Filth before freedom.(The Week)

[LUSTRATION OMITTED]

MY colleague Mark Steyn, in the dock at a Canadian "human-rights commission" for crimes against humanity-or perhaps more accurately misdemeanors against humanity-has become something of a permanent warning voice against the Orwellian tide flooding that vast college campus at the end of history we call "Canada." Recently he called my attention to a lawsuit from a Canadian woman who was fired by a McDonald's because her skin condition prevented her from sticking to the fast-food chain's strict hand-washing policy.

Figuring into the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal's thinking was the fact that, at the hearing, there was no evidence provided of the relationship between food contamination and hand-washing. The plaintiff was awarded $55,000 in damages in lieu of mandatory reinstatement as an employee. She was also informed that if only she'd provided expert testimony about her wage potential, she could have gotten a lot more.

Now the details of the case are more complicated than that, though not necessarily less stupid. But what fascinates me is the bit about how no one gave any evidence that there's a connection between hand-washing and food contamination. I'd assumed that the millions of bathroom signs in restaurants ranging from the gas 'n' go (where they serve the eternally rotating burnt wiener) to Le Bernardin were there for a reason. If global warming is "settled science," as Al Gore likes to tell us, then the connection between filthy hands and bowel-stewing germs is a subject of granitic certainty, on par with the laws of gravity.

All the same, the Canadian tribunal pointed its finger of damnation at Mickey D's. If only Arlen Specter had been around to ...