several states, which would ensure he could air the graphic ads during election season.

Section 315 of the FCC Telecommunications Act says stations must air ads for candidates for federal office and are prohibited from altering the content. That means they can't refuse to run political ads even if the ads contain material the stations would ordinarily reject.

Terry said Friday he had already purchased air time in 13 markets with upcoming primaries: eight during pregame and five that will air in Ada, Oklahoma; Grand Junction, Colorado; Paducah, Kentucky; and Joplin and Springfield, Missouri, during the big game.

The markets were chosen based on where Terry felt the ads would have the most impact.

"(President Barack) Obama is going to carry California if he's found with foreign children in the Lincoln Bedroom, and the GOP will carry Texas if it's found that the nominee owns a brothel," Terry said.

'Enemy outside your gate'

Obama and the evangelicals and Catholics who voted for him in 2008 are the main targets of Terry's ad, but David Lewis, who is vying for Republican House Speaker John Boehner's Ohio seat, and Angela Michael, who is challenging Rep. John Shimkus, R-Illinois, are running similar ads in their districts.

Terry said he considers both GOP incumbents enemies of his cause because of their stands on the abortion issue and "an enemy outside your gate makes you vigilant; an enemy inside your gate can make you dead."

He estimated he has raised about $40,000 so far and, ideally, would like to see the ads air in more than two dozen cities spanning seven states.

Brugato didn't foresee the backlash. The whole mess began because while she enjoyed the underdog quarterback story that consumed the sports world before the Broncos were dispatched from the playoffs on January 14, Tebow's stance on abortion made her uncomfortable.

Particularly unnerving was a Focus on the Family commercial two years ago in which Tebow's mother, Pam, said she had ignored a doctor's recommendation to abort the future Heisman Trophy winner to save her own life. The irony, Brugato said, is that Pam Tebow was given a choice.

Brugato made her inner conflict the theme of a December 13 column on the Abortion Gang website, which calls its writers "unapologetic activists for reproductive justice."

"How can I support a guy that's openly anti-choice?" she wrote. "This is the same man that used the Super Bowl to a) build his reputation and brand as the saintliest saint of an athlete that ever lived, and b) raise money for an anti-choice organization that would deny the right to abortion to millions of women that need it. Yuck."

As part of her missive, she created a #10forTebow hashtag on Twitter and urged her readers to donate $10 to a pro-choice group every time Tebow tossed a touchdown.

"It was more, 'This guy's at the forefront of pop culture and let's remind everyone he's a great football player, but he's anti-choice,' " she said. "(The call for donations) was a random thought that kind of came into my mind, and I just put it out there knowing he wasn't going to do a lot of scoring -- and it just took off from there."

Hate mail rolled in, and not the normal hate mail to which she was accustomed as a commentator on women's issues and her beloved Portland Trail Blazers basketball team. There were calls for her death -- one asserting she should have been aborted herself -- and threats of rape.

It was "disturbing enough to have to forward it to the FBI," Brugato said.

Pregnant teen opts against abortion

The 26-year-old Portland State University student even had a chat with her 7-year-old son, not only about the importance of protecting yourself on the Internet, but also about why mom should "stand up for people without a voice," she said.

Brugato's experience as a mother gives her an interesting perspective on abortion. Pregnant as a senior in high school, she went to Planned Parenthood for testing and counseling.

Just 18, she was "harboring illusions about adulthood" and didn't appreciate the responsibilities or financial obligations that came with being a parent. Having a child seemed romantic, but she said Planned Parenthood helped her understand the seriousness of the situation and laid out her options.

Her parents, who were upset, and the teachers at her Catholic high school, who were pushing for adoption, offered support. Ultimately, she decided on motherhood.

Despite the vicious responses to her Abortion Gang column, Brugato said she has received ample support. Portland is considered fairly liberal, and folks around town and campus have offered encouragement. Many people wrote her to say they had donated to abortion rights groups.

But others co-opted her hashtag, calling on abortion opponents to donate $10 to a pro-life organization each time Tebow put up six.

Then there was Terry, who took Brugato's words personally and lashed out.

