Free Republic

~Tradition holds that most Americans don't start paying attention to the presidential election until after Labor Day. So on Tuesday morning millions of people are going to be discovering that the one candidate got shot in the head and the other was more effectively dispatched and whoever's actually running the United States no longer feels the need to pretend that the dead husk of a moth-eaten sock puppet is the chief executive of the global superpower. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians say Moscow is "threatening the world with nuclear catastrophe". Given that an American client state has spent the last month bombing...

Not long after I came to New Hampshire, decades back, a chap in Littleton decided to hold up the local bank. Unfortunately, he made the elementary mistake of rolling the ski-mask down over his face not just for the robbery but also to case the joint. A teller at the bank, strolling back from lunch, noticed the ski-masked bloke standing on Main Street peering through the windows for some length of time, and she thought it rather odd. So, when he entered the lobby to hold up the joint, they were ready for him. That's pretty much what happened in...

Well, I guess the narrative has moved on to the next plot twist. As Joe Biden said just a few days ago:We're done talking about the debate. It's time to put Trump in the bullseye.It wasn't quite a bullseye: the bullet struck his ear.Which is to say the would-be assassin - one Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania - came within rather less than an inch of killing the Republican presidential nominee. From the intended target upon his discharge from hospital:I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear. I knew immediately that...

~Two years ago tomorrow - July 13th 2022 - GB News became the first over-the-airwaves (and, in UK terms, Ofcom-regulated) broadcast network anywhere to air a one-hour special on victims of the Covid vaccines. All that year, I had covered the story in nightly segments with concerned medical professionals and, more importantly, with individual victims triply injured - first by myocarditis or Guillain–Barré syndrome or some other affliction, next by government stonewalling, then by the media's denial of their very existence. But at some point we thought it worth tying it all together for our first ever single-issue show with...

The U.K. Blowout: Mark Steyn’s View [Updated]Mark Steyn comments on yesterday’s U.K. election. His thoughts are consistent with Scott’s, but expressed in Mark’s unique voice:Across the United Kingdom almost every constituency voted for lefties of various stripes – not just victorious Labour lefties, but also Scots nationalist lefties, Irish republican lefties, eco-lefties, Islamo-lefties and, of course, duplicitous pseudo-conservative lefties: you can get it in any colour as long as it’s red. So, if you’re one of those Britons concerned about, say, transformative mass migration or the right to freedom of speech, things are going to spend the next few years...

~As I first wrote over two decades ago, Islamic supremacism attaches great importance to the annexation of the public space. To mark the Canadian centennial of 1967, half of Dominion Square in Montreal was renamed Place du Canada. Half-a-century later, during a Defund-the-Police protest, the magnificent statue of Sir John A Macdonald was toppled and decapitated, and the craven city council decided he would not be returned to his pride of place. But these are mere poseur flourishes. (Pierre) Trudeaupian nationalism is dead, and the "anti-colonialist" nihilism that supplanted it is a mere death-spasm of demographically irrelevant western youth. Like...

snip ~Back in 2017, I was the guest-host for Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson. But Rush died and Tucker got fired, and, with one or two exceptions, the conversation these days on talk-radio and cable-news seems to be nowhere near where it needs to be to effect meaningful change. Seven years ago, the two major anglophone electorates had just voted for such change - Trump and Brexit - and the permanent state on either side of the Atlantic immediately set about subverting the people's will, and teaching the ingrate masses a hard lesson in what happens when you start looking...

[Tweets excerpted]: The judge is going over the verdict form question by question Simberg - defamatory? Lead Juror: Yes Provably false: Yes Simberg's statement false: Yes Simberg knew it was false: Yes Mann suffered injury: Yes Simberg Verdict Compensatory Damages: $1 Punitive Damages: $1000.00 Steyn's verdict Defamatory statements: Yes Provably False: Yes False Statements: Yes Published With Knowledge Of Falsity: Yes Entertaining serious doubts: Yes Reckless Disregard Mann Suffered Injury: Yes Compensatory Damages: $1 Punitive Damages: $1,000,000.00

On Wednesday, late in the day at 4pm Deep State Standard Time, Mann vs Simberg and Steyn finally went to the jury, and they retired to deliberate. So now we await their verdict - as, on this same day just a few blocks away, President Trump awaits the decision of a supposedly "conservative" Supreme Court on whether he can be permitted to appear on the ballot. I am exhausted by what passes for "justice" in America, and I expect he feels the same. In my case, the last phase of the trial - closing arguments - began yesterday after lunch:...

