Citizen Black

It's been a while since we checked in on our old friend Conrad "Lord Black of Crossharbour" Black.  After his conviction on a small number of fraud-related charges in the US, Black knuckled down and served his time in a Florida "Club Fed"-style jail. After doing his bit,  with a few months off for good behaviour,  he was expelled from the USA, as a convicted felon of foreign citizenship.  Of course, many years ago (we'll come back to this), Black renounced his Canadian citizenship in order to be able to accept a UK peerage -- that's the Crossharbour title -- so he had to get the government's special permission, as a convicted felon, to re-establish himself in Canada.  In effect, he's only living in his native land at the pleasure of the government.

So much for the entertaining backstory.  Now there are new developments.  Conrad's back to his old tricks as a serial court-botherer, and he's had a very bad week.  First off, his latest attempt to have the charges against him in the US quashed has been rejected.  Black's rather cheeky grounds for giving it another go were that the justice system had intentionally deprived him of the cash he needed to employ his first choice of lawyers.   There's no word as to how the lawyers who actually ended up representing him are taking this implied insult.  However, Judge Amy St Eve, who heard the original case and must be thoroughly fed up with the sight of Black, gave the request short shrift, noting that in all the long months of the trial, nobody had ever seen fit to mention that Black did not have his first choice of counsel by his side.

Meanwhile, back in Canada, it's come to light that Black also received a setback at the hands of the Federal Court of Appeal a few weeks ago.  An advisory panel recommended some time ago that Black should be stripped of the Order of Canada, the country's highest civilian honour.  Black went to the appeals court to try to expedite a hearing on whether he should be allowed to plead his case to keep the award, but has now been told he has to wait his turn with everyone else.

You have to wonder whether the eventual decision in this matter will take any account of Black's opinion of the award and indeed of Canada itself, eloquently expressed in his decision to renounce his citizenship and accept the peerage in Britain.  That peerage itself may effectively no longer be available to him anyway -- he would almost certainly face expulsion from the House of Lords, again on the grounds of his felony conviction,  if he ever showed up there.

Still, you can't keep a good man down, especially if he needs to put bread on the table, and Black is now reinventing himself as a chat show host.  He's landed a gig on something called Zoomer TV, whose programming is aimed at active baby boomers, a category into which Black presumably fits.  He's promised to use his contacts to land some big name guests, starting with.....Henry Kissinger.  Well, by your friends shall you know them, I guess.