Yes, it's me! Mark Steyn of that ilk - and still here, just about, despite the best efforts of Ofcom, the District of Columbia Superior Court and the University of Vermont Medical Center. So I'm raring to go for today's edition of our Clubland Q&A, live around the planet at 3pm North American Eastern - which is 8pm British Summer Time/9pm Central European. If you chance to be elsewhere, do check local listings below.
In America, the two biggest stories are the near-assassination of Trump and the removal of Biden - which may indeed be mere set-pieces of the same story. That should be enough for any pseudo-republic's news cycle but July still has a week to go.
The Secret Service has now acknowledged its lapses in Butler, Pennsylvania, and come up with the perfect solution:
Secret Service Urges Halt to Trump's Outdoor Rallies After Assassination Attempt
So the best way for Trump to increase his chances of remaining alive is to cease campaigning. Fancy that.
Meanwhile, the Oversight Project - which is part of the Heritage Foundation, and so not exactly QAnon conspiracy types - has been analysing the late assassin's visitors via their mobile telephone data:
Someone who regularly visited Crooks home and work also visited a building in Washington, DC located in Gallery Place. This is in the same vicinity of an @FBI office...
This would-be killer, just out of high school, doesn't seem the type to know anybody in DC.
But maybe that's what they want us to think...
Likewise these leaks from one of the most corrupt police departments in America (the same one that successfully memory-holed the Mandalay Bay killer) that Biden suffered some stroke-like medical emergency in Las Vegas...
Happy to take questions on the above, or anything else that's on your mind, including any questions you might have on one or other or both of my free-speech lawsuits on either side of the Atlantic, in the District of Columbia Superior Court and the King's Bench Division of the High Court of England, respectively. Many listeners have asked if there are any ways there can support the free-speech side. Well, there are several ways:
a) signing up a friend for a Steyn Club Gift Membership;
b) buying a near-and-dear one a SteynOnline gift certificate; or
c) ordering a copy of Mark's latest book, The Prisoner of Windsor (you won't regret it, says Kathy Gyngell).
~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. Among the additions to our ranks in recent days are newbies from around the globe - from Hampshire to Haifa, Michigan to Moose Jaw, Sydney to Skaneateles, West Palm Beach to West Dunbartonshire. Whether you've joined this week either 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 joining, 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. So see you back here at 3pm North American Eastern - which is 8pm in London, 9pm in Paris, 10pm in Jerusalem; half-past-ten in Teheran; midnight-forty-five in Kathmandu; 3am in Singapore and Honkers (sorry about that); 5am in Sydney and Melbourne; 7am in Auckland, and a rather more convivial hour for the kippers and kedgeree in His Majesty's Dominions eastward across the Pacific, where you're so far ahead I've probably already lost my appeal by now...