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Week One of Mann vs Steyn at the District of Columbia Superior Court has come to a close: 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, is moving 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 Time/8pm Greenwich Mean Time.
I'm happy to address whatever's on your mind, although, having been walled up in the dank septic tank of DC justice all week, my glimpses of the rest of the world have been minimal and a little hazy.
As you'll know if you follow Amy K Mitchell's daily Court Report, yesterday was opening statements, significantly delayed by a far longer than expected jury-selection process. Over at Powerline, John Hinderaker gives his assessment of my performance:
I shouldn't have worried. Mark's opening statement, delivered on his own behalf, was a bravura performance. It was bold, frequently crossing the line, I thought, from exposition into argument–proper in a closing argument, but not an opening statement. It was shrewd, too...
So, in my opinion as a reformed trial lawyer, the case is off to a good start. Whether Mark can maintain the high standard he set today remains to be seen. But the day will come when he, personally, will cross-examine Michael Mann. I may have to buy a plane ticket to Washington to see it.
Mr Mann's counsel yesterday informed the jury that, because he's a busy in-demand world-renowned climatologist, he won't be able to attend trial every day. But you're not to draw any inferences from that, no sirree.
I'm up against not only a plaintiff's lawyer, John Williams, who plays very fast and loose with the facts, but also a judge who doesn't like me. I don't like him - although I think I've got a better reason. One year ago, he was minded to indulge Williams' attempt to kill me by requiring me to fly from France to Washington that week. As my cardiologist wrote to the court, my condition had "high potential of causing sudden cardiac death - which presumably would be in the opposition's favour".
~Re Mann's chum Bill Nye The Science Guy schmoozing the jurors, Steyn Clubber Suz writes from a delightful corner of Maine I was in just a few weeks ago:
Since when are non-jurors or non-potential jurors allowed to just hang out with jurors (or potential jurors)???
Indeed, Suz. That would be open-and-shut jury-nobbling in any other courthouse I've been in around the world. But in DC, as with so many other legal conventions, it's more honoured in the breach.
However, during yesterday's opening Mr Nye seemed a little uncomfortable at being besties with "the paedo enabler's pal".
~The last time I saw John Hinderaker was a little over a year ago for a drink in London, just before my health imploded. At that time, as his readers will know, John didn't think it was a great idea for Republicans to re-nominate Trump. (His current take is here.) My view was slightly different: I thought Trump reprising his 2016 shtick wasn't going to work. "He needs a second act," I said.
Well, very obligingly, the corrupt Democrat-media-Deep State uniparty gave him one: indictments without end. On the day my trial opened in Washington, Trump's latest opened in New York. Litigation-a-go-go has put the wind in his sails. I wish I could say the same, but at the end of each day I'm exhausted and on the verge of collapse. Glad to see he's not. Nonetheless, we stagger on.
~An oldie but goodie opens former cabinet minister Lord Frost's Telegraph column today:
'The future belongs to those who show up.'
So says the writer and commentator Mark Steyn, one of the few who warned early on about the demographic problems the rest of us are now beginning to discuss.
We've left it a bit late to start "beginning" to discuss. But I hope it's true.
~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 garbage Covid propaganda. It will be coming to the King's Bench Division of the English High Court sometime before the end of March. In fact, it's not altogether impossible, at the present glacial pace, that the tail-end of the Washington trial could run into the opening of the London one. As I am wont to say, I don't know whether to laugh or cry, or have a massive stroke.
~In opposition to Michael E Mann's climate-change "hockey stick", we have a limited-edition trial souvenir, the SteynOnline Liberty Stick, to help me make it through a month in the grisly American capital. The Liberty Stick features Magna Carta at one end and the US Constitution at the other, so you can shake it, according to taste, either at Ofcom censorship czars Michael Grade and Melanie Dawes or at your local Secretary of State as she removes Trump from the ballot - or at multiple Commonwealth commissars in between, such as those tormenting the Canadian truckers and throwing the book at Kiwi vaccine whistleblowers.
Each Liberty Stick is individually signed and numbered by yours truly - and is made not round the back of the Wuhan Institute of Virology but by red-blooded all-American types in John Hinderaker's Minnesota. Many listeners have asked how they can support these important free-speech cases on both sides of the Atlantic. Aside from our Liberty Sticks, you're very welcome to...
a) sign up a friend for a Steyn Club Gift Membership;
b) buy a near-and-dear one a 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 on the eve of trial are newbies from around the globe, from Wallowa to Wokingham, from New South Wales to Niceville, from Gillingham to Gulf Breeze. 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.
