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Mark Steyn
Steynonline
2 Feb 2024
Mark Steyn


NextImg:Live Around the Planet: Friday February 2nd

Week Three of Mann vs Steyn at the District of Columbia Superior Court has now ground to a grim halt: the judge does not sit on the last day of the week. So our Clubland Q&A, which moved to Wednesdays following His Lordship's cancellation of the last trial, has moved back to Fridays for the duration. Thus, live from America's diseased and depraved capital city, I shall be taking questions from Mark Steyn Club members around the planet starting at 3pm Deep State Standard Time/8pm Greenwich Mean Look Time.

I'm happy to address whatever's on your mind, although, having been walled up in Courtroom 132 all week, my glimpses of the rest of the world have been flickering and fitful. If there's a coup or peasants' revolt out there you would care to bring to my attention, I would be glad to hear of it.

I am fading a little more with each day, and Mann's ghastly team of flimflamming shysters are just trying to run out the clock - which, in my case, could get a little literal. As I've noted before, and as poor Andrew Breitbart's widow and children could tell you, in the event of the Defendant resting in a more permanent sense, the suit would simply become Mann vs Estate of Steyn. Or, as one of the lawyers sneered a couple of months back, "This case doesn't end with your death." So, for the sake of my heirs and relicts, we stagger on into Week Four of a non-existent case. Only in America, as the constitution-wavers like to say.

~My old comrade Terence Corcoran writes in Canada's Financial Post:

While Donald Trump's embarrassing and costly defamation quagmire received all the headlines last week, a more significant libel trial was grinding on in another Washington courtroom...

I'm not sure that's true, although the two cases are related. Mine was an early example of SLAPP - a "strategic lawsuit against public participation" - ie, targeted lawfare to take someone out of the game pour encourager les autres. All that's happened in the twelve years since is that the leader of the political opposition is now the target of a nationwide ultimate mega-SLAPP. Only in America, as the constitution-wavers like to say. Oh, did I already do that line?

After pausing for a depressing photograph of me from a decade back looking half-a-century younger, Mr Corcoran continues:

Reports from the courthouse show Steyn, a Canadian and former National Post columnist, arriving in a wheelchair following heart attacks, to conduct his own defence in a case that has been dragged through a decade of legal wrangling. The trial is before a jury burdened with what looks like tens of thousands of pages of evidence filled with some of the most contentious libel and science issues.

Actually, a surprising amount of the mumbo-jumbo has been tossed by the judge, including every single one of the exhibits used by Patrick Coyne in yesterday's consciously torpid and time-wasting cross-examination of star statistician Abraham Wyner.

~I do not know what I have done to deserve the support of so many eminent Minnesotans, but I have been very grateful for the presence in court all week of my Mark Steyn Cruisemate Michele Bachmann and Powerline's John Hinderaker. The latter is now back on home turf:

Since retiring from the litigation business at the end of 2015, this is the most time I have spent in a courtroom, and it has been fun.

When the trial is over I will have more to offer, but for now I will just say that today was a very good day for Steyn and Simberg. Mann's case isn't dead, but it is on life support. On the other hand, we are in the District of Columbia, before a D.C. jury.

Meanwhile, it's good to see my Irish chums, doing the job American media won't do, getting credit for their creativity and innovation:

Inventive documentarians Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer have done it again, turning a story of interest to just left and right hard-liners into a national sensation.

After successes in bringing the case against abortionist Kermit Gosnell, and the sordid Hunter Biden tale to theaters, they are producing a daily podcast on the D.C. Superior Court trial of the 12-year battle between climate change advocate Michael Mann and two who have questioned his science, Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg.

~Today I'm also happy to take any questions on my other legal battle - against the UK state censor Ofcom over their enforcement of the appalling Covid propaganda. It will be coming to the King's Bench Division of the English High Court sometime before the end of March.

Our SteynOnline Liberty Stick has now completely sold out, to help me make it through a month in the grisly but amazingly expensive American capital. But there's always our Big Climate Special or our Michael E Mann special, A Fraud and a Disgrace, not to mention our SteynOnline gift certificates, starting at $25 and heading skywards from there.

Many listeners have asked how they can support these important cases on both sides of the Atlantic. Well, you're very welcome to...

a) sign up a friend for a Steyn Club Gift Membership;

b) buy a near-and-dear one an aforementioned SteynOnline gift certificate;

c) order a copy of my latest book, The Prisoner of Windsor (you won't regret it, says Kathy Gyngell); or

d) treat your loved one to a once-in-a-lifetime Mark Steyn Caribbean Cruise.

~Whether or not you're a member of The Mark Steyn Club, you can listen to our Clubland Q&A live as it happens wherever you chance to be on this turbulent earth: Club membership is required only to ask a question. We love to hear from brand new members, and among the additions to our ranks as this trial continues are newbies from around the globe, from California to Queensland, Ottawa to Orpington, from Double Oak in far-northern Texas to Donabate in the ancient barony of Nethercross. Whether you've joined this week for a full year or a see-how-it-goes experimental quarter do shoot me a head-scratcher for today's show.

But, if you're not interested in signing up, no worries, as they say in Oz: We seek no unwilling members - and as always the show is free to listen to, so we hope you'll want to tune in.