A few thoughts on the passing scene:
~Happy St Patrick's Day to our many Irish readers around the globe. We mark the occasion with a major breakthrough for diversity:
Congratulations Northern Ireland!!!!
— Phelim McAleer (@PhelimMcAleer) March 14, 2025
It used to be a backward little country.
Now it can proudly take its place among the progressive nations of the world with its first radical Islamist stabbing.@MarkSteynOnline pic.twitter.com/biCHKVfzvy
We finally have an answer to the Irish Question: in the Erin of tomorrow, Protestants and Catholics can all come together to be stabbed by Muslims.
~The French Euro-MP Raphael Glucksmann is calling for the return of the Statue of Liberty because Trump is "firing researchers for demanding scientific freedom".
Works for me. I'd be all in favour if it also means getting rid of that Emma Lazarus doggerel about teeming masses yearning to breathe refuse stapled to the bottom and regarded by open-borders types as outranking the US Constitution. As longtime readers know, my position is that the Frogs gave the Yanks a pretty good Statue of Liberty and the Yanks nailed a third-rate poem to it and turned it into a lousy Statue of Unlimited Mass Migration. Me in the Munk Debate:
Best to send it back. The French can install it outside the Basilica of St Denis and see how long an uncovered woman lasts in that particular neighbourhood.
~Predictably enough, Covid vaccine-damage payments have been hijacked by Big Grift:
Covid vaccine damage consultants paid more than victims
US-based Crawford and Company has paid out £24,360,000 to claimants but received £27,264,896 for its serviceshttps://t.co/zVQLXIfh4S
— VIBUK Official (@VIBUK_Official) March 16, 2025
I think of the vax victims we have had on the Steyn Show who have lost their jobs, their cars, their homes ...but the racketeers always comes out on top.
~This may be my all-time favourite Tweet:
Um... Aren't you dead? pic.twitter.com/ysgDO7BhM8
— Leftism (@LeftismForU) March 13, 2025
We are enjoined not to speak ill of the dead, even the ones who are still Tweeting. So I shall merely quote what I told the United States Senate about Mr Grijalva a decade ago:
Likewise, Raúl Grijalva, the Congressman from Arizona and Ranking Member of the House UnEnvironmental Activities Committee, earlier this year sent a letter to seven scientists, including professors Curry and Christy – a quite disgraceful letter that no citizen-legislator in a representative parliament has any business sending to anybody, demanding among other things details of speaking fees, travel expenses, and email communications stretching back a decade. Commissar Grijalva presumed to be able to do this because these scientists had voluntarily testified before his committee, and thus, as he saw it, had submitted to his jurisdiction over every aspect of their lives. I hope this Senate sub-committee will distance itself from Commissar Grijalva's deformed understanding of his role. But, in the event that, following my voluntary appearance here today, any Senator demands in five years' time to see my emails and know what hotel I stayed in in Cleveland or Copenhagen, I might as well give you my answer now: You ain't getting' nuthin'.
~That was me in 2015, when it was a lot easier to talk butch. Mr Grijalva is not the only legislator to be active from beyond the grave. Rishi Sunak's Tories have been clinically dead since last summer, but it is only today that their Online Safety Bill goes into full effect with respect to "illegal harms". From Kathy Gyngell's summary at The Conservative Woman:
Reform, like the rest of establishment right, seems to have bowed down to this Tory invention without an analysis, let alone a fight.
That's right: it was the so-called "conservatives" who extended Ofcom's control of the remnants of English free speech from TV and radio to the Internet:
The potential fines for noncompliance or 'proven' complaints are eye-watering. No wonder several sites have already closed down or are making their content unavailable to the UK.
I am afraid that the full force of this reality for us at TCW only caught up with me this last week, thanks to pressing alerts from TCW's webmistress. I have been struggling with various Government and Ofcom 'guidance' and multiple commentaries on it ever since, trying to work out the implications for TCW. False communications are already in its remit. What compliance is demanded for us not to be breaking the law? It's a bureaucratic nightmare to wade through it, as noted above; it is designed to defeat you, apart from anything else. Kafkaesque. Not, I can assure you, a way I enjoy spending my time.
Knowing how regulators and judicial-review courts work in that benighted land, I would doubt this website you're reading right now will be available in the United Kingdom in a couple of years. The only question is whether Internet service providers will take the time and trouble to customise access for approximately two hundred nations and territories, or whether it will be easier just to remove transgressive websites from, say, the entirety of Europe.