Terry, who has been arrested almost 50 times while protesting, is no stranger to political theatrics. In 2009, he donned a doctor's scrubs and lab coat and stood outside then-Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd's Charleston, West Virginia, office with a man dressed as Obama, who handed him plastic babies. Terry stabbed each one with a scalpel and tossed it over his shoulder. He also mimicked stabbing an elderly woman to register his opposition to the administration's health care package, which some critics argue promotes euthanasia.

"We're trying to jolt people back into reality," he said at the time.

After Brugato's column last month, Terry wrote a letter to his "pro-life, Christian friends," that said the blogger's "despicable challenge has the ring of a horror film: 'Every time you do something good, we will kill an innocent person.' "

He further called Brugato a child killer and implored, "Let's make them rue the day they attacked Tim Tebow because of his Christian faith and because of his pro-life ad that he ran in the Super Bowl of 2010 by showing pro-life ads in Super Bowl 2012 that grab the attention of the nation."

Love it or hate it

Brugato was shocked by the letter's tone and was concerned that "some of the language was meant as a dog whistle to the more extreme anti-abortion folks out there."

She was even more disturbed by the ads that Terry's campaign had produced, including one that likened abortion to civil rights atrocities and the Holocaust.

"It's just so offensive. It's going to offend more people than it will bring to his cause," she said.

The planned Super Bowl ad begins with a brief warning imposed over Obama's face before Terry says, "Abortion is murder. The innocent blood of 50 million babies cries out to God from our sewers and landfills. We must make it a crime to murder them, or heaven will judge America."

Claiming Christians who vote for Obama "have blood on their hands," the ad features several unsettling images, including two fetuses curled up inside a rosary and a headless fetus next to a crucifix. Another segment of the ad features a fetus' arm lying on a dime.

Similar ads ran during the Iowa and New Hampshire GOP contests, the latter prompting CNN affiliate WCVB-TV in Boston, Massachusetts, to pre-emptively explain to its audience that it cannot edit the ad, "even if it is libelous, inflammatory or otherwise offensive to the community."

As for the response in Iowa, Terry said, "What do you think? People were enraged or they loved it. There's no middle ground."

He makes no apologies for the ads' disturbing content because "using these images is what's required for peaceful political revolution." He points to the results that disturbing images have historically had on wars, child slavery and the civil rights movement.

NARAL Pro-Choice America did not return messages seeking comment on the appropriateness of the images. Nor did Planned Parenthood, though a representative sent an e-mail containing information on two of Terry's many arrests and some past inflammatory remarks.

Super Bowl the right audience?

Eric Scheidler, executive director of the Pro-Life Action League, endorses the ads, if not the venue. During their Face the Truth Tours, members of his group congregate at major intersections across the country holding aloft similar images of fetuses.

His group places people before the targeted intersection with warning signs so drivers can take alternate routes if they choose, Scheidler said. He knows the images are disturbing, and that's the point: to emboss in someone's mind a gruesome image of abortion in hopes that it affects their philosophy or advice to loved ones later.

"We don't show these pictures to make friends or be popular," he said, adding that while some people are moved by intellectual or religious arguments, "others will be persuaded by seeing for themselves the injustice."

Scheidler said he hopes Terry's Super Bowl tactic is successful, even if it isn't one he'd embrace.

"I like to respect that time for family fun. There's a time for families to have entertainment and not to be dealing with the grave issues of the day," he said. "It's not anything I would do, but I'm not going to say it's wrong for Mr. Terry to do it."

To those who label Terry an extremist, he welcomes the tag, saying "extremism is the essence of Christianity. ... No successful social movements were moderate."

He isn't airing his ads solely to be controversial, he said. He's wanted to be president since he was a boy, and though he doesn't expect to beat Obama in the primary (the president took 98% of the vote in Iowa and out-dueled Terry 82%-1% in New Hampshire), Terry hopes that "by putting babies out front that that will break his back in the 2012 general election."

"I'm looking to create the debate over whether a Christian can ethically vote for Obama," he said. "I know that we will prevail. I know we will make it a crime to kill unborn babies."

