IS RAPPER IN DOGG-HOUSE AT CDN. BORDER?

Snoop Dogg was convicted of having cocaine for the purpose of
trafficking. Martha Stewart was convicted of lying.

Calvin Broadus, A.K.A. Snoop Dogg, was also arrested three times in
the past four months for illegal possession of weapons and was once
tried for murder (he was cleared in the murder and the three weapons
charges haven't yet been dealt with in court).

As for Martha, well, besides her white collar crime of lying to
investigators about a stock transaction it is also alleged she is
sometimes mean to her staff.

Martha wanted to come to Canada in 2005 to help raise money for the
Children's Wish Foundation. Calvin wants to come to Canada this month
to rake in some Benjamins and buy some more bling. That has one
Riverview resident asking which felon should get hassled at the border?

Martha Stewart got hassled big time in 2005 when she wanted to row a
giant pumpkin in a charity event, though Canada's Citizenship and
Immigration minister of the day, Joe Volpe, did ultimately intervene
to allow the domestic diva into the country.

Rapper Snoop Dogg comes to the great white north this week for a
10-city tour that wraps up in Moncton January 31 and, so far, there's
been very little said about letting the gangsta star in the country.

Not everyone has been silent though. Riverview's Marvin Buckley is
appalled that the Doggfather plans to lift his leg on Moncton, and
called the Times & Transcript this week to say so.

Buckley is a lifelong friend of Evelyn Breau, whose daughter Monique
was murdered in a case of domestic violence in Moncton just before
Christmas 2005. With Snoop Dogg's criminal past, not to mention his
songs and videos glorifying gun violence and the objectification of
women, to say Buckley is hip-hopping mad with federal officials is a
bit of an understatement.

"Just what kind of creep do you have to be before we don't let you
in?" he asked yesterday.

Buckley is also baffled by the double standard that seems to suggest
Martha Stewart somehow represents a greater threat to Canadian society
than a hip-hop hoodlum.

Lastly, he is angry that civic officials are allowing the City of
Moncton owned Moncton Coliseum to host the show. He quoted city
manager Al Strang as making the distinction between actually promoting
the show and merely renting space, but Buckley argued "it's a very
fine line." Attempts to reach the city manager as well as Ian Fowler,
general manager of the city's Recreation, Parks, Tourism and Culture
department, were unsucessful yesterday.

There is some argument, of course ,that if you kept every performing
artist out of Canada for having a criminal record, we would rarely see
a concert in Moncton. Certainly, it would have been difficult for the
Rolling Stones to rock the hill without Keith Richard, who has a drug
conviction - in Canada - dating back to the 1970s.

By the same token though, Sir Paul McCartney's tokin' in Japan a few
years after Keith Richard's arrest might have spared all Canadians the
spectacle of seeing the zillionaire Beatle on the ice floes of
Newfoundland harping at us about how sealers should just walk away
from their livelihoods.

Just how does it work? What criminal convictions will keep you out and
how can you get let in? One answer is absolute - any criminal
conviction makes you "inadmissible" in the eyes of the Canadian Border
Services Agency. "A criminal record is a criminal record," CBSA
spokeswoman Jennifer Morrison said yesterday.

However, Canada gives its frontline border officers the authority to
make a determination on the spot on whether or not someone should be
allowed to enter the country. Morrison said the officers' professional
judgments were rooted firmly in laws and policy directives.

"Every person is a unique situation and it has to be determined by the
officer," she said, pointing out it is not just celebrities who get
exemptions.

Officers look at everything from purpose of the visit - attending a
funeral for instance - to the degree of criminality of the person. If,
for example, you are a war criminal or a terrorist, it won't matter
how many funerals you want to attend.

The length of time that has passed since your last conviction can also
play some role in the determination, though Morrison said there is no
established formula. Snoop Dogg's last conviction was over a dozen
years ago and his acquittal - which it must be emphasized was just
that, an acquittal - on the murder charge was in 1996. This fall, he
has been arrested twice for possessing illegal firearms and once for
having a collapsible police baton, but he is innocent unless proven
guilty and those matters haven't yet come to court.

As for Snoop Dogg's arrest in the homicide, that his bodyguard
McKinley Lee gunned down a 20-year-old gang member in a drive-by
shooting while Dogg was at the wheel of a vehicle in 1994 was not
disputed. A jury, however, acquitted both men on the grounds of
self-defence, finding they feared for their lives because the man had
pointed a gun at them.

Snoop Dogg's 10-city Canadian tour is in support of his newest CD Tha
Blue Carpet Treatment, which some have called an homage to the
notorious street gang the L.A. Crips. The Crips' gang colour is blue,
and blue bandannas are what Crips traditionally wear to distinguish
themsleves from other gangs. In pictures on the CD's cover and liner
notes, Dogg wears blue paisley and a female companion in one photo
wears a bikini that is essentially three blue bandannas sewn together.
The compact disc itself is painted to look like a blue bandanna.

While Snoop Dogg has said "tha blue carpet treatment" is merely a
humourous twist on the "red carpet treatment" celebrities routinely
get, the "blue carpet treatment" has been alleged to be a Crips form
of punishment, in which gang members roll up someone they judge to be
in need of correction into a carpet and beat them.

A Times & Transcript reporter tried to confirm this with a call to
gang experts at the Los Angeles Police Department, but in a surprising
twist, the LAPD's media relations department referred the reporter to
the official website of the Crips, saying the gang itself would be the
best source of that information.

To access the Crips website you have to e-mail a webmaster for special
directions to find your way to it in the cyber world. Attempts to do
so failed yesterday.

Snoop Dogg has acknowledged that as the young Calvin Broadus he was a
member of the gang but says he is no longer part of e
organization.

Snoop Dogg's concert and tour are expected to do well. The rapper's CD
Doggy Style was the first debut album to ever enter the charts at
number one and he has sold close to 20 million albums since that 1993
debut. He has also parlayed his fame into acting gigs and a line of
softcore sex videos.

Marvin Buckley still can't believe the country and the city are
letting the Dogg slip in the backdoor all in the name of a bit off
spinoff revenue.

"Surely we don't need the money that bad," he said.