~As I've mentioned on our two most recent Q&As, I am - at least theoretically - over a million bucks better off than I was a fortnight ago. This is due to two recent court decisions in Mann vs Steyn as it prepares to enter its fourteenth year in the choked septic tank of the District of Columbia Superior Court. So, in fact, instead of me writing a seven-figure cheque to Doctor Fraudpants, the poor fellow will wind up having to write a cheque to me. I won't hold my breath - although I may ask the court to attach his weekly Wegman's supermarket order.
America's basket-case legacy media have been in no hurry to update their "Victory for Science!" stories from a year ago. The New York Times and NPR remain silent, but - credit where it's due - The Washington Post did report on the latest developments. They assigned the same chap as last year, Dino Grandoni. If I recall correctly, he said hello to me when he showed up halfway through the trial. I declined an opportunity to be interview by Mr Grandoni because he's the paper's eco-correspondent - and a real newspaper would have assigned a trial reporter to cover a trial rather than an enviro-activist. Because it's about legal questions rather than whether you like polar bears.
So last week Grandoni returned to the scene of his original journalistic crime. The headline tells you how he sees the story:
A famous climate scientist won a $1M verdict. Then his case took a turn.
But the real wankery came in the headline's strap:
A judge vastly reduced climate researcher Michael Mann's award, accused him of false evidence and ordered him to pay $530,000.
This is surely too incompetent even for America's unreadable monodailes. "Accused him of false evidence"? Who is this Alfred S Irving guy? The plaintiff? The District Attorney? No, he's the judge - or, to borrow a George W Bush coinage, "the decider". So, speaking as the sixth trial judge, he found that Michael E Mann had indeed given "false evidence" and imposed sanctions on him. Dino Grandstandi could try reading the judge's "decision". In pertinent part:
It is further ORDERED that Plaintiff Michael E. Mann, Ph.D., is SANCTIONED for bad-faith trial misconduct.
"Accused him of false evidence" turned out to be too bollockingly stupid even for The Washington Post. So, at a certain point, the sub-editors amended "accused him of false evidence" to "sanctioned his lawyers for presenting false evidence".
But that isn't correct either, is it? As Judge Irving states explicitly, it was not just Mann's lawyers but also Mann himself who gave "false evidence":
First, Dr. Mann's assertion that there was no falsehood or misrepresentation in his testimony or his counsel's conduct borders on frivolity.
At one point, the Court writes:
Dr. Mann made three changes to his claimed post-publication funded grants. Setting aside questions of credibility or even perjury...
Mann's lawyers cannot commit perjury. Because they are not under oath in the witness box. Only Mann can perjure himself.
In other words, it is John Williams, Peter Fontaine and Michael E Mann who have been sanctioned for "bad-faith trial misconduct". Or to put it another way: Mann sued me for calling him a fraud and then, in court, committed fraud.
Oh, well. The Washington Post is only some podunk hicksville small-town birdcage-liner of no importance, right?
These papers can't die fast enough.
~We had a very busy weekend at SteynOnline, starting with my column on Eurabian night and a likely civil war. My Saturday music show featured Sinatra getting his Irish up and tea for two with me and legendary lyricist Irving Caesar. Rick McGinnis's weekly movie date was Randolph Scott in Decision at Sundown, while our Sunday Song of the Week offered a song for St Patrick's Day - sort of. Our marquee presentation was our brand new Tale for Our Time - P G Wodehouse's The Girl on the Boat. Click for Part One, Part Two and Part Three. Part Four airs tonight at SteynOnline.
If you were too busy this weekend getting diversity-stabbed in Belfast, we hope you'll want to check out one or three of the foregoing as a new week begins.
~In this eighth year of The Mark Steyn Club, we're very appreciative of all those who signed up in our first flush and are still eager to be here as we cruise on towards our first decade. We're thrilled by all those 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. We have quite a bit of fun in The Mark Steyn Club, with audio adventures, video poems, planet-wide Q&As, and much more (heart attacks permitting). We appreciate the Club is not to everyone's taste, but, if you're minded to give it a go, either for a full year or a three-month experimental period, we'd love to have you. You can find more details on The Mark Steyn Club here - and, if you've a loved one who'd like something a little different for his or her birthday, don't forget our special Gift Membership.