In the meantime, here are Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer with their dramatised reconstruction of the most recent events. In this episode, Dr Judith Curry takes the stand - a woman sorely traduced by the misogynist pig Michael E Mann, who spread false rumors that she was a slut who slept her way to the top. Simply click below: Mark is played by the Australian actor Thomas Bromhead, who in America is one of the voices of the Geico Gecko and also Rocket in I Got a Rocket, and in the UK and elsewhere is perhaps best known for the...

Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer are back with their dramatised reconstruction of Mann vs Simberg and Steyn, now installed in a far grander courtroom - 132 - at the District of Columbia Superior Court. Day Eight began with Steyn's continuing cross-examination of the plaintiff. Michael E Mann's misogyny regarding Judith Curry audibly shocked the courtroom, but he recovered sufficiently to assert that the best proof that he really is a Nobel Laureate was that he was one of only two people to receive a standing ovation at some climate beano in Hawaii. Then, at the end of the day, the...

Michael E Mann's sixth and final witness is some guy called John Abraham, from the University of St Thomas in Minnesota, who presented himself to the court as an "expert" in investigations, whatever that means. Perhaps he's worked with Hercule Poirot. Mr Simberg's lawyers and Steyn promptly announced they would "voir dire" him, which will take place today. "Voir dire" is an old Norman French term meaning "truly dire", which accurately sums up the American justice system. The courtroom is turning into a mini-Minnesota, with not only Mr Abraham on the scene but also Mark's favorite presidential candidate Michele Bachmann...

The action of making something obscure, unclear, or unintelligible. The Plaintiff's case hinges on making you, or rather the jury, believe — nay, they have to prove — that Mark and Rand knowingly falsified information and had an intent to ruin Mann's reputation. How are Mann's lawyers trying to do that? By making data falsification, fabrication, and every other journalistic standard, such as plagerism (which has been in the news of late, if we recall correctly), the exclusive domain of academia. These really smart people are the only ones who are educated enough to say what is right and what...

First things first. Those who have been watching online have already figured this out, but it is expected that Mark will cross-examine Michael Mann — mano a mano — TOMORROW. So be sure to tune in (Room 518). Second, welcome to the fight, Jack Posobiec! Thank you for the excellent coverage of the trial over at Human Events (at minute 38, but the whole show is great as usual). Jack joins a growing cadre of media (see John Hinderaker at Powerline here, Ricochet here, Heartland and John Droz here, and Phelim and Ann's latest here) who recognize the seriousness of...

~I'm glad to see I wasn't the only one who got a mordant laugh out of this line in Joe Biden's Feast of the Insurrection sermon: "Political violence" is when the FBI kicks in the door of a fat old man with a cane and guns him down like an animal for putting up some spicy Facebook posts. What Joe Biden is saying is he'd like to retain a monopoly on the political violence in America. https://t.co/gqs8glCuRx — Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) January 5, 2024 So "political violence is never ever acceptable in the United States political system. Never, never, never....

~Surprise Development of the Week: German chancellor tests positive for COVID again, despite booster shots "Despite"? Meanwhile, back in the real world: EU countries destroy €4B worth of COVID vaccines A POLITICO analysis shows that more than 200M unwanted coronavirus jabs have been dumped. The Mark Steyn Show first reported on the dumping of Covid vaccines last year, but it's good to see the trend continuing. That "200 million" EU total is a considerable underestimate, given that certain countries - France, Greece, the Czech Republic, etc - have refused to cough up any data. Obviously not all the unwanted "boosters"...

@DVATW Mark Steyn has been a brave and courageous voice for many years. He has suffered several cardiac incidents since taking the jabs and appears to be white in the hair and confined to a wheelchair. This is very sad to see and I hope he can recover.

Prayers for Mark Steyn Today as he Again Faces the Leftist DC Courts and the Mann Lawsuit. He is being sued for challenging a leftist' lies about environment temperature increases. He has severe cardiac issues. Snd just had another heart attack and a sixth Stent placed. The horrorshow courts require his presence instead of video. Evil courts are killers

On the fiftieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, Israelis woke up to a sustained attack on multiple southern towns near the border with the Gaza Strip (half of the so-called "Palestinian Authority"). This isn't the usual vicious but random spasm of slaughter in which Hamas likes to engage. It appears to have been very well planned and executed, with thousands upon thousands of rockets barraging Israeli residential areas from the southern border to north of Tel Aviv. It is also an invasion: Hamas used bulldozers to demolish Israeli border barriers, enabling an unknown number of its assets to enter...

My grandfather, who was born when Charles Dickens was still alive and writing, left me his books, including copies of David Copperfield, Bleak House and Barnaby Rudge, which is good because at no point in either grade school or high school did Dickens appear on any reading list. Dickens was – and still is – one of the most famous novelists ever, but like Mark Twain and Tolstoy, I have no sense whatever that he's being read. Back at the end of World War Two, when David Lean was a young director presented with Dickens' Great Expectations as his next...