Programming note: Tonight, I'll be here with Episode Twelve of our latest Tale for Our Time, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Tomorrow, Wednesday, I hope to be back behind the microphone taking questions from Mark Steyn Club members around the world at 3pm North American Eastern (8pm British Summer Time) for our latest Clubland Q&A. Hope you can swing by.

~Thought for the day:

Indeed. So, just for old times' sake:

So, unlike straight-shooter John Durham, Gladys the filing clerk managed to find it in the bottom drawer after three minutes and for a total cost of a buck seventy-three. However, after ten years, Durham did manage to indict a girl from the typing pool and the parking-lot night-shift attendant. The former was given two days of community service, and the latter had his conviction overturned on appeal.

And, as anyone knows who has had the misfortune to spend thirteen sodding years before the DC courts, that's how it goes in the developed world's most corrupt "justice" system: in the thundering words of Ted Kennedy as he was wringing out his trousers in the hotel bar, "No one is above the law! (Except Democrats.)" As the old country song goes, they were two-tier before two-tier was cool.

Nevertheless, here we go again:

I have to say I'm inclined to agree with Matt Walsh:

That's great but we aren't satisfied with memes and funny videos. You have to actually go do it in real life.

I'm memed out; I'm AI-videoed out. They remind me of the Obama-era bollocks:

Ten years on, over one hundred of those Christian schoolgirls remain missing, forcibly converted to Islam and married off to their Boko Haram kidnappers. It turns out the magic properties of tilty heads and cardboard hashtags don't work that well in what passes for the real world.

So funny memes are consolation prizes for losers - unless you think that, in a filthy system where district judges ignore Supreme Court rulings and Bureau of Prisons apparatchiks reject presidential pardons, there is any chance of anyone you've actually heard of winding up behind bars.

Don't get me wrong. What happened in the three months following the 2016 election would meet most developed nations' - Sweden's, for example - definition of a coup. Me eight bollocking years ago, "Coup d'état profond":

From November to January we had three months of blather about the 'peaceful transfer of power', but that is in fact precisely what the losers have denied the winners: Instead, they weaponized the transfer... What we are witnessing is a slow-motion coup against a duly elected government by people determined to use whatever they have to hand - national-security leaks by the permanent bureaucracy, money-no-object fishing expeditions by hopelessly conflicted prosecutors, domestic surveillance of political opponents by Obama officials, and indifference to most of the preceding by a GOP congressional leadership that has no interest in seeing Trumpism succeed.

Under cover of America's uniquely unique "peaceful transfer of power", Obama, Biden and the Clintons colluded to subvert the results of the 2016 election. That said, in a sane polity, I would not support of gaoling three of the five previous presidents - because, alas, to half the country, Barack and Hillary are revered for shattering the glass ceiling, while Bill is venerated for obliging interns to perform acts of sexual gratification on him, and Joe is highly respected for sniffing the hair of little girls. So walling them up in Alligator Alcatraz would have consequences for social tranquility. I would, however, to put it as soberly as I can, be in favour of reaching the same deal as the Spanish Government did with King Juan Carlos - that, in exchange for avoiding prosecution, the aforementioned Obamas, Bidens and Clintons would be obliged to join His Majesty in exile - the United Arab Emirates, maybe, or Belgium - and never again set foot on American soil.

I would, on the other hand, be in favour of incarcerating "Comey, Clapper, Brennan, Strzok and Steele", to reprise the chorus of one of our Durham Town songs. Is that going to happen? It already has to A-list fellows on the other side - Flynn, Bannon, Navarro. But on their side? Right now, they're all living large on book deals and cable contracts

And, lest you think I'm Princess Pussypants for saying I wouldn't support imprisoning three presidents if this was a sane polity, I'm prepared to make an exception for the following reason: the Obama-Biden-Clinton coup was not a victimless crime. What the outgoing president, in particular, chose to do in concocting the "Russia investigation" was to make impossible regular state-to-state relations with a not unimportant foreign country. One consequence of that was the Russia-Ukraine War, a brutal meat-grinder now in its fourth year. Hundreds of thousands are dead because of what the blood-soaked Obama and Mrs Clinton did. Russia is not just a useful card to play against your political opponent in some stupid lo-grade bus'n'truck tour of House of Cards: it's an actual place in that zone of the State Department maps marked "Rest of the World". So, okay, Obama and Clinton are war criminals who should be on trial, but not in DC (where they'd walk) but in the Hague.

The reach of the Democrat Deep State is impressive, as the present Director of National Intelligence well knows, because the bastards didn't gaol her (yet) but they did put her on the no-fly list. Until, say, Comey - a man who threatens to eighty-six Trump - faces the same lifestyle adjustments, bugger off with the memes.

~The Mark Steyn Club is now in its ninth year. I'm thrilled by all those SteynOnline supporters across the globe - from Fargo to Fiji, Vancouver to Vanuatu, Surrey to the Solomon Islands - who've signed up to be a part of it. My only regret is that we didn't launch it twenty-three years ago, but better late than never. You can find more information about the Club here - and, if you've a pal who might be partial to this sort of thing, don't forget our special Gift Membership.