Free Republic

Not so long ago, when newspapering was still a going concern, being a "court reporter" was a much sought-after beat - albeit modestly demanding, in that one was expected to know something about the case one was covering and the legal questions it raised. Not anymore - as I learned during my own trial in the District of Columbia Superior Court a few weeks back. The likes of The New York Times and NPR never sent a reporter to court to cover proceedings for a single day, but instead waited until the verdict and then had the "climate correspondent" write...

Happy Passover, the holiday when American Jews attempt to pass over an Ivy League campus and British Jews attempt to pass over a Central London thoroughfare. Surveying the scene at Columbia, Powerline's Scott Johnson posts a picture of Nazis preventing Jews from entering the University of Vienna in 1938. We are enjoined not to go full Godwin's this early in the column, but the photograph prompted this thought: A century ago, the Jews of Germany were the most assimilated in Europe. They had prospered under the Kaiser, and seemed set to do even better in the Weimar Republic. They were...

The conventional wisdom of the media and think-tanks agreed its line around the time the two-hundredth drone was shot down: Iran's assault on Israel was a flop. A record number of drones, cruise and ballistic missiles were launched by the mullahs against the Zionist Entity: For the flight from Persia, a drone takes nine hours, a cruise two hours, and a ballistic missile about twelve minutes. Not a single drone or cruise missile made it to Israeli soil. A few of the ballistics penetrated the country's air space, lighting up the sky over the Temple Mount yet killing not a...

This week my old newspaper The National Post is full of columns about "the death of the Canadian dream", if not the murder of said Canadian dream. Oh, I don't know. Say what you will about Canada, but it's the first country in the world to decree that its citizenry are entitled to both a penis and a vagina - and taxpayer-funded at that: An Ontario resident has successfully secured public funding for a specialized gender-affirming surgery argued to be "experimental" by the provincial health insurer following a years-long legal battle. The … … to the review board following an...

The "last copier in the woods" scenario is showing up somewhat sooner than scheduled. In Scotland, Ireland, Canada and elsewhere, the micro-regulation of speech - even in your own home - is being imposed without much in the way of coherent political pushback. Likewise in the land of the First Amendment, my misplaced faith in which has cost me twelve years of my life and millions of dollars in the choked septic tank of DC "justice". It is, however, even worse for others: at least I was "sued"; there was a "case", a "controversry" to be "litigated" and "adjudicated". By...

Welcome to a brand new audio edition of The Mark Steyn Show, recorded live at sea before an audience of Mark Steyn Cruisers from around the world. Today's episode brings together two of the Steyn Show's favourite guests - Conrad Black and Samantha Smith - to take the temperature of the new reign of Charles III a year-and-a-half since the death of his mother, and to consider the merits of monarchy versus republican alternatives. And Conrad's proposal for a somewhat paradoxical constitutional reform prompts a scornful response from Samantha. To listen to the show, simply click above.

Mark Steyn is the bestselling author of many books, including America Alone, After America, and Lights Out: Islam, Free Speech and The Twilight of the West. His previous incarnations include broadcaster, film and theatre critic, and jazz musician. But for the purposes of this interview, it’s his role as a campaigner for free speech where I think Steyn deserves the most credit. He was the man warning us about demographic decline and the dangers of Islamic immigration two decades ago. He successfully campaigned for the repeal of Canada’s Section 13 hate speech law and, more recently, has been a voice...

Happy Easter Monday to our readers, listeners and viewers across the Commonwealth and Europe. On the other hand, if you're in the United States, presumably it's a big Happy Post-Transition Monday, yesterday having been officially proclaimed by the purported Leader of the Free World as Happy Transgender Day of Visibility: NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 31, 2024, as Transgender Day of Visibility. I call upon all Americans to join...

"Hooray for Hollywood" is the name of the song, not my general disposition toward that industry in its contemporary incarnation. For almost the more than two-decade history of this website, we have marked Oscar Night by celebrating an Oscar-winning song from the last nine decades, even though the Best Original Song category was one of the first to start running on fumes. Now the whole show is. I wasn't even aware tonight was Oscar Night until it was pointed out to me, and I would wager that general lack of interest will be confirmed by the ratings: it's a long...

Spring has sprung! And I'm feeling rather like the dramatis personae in what is apparently now just another of those "problematic" pictures, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (although, personally, I far prefer the director's cut, Fourteen Brides for Fourteen Brothers - presumably even more problematic): Oh, the barnyard is busy In a regular tizzy And the obvious reason Is because of the season Ma Nature's lyrical With her yearly miracle Spring, Spring, Spring...In Spring a young man's fancy turns to songs about a young man's fancy. Not that you have to be homo sapiens to feel the old sap rising...

