Conrad Black will have plenty of time to ponder whether insulting the court was the best idea after receiving another year of jail time

Take, for example, this offering from Canadian Business:

Examples of Conrad Black’s intransigence abound. One pronouncement made earlier this year should suffice by way of example. “A moron can see today that there were no crimes committed by the defendants in our case,” he said after giving a speech in New York in March. His comment made the papers, and cannot have been made lightly. Such pronouncements are risky while one’s fate remains in the hands of a judge.

No kidding. Appearing via satellite in Toronto last week, Black also told Moses Znaimer’s Ideacity, “The chances of my ever committing a crime are less than zero,” the implication being that he’s still innocent and the courts are wrong (because there isn’t a guilty man in prison and all that). And these are just a couple of examples in a long history of Black saying, either implicitly or explicitly, that he, like Jesus of Nazareth (we wouldn’t be even remotely surprised if Black did one day decide to compare himself to Mr. Christ himself), is getting punished by an unjust legal system.

Now, we’re not particularly in love with the U.S. criminal justice system. But we also didn’t have to be jailed for various financial crimes to discover things like, “Boy, this war on drugs turns out to be a waste of time, lives and money.” As he serves out the rest of his sentence (which will almost certainly be less than the year imposed by Judge St. Eve) we can’t help but wonder if perhaps Lord Black will be a bit quicker on the uptake when he gets out.

• One lord a learning [National Post] • The Wages of Black’s Defiance [Canadian Business] • Black Day in June [Toronto Standard]