Two Weeks to Trial

Happy Ninth Day of Christmas - or, as I think of it, Happy Fourteenth Day before Jury Selection. My trial begins at the District of Columbia Superior Court on January 16th. Global warm-monger Michael E Mann is suing me and Rand Simberg for $20,000,000.00 for disparaging his climate-change "hockey stick", and, after twelve years of multi-gazillion-dollar jousting, it's finally happening.

If that Giuliani judgment is anything to go by, a Washington jury may be minded to add another couple of zeroes to that twenty mil. Rudy's lawyers made the mistake of making a plea for sympathy. Given the way that worked out, I don't think I'll bother with that bit. At any rate, one way or the other, we shall know the answer about halfway through February, just before this year's Mark Steyn Cruise.

~Meanwhile, after a decade-and-a-fifth of Mann vs Steyn churning round and round in the choked septic tank of DC justice, how goes the planet? New Year headline from USA Today:

It's over: 2023 was Earth's hottest year, experts say.

What's over? 2023? Or Earth? Well, don't get hung up on nuances of the hyperbollocks. "Experts say" it's over, just as "experts say" Covid is never over. When you see the phrase "experts say" in a news story, you can take that to the bank. Just two months ago, Reuters spoke to experts who were expertly saying:

This year 'virtually certain' to be warmest in 125,000 years, EU scientists say

But then came a sweltering December - and you can add a couple of zeroes to that number. Back to that USA Today expert report:

What's especially concerning, experts say, is that "the rate of warming over the past century has no precedent as far back as we are able to look, not only hundreds or thousands, but many millions of years," according to University of Pennsylvania meteorologist Michael Mann's book "Our Fragile Moment."

The hottest it's been for "millions of years"? Our friend Jo Nova comments:

Naturally, no science journalist thinks to ask him how he could possibly know this?

No need to be cynical, Jo. Mann has a tree-ring from the Pleistocene Era as his office door-stop. Maybe he'll bring it to court.

As to establishing definitively the root cause of "climate change", how's that going?

Humans may be contributing to global warming by breathing, a study has found.

So, simply by refusing to answer opposing counsel's questions on the witness stand, Mann will be helping to save the planet.

Really, what with all the breathing I'm doing, the jury should just skip the 157-bazillion-dollar judgment and send me straight to the SuperMax. From Steyn Clubber Wayne Cunnington:

On the other hand, if your plucky little defendant has to wait till the appeals court or even the Supreme Court for ultimate victory, I won't even be able to pop the celebratory champers:

New Year's Eve beverage could go extinct due to climate change, AI company predicts.

Great. The last good stuff will be reserved for Klaus Schwab's Spectre board meeting. The rest of us will have to make do with bugsecco.

~In opposition to the litigious Mann's hockey stick, we have a limited-edition SteynOnline Liberty Stick to help me through a month in the depraved and grisly American capital city. That's me at top right with Stick #1 outside the DC Superior Court on what was supposed to be the first day of trial on October 30th ...until Judge Irving emailed to say he'd eighty-sixed it. The Steyn 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. These Liberty Sticks are individually signed and numbered by yours truly - and are made not (like everything else) by slave labour in China but by all-American types in Minnesota. They're proving rather popular. From Kim Corwin, a Massachusetts member of The Mark Steyn Club:

Thanks for the Liberty Stick I gave my hubby for Christmas; being a great fan of both freedom and hockey, absolutely perfect gift! Here's hoping the new year is 1000% better.

1,000 per cent? Not so breezy with all those zeroes, Kim, or they'll be putting you in the DC jury pool.

~At The Conservative Woman, Kathy Gyngell has very generously picked my latest book The Prisoner of Windsor as one of her Christmas reads:

LAUGHTER is the balm of life, and if you are in need some of that balm I cannot direct you to a funnier book – one that makes you laugh out loud – than Mark Steyn's novel, The Prisoner of Windsor, which he describes as a sequel to The Prisoner of Zenda, the 1894 Anthony Hope adventure. For readers who haven't read this novel or seen its 1937 film version, it's the story of an English gentleman on holiday in Ruritania who is persuaded to act as a political decoy for the country's drugged and kidnapped monarch. You don't have to know the original to enjoy or follow Mark's reverse take on the plot, set not in a fictional kingdom but Charles III's present-day not-so-United Kingdom.

The thought that triggered Mark into writing it was whether a present-day Ruritanian (in other words, someone from an Eastern European country ) wouldn't find life here now as fantastical as Hope's Rudolf Rassendyll found life there then.

That's true. Indeed, as I said on the last Mark Steyn Cruise, as a general rule I find the countries that were to the east of the Iron Curtain are now far less insane that those to the west.

Steyn's prescience is uncanny... He puts his finger on all the idiocies that are indeed laughable but at the same time are the indices of society's alienation, moral and political collapse. Like the French author Michel Houellebecq, he shows where moral relativism leads...

The Prisoner of Windsor will make you think as much as it makes you laugh.

That's very kind of Kathy. If you'll forgive me adding a note of urgency to her recommendation, whether you order from the big guys or prefer an autographed copy direct from yours truly, the proceeds will help keep me in the game these next six weeks in the dank toilet of American "justice".

~Notwithstanding my one-step-forward-three-steps-back health, we had a busy New Year weekend at SteynOnline, starting with my essay on the accelerating degeneration of a "constitutional republic". Rick McGinnis's Saturday movie date offered Lucky Lindy as considered by a not-so-lucky Billy Wilder, and our New Year Song of the Week found me celebrating the all-time Hogmanay hit (plus a runner-up).

Our marquee presentation was Part Two of my remembrance of those from the music world we lost in 2023. You can find Part One here. "Musical obits—only available from the great Mark Steyn!" says David Elstrom, a First Hour Founding Member of The Mark Steyn Club. "Fabulous program."

One of our newer Steyn Clubbers, Anna Niemann, adds:

Ah Mark - I was warbling along delightedly with each memorable song and deeply appreciating those few that were unfamiliar and listening to your memories and stories, when finally 'Sunrise Sunset' arrived and to my astonishment I was unable to sing along with that beloved song for the arrival of the lump in my throat and the tears finally falling. In fact, it was the perfect ending to a troubled year.

Thank you, Anna and David. On the other hand, from Gareth Wigmore:

That was the worst Steyn Show I've heard.

Oh, well. If you were too busy spending the New Year trying to save the planet by cutting down on your breathing, we hope you'll want to check out one or three of the foregoing as a shortened work week begins.