Nigerians arrest Islamist militant suspects, sources say

Nigerians arrest Islamist militant suspects, sources say

A paramedic helps a man who was injured during one of the attacks in the Nigerian city of Kano

Lagos, Nigeria (CNN) -- A joint military task force in Nigeria arrested 158 suspected members of the Islamist militant group Boko Haram, security sources told CNN Tuesday, three days after a spate of bombings and shootings left more than 200 people dead in Nigeria's second-largest city.

Some suspects resisted arrest and exchanged gunfire with the task force in the city of Kano, said security sources who asked not to be named because they are not authorized to speak to the media.

No casualties have been reported so far, they said.

The arrests come as community leaders said the number of dead from the Kano bombing and gun attacks has risen to at least 211.

Government officials declined to confirm the number of victims. They previously put the death toll at 157.

President Goodluck Jonathan toured the city Sunday after the attacks there left the police headquarters and other government buildings in charred ruins Friday night.

"The message I had for the people of Kano is the same message I have for all Nigerians: A terrorist attack on one person is an attack on all of us," Jonathan said in a post on his official Facebook page after the visit.

Islamist group Boko Haram -- whose name means "western education is sacrilege" -- claimed responsibility for the blast in a phone call to the Daily Trust, according to journalists at the newspaper.

The group has been blamed for months of widespread bloodshed, with churches and police stations among the targets.

Community leaders have been keeping their own count of the number of dead from Friday's attacks, they told CNN Tuesday, including victims who never made it to hospitals. They declined to be quoted by name for security reasons.

Police in the city announced Tuesday that they had seized 10 cars laden with explosives and about 300 improvised explosive devices hidden in soft drink cans and bottles at a number of locations in Kano.

The state police commissioner said a mass search turned up the explosives after police found undetonated devices at a police barracks in Kano.

The bombings hit eight government sites Friday.

Shell-shocked residents wandered the streets, looking for loved ones. Others hid behind barricaded doors, too scared to leave for fear of more attacks.

"That's the scary part, not knowing," said Faruk Mohammed, 27, who lives near one of the bombed police stations. "We don't know what's going to happen next. No one thought this would ever happen here. There's a general sense of despair."

The attacks paired bomb blasts with shootings on various sites including police stations, the passport office, state security headquarters and the immigration office.

During the attack, assailants entered a police station, freed detainees and bombed it, authorities said.

They later canvassed the area in a car led by motorcycles, spraying targets with gunfire.

"I counted at least 25 explosions ...," Mohammed said. "Then it went deathly quiet. Kano is a bustling city ... I've lived here for years and it has never been quiet, even at night. But after the bombings stopped, the only noise you could hear were dogs barking."

On Sunday, two churches and a security checkpoint were attacked in the neighboring state of Bauchi, the state police commissioner said in a statement. At least 11 people, including police and army personnel, were killed in the checkpoint attack, the commissioner said. There were no casualties reported from the church attacks.

Police said they suspect Boko Haram was involved in the checkpoint attack.

In December, Jonathan declared a state of emergency in four northern states after a series of Christmas Day attacks on churches blamed on Boko Haram.

The man suspected of masterminding those attacks was briefly captured before escaping police custody while being transferred to another prison.

Depending on the faction, Boko Haram's ambitions range from the stricter enforcement of their interpretation of Islamic Sharia law to the total destruction of the government.

Its grievances remain local, but it has attacked international institutions --- such as the United Nations -- on Nigerian soil.

An August 26 attack -- during which a Boko Haram suicide bomber drove a Jeep laden with explosives into the U.N. headquarters in Abuja -- was one of the deadliest in the world body's history. Twenty-four people were killed, including 12 U.N. staff.

The group was formed in 2002 by Islamic preacher Mohammad Yusuf as an outgrowth of ethnic tensions in the country in the 1990s.

Nigeria's population is split between mostly Muslims living in the north and predominantly Christians in the south. Yusuf advocated the institution of Sharia law throughout the northern states and opposed democracy.

The group operated openly out of northeastern Nigeria and staged small-scale attacks against government targets.

