UPDATE! Speaking of my previous hate crime (as we were, tangentially, below), The Ottawa Citizen's Robert Sibley begins his story thus:
Surely, we all remember the lawsuits filed against journalists Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant by Muslims upset with them for expressing their view. Now, the National Council of Canadian Muslims – formerly known as CAIR-CAN, or Council on American Islamic Relations (Canada) – threatens to sue Prime Minister Stephen Harper's spokesman, Jason MacDonald, for daring to suggest that the organization has links to the terrorist group Hamas.
First, I'm not sure why NCCM would wish to sue for being associated with Hamas, since their worldviews are all but indistinguishable.
Second, they never sued anyone for pointing out their affiliation to their US parent CAIR, which was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in America's largest terrorism-funding case to date. So they would seem to be historically relaxed about being "linked" to terrorism.
Third, as the excellent Quebec website Point de Bascule lays out for all to see, NCCM and its predecessor groups have ties to Hamas going back two decades, including public expressions of support for Hamas by at least two CAIR-CAN directors.
One of the heartening things about Stephen Harper's ministry is that, unlike its predecessor and unlike far too many western governments, it's far pickier about participating in multiculti photo-ops with schmoozy imams who then turn out to have barely a degree of separation from the sharp end of the jihad. Carelessly respectabilizing too many shifty dissemblers was one of the biggest mistakes made after 9/11.
So now NCCM is trying to sue their way back to respectability. This is classic "lawfare" - or SLAPP, a "strategic lawsuit against public participation". NCCM doesn't need to win (which they won't); they simply need to tie up enough of Mr MacDonald's time and money pour encourager les autres - to send the message that the price of criticizing Islamic imperialist front groups is very steep. As with Dr Mann in my troubles down south, it is necessary for NCCM to lose big, and be seen to lose.
*****
Hinting at a sublime harmonic convergence of my previous hate crime and my latest one, Al Jazeera has been covering self-proclaimed Nobel Laureate Michael Mann's lawsuit against me. I believe it was HRH The Prince of Wales who first brought together the two great religions of our age:
'Follow The Islamic Way To Save The World,' Prince Charles Urges Environmentalists
Good for the Prince, but with luck al-Jazeera can persuade Muslims to follow the Mannish way to save the world. You can find the story here. Or rather you could if the link hadn't gone mysteriously bad. This lady, however, hits all the essentials, and throws in some Koch-machine stuff to boot. Meanwhile, Climate Research Watch reports:
Defendants' Appeal In Michael Mann Defamation Case Further Delays Discovery Process
To be clear, this "defendants' appeal" is by CEI and Rand Simberg. There are now three separate parties on the defendants' side: CEI/Simberg; National Review; and l'il ol' me. There's been way too much misattribution of Simberg's words to me, etc, and CEI's positions to NR's - not just in Judge Combs Greene's slapdash order of July 19th but in much of the coverage thereafter.
*****
On this morning after the night before, Mediaite reports that Ann Coulter has had it with GOP "speech coaches" and is demanding something different for the Republicans' official response to the State of the Union:
I think @MarkSteynOnline should deliver the GOP rebuttal next time. why does it have to be a member of congress?
To which Mark Krikorian adds:
...or even an American citizen?
Picky, picky, picky. I don't think there's anything about the Constitution requiring a natural-born State of the natural-born Union response. And in fact, if you think about it, it's not that difficult to imagine, were some Republican president blocking "comprehensive immigration reform", today's Dems signing up some hardworking member of the Undocumented-American community - maybe one of those new illegal lawyers they have in California - to give the official heartwarming SOTU riposte.
Anyway, I doubt it's going to happen for me. From my brief surf of last night's telly punditry, what matters for the SOTU response is that you have an "inspiring personal story". And mine needs rewrite: A plucky, hardworking immigrant who makes his way to the Land of the Free for a shot at living the American Dream, and gets dragged into court and sued for a seven-figure sum, after which he winds up living in a rusting boxcar round the back of the freight yards. But maybe it'll sound better when it's loaded into the prompter.
And it's certainly David vs a massive hockey-stick-wielding Goliath. As Zack Chibane gloats:
The opinion of a hs graduate > 98% of the world's scientists? Hm.
Who said I ever graduated? Meanwhile, in his tireless coverage of the case, David Appel goes to great lengths (titter) to explain why I was wrong to say Dr Mann's hockey stick is not scientifically "flaccid". Oh, dear. Sometimes a cheap sex crack is just a cheap sex crack.
PS My old National Post colleague, Donna LaFramboise, made an appearance for the "Deniers' side" (as Mann would say) at the Palace of Westminster yesterday at a parliamentary hearing on the IPCC - and acquitted herself well.
Thanks for all your support via the SteynOnline bookstore. In next year's SOTU response, I promise to thank you all by name.