Yes, it's me! Mark Steyn of that ilk - and not dead yet, despite the combined efforts of GB News management, the DC Superior Court and the University of Vermont Medical Center. For the moment, I am just about healthy enough to conduct another midweek 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.
As many of you know, The Mark Steyn Club turned seven last week. I thank all our First Week Founding Members who graciously decided to sign on for an eighth year, and hope our First Fortnighters will wish to do the same as we chug on to the weekend. We marked our birthday with the return of Tales for Our Time, the launch of a new weekly audio show, and an extended edition of our traditional cavalcade of Non-Stop Number Ones. But, if you'd like to express your satisfactions or dissatisfactions with our Club seven years on, you're more than welcome.
~What else to talk about? Well...
New York's corrupt hack judge, Juan Merchan, is obliging Trump to spend four days a week off the campaign trail and in his fetid courthouse. Speaking as a serial defendant myself, I've never been required to do that, and I don't believe this particular court "rule" is - please, no tittering - "constitutional". It is, however, a pretty obvious interference by Merchan in the presidential election. So I suggested some weeks back that Trump force the issue by ignoring this perversion of a judge and dare him to do his worst.
Instead, Trump has done something rather savvier, and inverted the old saw that, if the mountain won't come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain. In this case, if Trump is forbidden to go to the election campaign, then the election campaign must come to Trump. Having former rival candidates and senior party officials join him in court and then talking public policy on the steps is a genius move:
As readers may recall, I was very grateful to Michele Bachmann, John Hinderaker and other friends who took the trouble to show their support for me at the DC Superior Court, and I think that goes quintuple for a guy like Trump. As I realised almost two decades ago at the Conrad Black trial in Chicago, court shrinks the greatest of men: not so long ago, you consorted with princes and presidents; now you're mute in a windowless room listening to your legal team argue the minutiae of admissibility. Judge Merchan has chosen to stage a circus; it is entirely reasonable for Trump to steal the show and make it a better one.
~Merchan is a constitutional abomination, but the title of Worst Judge in America is extremely competitive. One of the rituals I came to enjoy each morning at the DC Superior Court was joining the security line to get into the building with all the muggers and carjackers and other ne'er-do-wells. Unlike your effete "niche Canadian", these lively lads knew the system and how to work it. So, courtesy of Judge Lloyd U Nolan Jr, "a self-described 'woke' magistrate judge on the Superior Court of the District of Columbia":
Teen gunman who 'sprayed DC neighborhood with 26 rounds from an AR-15' is released on bail
It's only controversial because Amonte Moody, the teen gunman in question, shot up a tony neighbourhood a mile from the Capitol where former Obama officials live. I know the 44th president said if he had a son he'd look like Trayvon, but they're not supposed to take that as an invitation to move in.
~On today's show I'm happy to talk about the above or whatever else is on your mind. I'm also up for any questions on my continuing legal battles on both sides of the Atlantic - in the above-mentioned sewer of DC "justice", and against the UK state censor Ofcom in the English High Court. Many listeners have asked how they can support one or other or both of these free-speech lawsuits. 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 my 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. In this seventh birthday month, we cherish the founders of our Club, but we also love to hear from brand new members. Among the additions to our ranks in recent days are newbies from around the globe - from Manhattan to Magherafelt, Louisiana to Lincolnshire, Glendowie (New Zealand) to Glenmaggie (Australia). 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...