In 2009, Nigerian police forces moved to crack down on Boko Haram. Harsh police tactics led to an armed uprising and the arrest of Yusuf, who later died in police custody.

The death spurred the group to begin its attacks on police stations. Ensuing clashes between group members and the police killed hundreds.

The following year, Boko Haram re-emerged as a more radicalized, insurgent style group, staging assassinations and attacks against not only government targets, but also churches and even a beer garden.

"We're dealing with a movement of inchoate rage," said John Campbell, a U.S. ambassador to Nigeria who left his post in 2007.

"It's highly decentralized, but what it has in common is a strongly Islamic character, and hatred for the secular, political economy of Nigeria, particularly the federal and state governments," he said.

Tablet and e-book reader ownership takes off

Tablet and e-book reader ownership takes off

Sales of computer tablets and e-book readers in the U.S. have soared, according to a new study.

Computer tablets and e-book readers are surging in popularity, with nearly a third of Americans owning at least one of the digital devices, according to a new study.

“In the time we have been doing surveys about the adoption and use of digital technology, we have never seen growth quite like this," Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, told CBC News in an email.

"These findings have major implications for every media company, especially book publishers, everyone in a knowledge business, and key community institutions like libraries. They show how radically the tectonic plates of information creation and dissemination are shifting under our feet.”

The number of adults in the U.S. who owned each device — a tablet computer and an e-book reader — nearly doubled from 10 per cent to 19 per cent between mid-December and early January, the study found.

The number of Americans owning at least one of the devices jumped from 18 per cent in December to 29 per cent in January, and much of the increase may be attributed to gift-giving over the holiday season.

Tablet owners tend to have higher education (31 per cent had college educations or higher), are more affluent (36 per cent lived in households earning more than $75,000), and tend to be under age 50.

Meanwhile, women led the growth in ownership of e-book readers (21 per cent of women owned one compared with 16 per cent of men).

E-book owners also tend to have higher education and income, but the gap between the higher and lower income groups isn't as dramatic with e-books. For example, 19 per cent of household earning between $30,000 and $50,000 have e-book readers, which is 12 percentage points behind households earning $75,000 or more that own such devices.

The gap between those income levels on tablet ownership is 20 percentage points. The findings are based on three national surveys that involved reaching people both on landlines and cellphones, said Rainie.

The pre-holiday survey conducted among 2,986 people has a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points. The post-holiday data come from the combined results of two surveys in January with a total respondent pool of 2,008. The combined surveys have a margin of error of plus or minus 2.4 percentage points.

The Pew Research Centre is a non-profit think-tank based in Washington, D.C. The research was supported by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

U.S. storms kill 2, injure 100

U.S. storms kill 2, injure 100

A tornado ripped through Trussville, Ala., early Monday, destroying many homes.

Severe storms and possible tornadoes pounded the U.S. South on Monday, injuring more than 100 people and killing at least two in Alabama, including a man who lived in an area devastated by a deadly twister outbreak in the spring.

Homes were flattened, windows were blown out of cars and roofs were peeled back in the middle of the night in the community of Oak Grove near Birmingham. As dawn broke, residents surveyed the damage and officials used chainsaws to clear fallen trees.

Oak Grove was hit hard in April when tornadoes ravaged Alabama, killing about 240 people, though officials said none of the same neighbourhoods were struck again. Officials had to reschedule a meeting Monday to receive a study on Alabama's response to the spring tornadoes.

"Some roads are impassable, there are a number of county roads where you have either debris down, trees down, damage from homes," said Yasamie Richardson, a spokeswoman for the Alabama Emergency Management Agency.

An 82-year-old man died in Oak Grove and a 16-year-old girl was killed in Clay, Jefferson County sheriff's spokesman Randy Christian said.

The storm system stretched from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, producing a possible tornado that moved across northern Jefferson County around 3:30 a.m. ET, causing damage in Oak Grove and other communities, Christian said.

As day broke, searchers went door-to-door calling out to residents, many of whom were trapped by trees that criss-crossed their driveways.

