Programming note: Tonight, Monday, I'll be live with Tucker Carlson, coast to coast across America on Fox News at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific, with a rerun at midnight Eastern. We hope you'll tune in if you're in the presence of the receiving apparatus. Meanwhile, a few thoughts on the passing parade:
~At last! A truly bipartisan solution to illegal immigration that works for everyone:
'DREAMers' Threaten To Leave US If DACA Deal Doesn't Allow Them To Stay
For Democrats who fret that this will make us less diverse, don't worry. Nancy Pelosi's grandchildren are panting to go full Rachel Dolezal:
When my grandson blew out the candles on his cake, they said, 'Did you make a wish?' He said yes, he made a wish. What is your wish? He said, 'I wish I had brown skin and brown eyes like Antonio.' So beautiful, so beautiful.
Surely Nancy's grandson is a Dreamer, too - and surely there are millions who share his dream among the scions of guilt-ridden white liberals. Who needs immigration at all when so many of those already here are volunteering to "transition"?
(Maybe we could incentivize the process, as they do in Toronto, where you can get a zero-percent mortgage if you convert to Islam.)
PS That Dreamer threat sounds like the Iranian negotiating playbook held upside down:
Iran will resume uranium enrichment if the European Union does not recognize its right to do so, two Iranian nuclear negotiators said in an interview published Tuesday.
Or as I paraphrased it:
Got that? If you don't let us go nuclear, we'll go nuclear. Negotiate that, John Kerry.
So he did.
~The #MeToo movement has spread to the prestigious Westminster Kennel Club. Their big dog show opens today, but you might want to think twice about going along: It's a Harvey Dogstein Mirabarx production, with a PBS casting couch behind every kennel. Reuters reporter Stephanie Kelly lifts the veil on the canine glass ceiling:
After the German shepherd Rumor won the top prize at last year's Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in New York, she had her first litter of puppies and retired from competition, like many female show dogs.
Wow. It's like Best Supporting Actress, and poor old Rumor is Mira Sorvino or Marisa Tomei...
By contrast, most top male show dogs can keep competing for years, and it is no coincidence that they also win "Best in Show" in the prestigious annual competition far more often than females...
Female dogs, known in pure-bred circles as "bitches," have snared Best in Show at Westminster 39 times since the award was first given in 1907. Males, known simply as "dogs," have been victorious 71 times, almost twice as often.
Life's a bitch. Not.
A dog's peak age for competition is 3 to 5 years old, which also happens to be prime breeding age for females, said Kimberly Calvacca, a professional handler and breeder from Westbury, New York...
"People don't like to campaign females because they don't like to jeopardize their breeding program," said Calvacca. "Males can be used to stud anytime, and still show and breed at the same time."
God Almighty, it's straight out of A Handmaid's Tail...
A female competitor's "heat" cycle brings changes in temperament and hormones that can also hurt its chances of winning the world-renowned show for pure-bred canines...
Depending on the breed, a female dog in season will shed her coat, leaving her less impressive looking than male peers.
Whereas, in Harvey Weinstein's hotel room, getting females to shed their coats was the principal objective. Although, from the descriptions of his back hair, Harvey could easily win Best in Show at Westminster.
~For those wondering where we're at in the Mann vs Steyn climate-change hockey-stick case, legal analyst Jonathan Adler has penned another of his eminently sensible "Whatever Happened to Michael Mann's Defamation Suit?" pieces. He does these every year, which is awfully decent of him if you're looking for the case-status equivalent of The Bing Crosby Christmas Show, this year featuring a full en banc chorus of inert jurists:
National Review and CEI promptly filed petitions for rehearing or rehearing en banc in January. These petitions were supported by several amicus briefs, and the court sought a response from Mann in February 2017. (These and other filings in the case may be found here.)
Mann's response was filed over 10 months ago, and there is still no word from the court. What's going on? I have no inside knowledge, but I suspect the delay may indicate at least some of the judges are having difficulty with the potential breadth of the initial ruling. As I wrote in March 2017...
Etc.
Prof Adler seems a decent cove, and I have no doubt he'll sportingly offer variations of this column every year as the decades roll by. But, like his fellow legal analyst Popehat, he is for my tastes insufficiently repulsed by the malign sclerosis of the DC court system. I appreciate that this is the difference between being philosophically interested in a case and being stuck in the crapholian hell of it. Nevertheless, the Mann vs Steyn suit, over a 270-word blog post, enters its seventh year in a couple of months, and I do wish some of these brainy legal types were as affronted by that as "the reasonable man" (to dig up a concept now largely lost to US jurisprudence) would be. As a Canadian immigrant to New Hampshire who never sets foot in America's toxic dump of a capital except to attend court or pick up the occasional award, I voluntarily submitted to the DC court's jurisdiction on the careless assumption they were capable of trying the matter in a reasonably competent fashion.
Silly me. Obviously they're not, and it's hard to see how any "reasonable man" could have anything other than utter contempt for such a system: sh*tholes start close to home, Mr President. On the present rate of progress, I am unlikely to live long enough to see the conclusion of a case totally procedurally bollocksed at its inception by an incompetent trial judge complaining on the very first day about all the filings. As I have noted with sadness, witnesses of mine have already died. As I wrote a year ago:
As a practical proposition, that means, if I enjoy normal life expectancy, this case will consume the bulk of my remaining time on earth. In the event that I don't, the thuggish Mann will come after my family, as has happened to my late friend Andrew Breitbart's children. I did not seek this battle, and I confess, in my gloomier moments in recent days, that I envy those returning Somali green-card holders denied re-entry to the United States. But I will not shirk the fight, and I will prevail.
I'll stand on that, not because I'm inclined to boy-stood-on-the-burning-deck stuff but mainly because I have no choice. Still, I must say I'm perplexed by the apparent indifference of sensible legal analysts to the American court system's vile torpor - which, to those of us mired therein, is its distinguishing feature. The appeal before the DC court is not an appeal of a final verdict, but an interlocutory appeal - ie, an appeal of something or other while the case is still before the trial court. Which in any functioning system would behoove the appellate judges to get on with it. Jonathan Adler discreetly tiptoes up to this point:
Whether or not judges on the D.C. Court of Appeals agrees with me on these points, it seems they've had more than enough time to consider the issue.
Well, yes. But any thoughts on how we can get them to pull their fingers out, as the Duke of Edinburgh is wont to say? And, if not, what then?
America, alas, has gone back to trial by ordeal - and too many legal commentators seem entirely relaxed by that.
~We had a busy weekend at SteynOnline, starting with my Olympian thoughts on curling: Romancing the Stone. Our Saturday movie date celebrated the centenary of Ida Lupino, and our Sunday Song of the Week did likewise for "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody". Our pre-Valentine Mark Steyn Weekend Show offered live music, the food of love, and romantic poetry. If you were too busy glued to rhapsodic coverage of Kim Jong-Un's sister, we hope you'll start your week by checking out one or more of the above.
The Mark Steyn Show and much of our other content is supported by members of The Mark Steyn Club, for which we're profoundly grateful, given our legal bills. We have fun in the Club, not least in our audio adventure series Tales for Our Time, the latest of which starts this coming weekend. If you'd like to join us, you'll find more details here. Or, if you're personally antipathetic to me but the lady next door's quite partial, why not sign her up for a Gift Membership, or treat her to a SteynOnline gift certificate?