Stevie Sanders woke up around 3:30 a.m. and realized bad weather was on the way. She, her parents and sister hid in the laundry room of their brick home as the wind howled and trees started cracking outside.
Trees fall on homes, storm shelter

"You could feel the walls shaking and you could hear a loud crash. After that it got quiet, and the tree had fallen through my sister's roof," said Sanders.

The family was OK, and her father, Greg Sanders, spent the next hours raking his roof and pulling away pieces of broken lumber.

"It could have been so much worse," he said. "It's like they say, we were just blessed."

In Clanton, about 80 kilometres south of Birmingham, rescuers were responding to reports of a trailer turned over with people trapped, City Clerk Debbie Orange said.

Also south of Birmingham, Maplesville town clerk Sheila Haigler said high winds damaged many buildings and knocked down several trees. One tree fell on a storm shelter, but no one was injured, Haigler said. Police had not been able to search some areas because trees and power lines were blocking roads.

In Arkansas, there were possible tornadoes in several areas Sunday night. The storms also brought hail and strong winds as they moved through parts of Arkansas, Tennessee, Illinois and Mississippi.

Tornado warnings were issued for parts of Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama.

RCMP commissioner not 'muzzled,' Toews says

RCMP commissioner not 'muzzled,' Toews says

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, left, says RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson, seen with Toews on his first day on the job Nov. 16, 'meets with whom he chooses to meet with.加

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews is denying allegations that his department is trying to "muzzle" RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson.

Toews was responding to accusations by Liberal Senator Colin Kenny that Toews' department is trying to silence the Commissioner by approving Paulson's meetings.

Kenny had been trying to set up a meeting with Paulson since December, but could not get Paulson to agree to a date or time, according to emails between Kenny and Paulson that Kenny released to the media this week.

After some prodding, Paulson said he could not commit to a meeting until he got the stamp of approval from the Department of Public Safety, according to the emails.

But Toews said Friday it was the former Liberal government that established that practice in order to ensure "fair access by other parliamentarians to key security institutions" under Public Safety.

Burgers and beer

Kenny and Paulson had been exchanging emails about meeting over burgers and beer to discuss some issues concerning the RCMP — a meeting Kenny described in casual terms, calling it a "get-together." Kenny said that he had set up similar meetings with the previous nine RCMP Commissioners without issue.

He added that Paulson had once been a dinner guest at his house, suggesting that Paulson hadn't needed to seek approval for that "meeting."

Kenny says nobody should be telling a commissioner to whom he should speak.

"If a member of a government is making these decisions, the integrity of the RCMP is eroded," Kenny said in one of the emails.

Speaking to Rosemary Barton on CBC's Power & Politics, Kenny said Paulson was set to have the meeting until someone from Toews' office intervened.

"I think for [Paulson] to maintain the integrity of his office, he has to draw a line in the sand and say to Mr. Toews ... I cannot be dictated to as to who I can see and who I can't," he said.

Paulson told CBC News Friday that he was simply following protocol, and that the protocol exists for a reason.

"We would not apply the national guidelines . . . where [a] local MP wanted to meet with the local detachment commander to talk about local priorities or issues," he wrote in an email to CBC Power & Politics host Evan Solomon. "We would however if the local MP was trying to have the local detachment commander weigh in on a major national policy matter or a political discussion on a contentious bit of legislation."


'Baseless and inaccurate'

Toews released a statement Friday denying the allegations and later spoke to reporters.

"The commissioner of the RCMP will meet with whom he chooses to meet with," he said during a news conference at the Ottawa International Airport. "Claims that (Paulson) is being muzzled (are) baseless and inaccurate"

He defended the protocol as both fair and necessary, and said there had been no change in the policy, which he said was set by former Liberal MP Anne McClellan when she was public safety minister.

"The protocol is an appropriate balance between the independence of the RCMP on law enforcement matters and its accountability to me as the minister responsible for the RCMP," Toews said.

"Senator Kenny knows that this policy was in place when the Liberals formed government, it’s simply a continuation. When he was denied a secret meeting that he wanted, he went to the media," Toews added. "And, so I find it rather surprising, his tact."