The death toll from the assault on the Crocus City Hall currently stands at 137, with another two hundred injured. It is the bloodiest terrorist attack in Russia since the Beslan school massacre twenty years ago - and, as with so many events these days, it makes a lot less sense. As things stand after forty-eight hours, ISIS - remember them? - have claimed credit for the bloodbath. No, not ISIS HQ, but their Khorosan branch, which is a breakaway group from the Taliban and al-Qaeda, not necessarily in that order. Islamic State-Khorosan, you'll recall, slaughtered even more people as...

Jeb Bush, then the presumed Republican presidential nominee, famously described illegal immigration as "an act of love". Because that's how these right-wing haters like to talk. As acts of love go, it doesn't appear to be entirely consensual: This is the moment when TX National Guard became overrun by migrants rioting to get across the border here in El Paso today We were there and saw it all happen. Absolute chaos here. pic.twitter.com/VN6Kf663ie — Jennie Taer (@JennieSTaer) March 21, 2024 The above happened in a country where law enforcement is not shy about using lethal force if you're pulled over...

A dissatisfied US reader, Neil Johnson, wrote the other day to chide me for "constant bitching about the legal system (which is accurate but so what?)" So what? Well, it's costing you your country, that's what. And don't start prancing around waving that constitution at me. A constitution is meaningless in a land without law: ask the Soviets about all their pretty-sounding paperwork. Politics is meaningless: cable pundits and radio hosts can yak about polls and policies all they want, but Democrats are pre-litigating the election because they're pretty confident it'll work for them. As I wrote a month ago,...

Happy St Patrick's Day to all our Irish readers around the world. In honour of the magnificent double "Up yours!" the sons and daughters of Erin delivered to their political masters a week ago, we could hardly not have an appropriately Irish song. And, with the funeral of Brian Mulroney in Quebec scheduled for this coming weekend, we could hardly not have this particular Irish song. Here is the then Canadian Prime Minister with America's President Reagan at the so-called Shamrock Summit nineteen St Patrick's Days ago (the big number starts about four minutes in, with the President, PM and...

Following last month's verdict, Mann vs Simberg and Steyn moves on into its thirteenth year and the appellate phase ...oh, no, sorry, we've still got some post-verdict maneuvring to attend to. On Friday, my counsel filed three motions at the District of Columbia Superior Court. If, as with baseball cards, you're anxious to collect the set, they are: a) a Motion to Stay Execution ...wait, wuh? Nobody said anything about execution. Relax, it's merely a Motion to Stay Execution of the Judgment; b) a Motion for Judgment as a Matter of Law; and c) a Motion for (gulp) a New...

Late on Friday Steyn's lawyers filed three new motions in the District of Columbia Superior Court. You can read them in full here... ~There is not a lot of good news around as western civilisation floors it off the cliff. The last such in the anglosphere came last autumn, with the Australian people's coast-to-coast rejection of the proposed "Indigenous Voice to Parliament". In the face of suffocating universal support for the yes side from the political, legal, cultural and media establishments, Oz voted it down 60-40. Well, this weekend the Irish just upped the Aussies, and rejected overwhelmingly two constitutional...

Welcome to a brand new audio edition of The Mark Steyn Show, recorded live at sea before an audience of Mark Steyn Cruisers from around the world. Today's episode re-unites Mark with his old boss the Rt Hon the Lord Black of Crossharbour. In this programme, Mark and Conrad, having both been on the receiving end, talk about the viscissitudes of American "justice" - and, on a happier note, the latter recalls what it's like when Donald Trump telephones to say he's pardoned you. To listen to the show, simply click above. There will be more from Lord Black at...

Following The Mark Steyn Caribbean Cruise, I am now on terra firma - as are Trump's poll numbers, to a degree not seen either in 2020 or 2016. Super Tuesday is tonight, and Nikki Haley may yet sweep the board, although so far her "War on Every Continent!" platform has resonated only in the depraved precincts of the District of Columbia. On the other hand, given the Deep State thumb on the scale in both 2016 ("Crossfire Hurricane") and 2020 (fifty-seven heads of the "intelligence community" assure us that Hunter Biden's laptop is "Russian disinformation"), no prudent person would bet...

Greetings from The Mark Steyn Caribbean Cruise, where we are presently sailing from Cozumel back to Florida, in the company of Michele Bachmann, Conrad Black, Samantha Smith and other special guests. By common consent, the best coverage of my recent trial in the hellhole of the District of Columbia Superior Court was from everyone's favourite Irish chancers, Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer. So we were delighted to welcome Ann and Phelim among our shipmates - and even more pleased when, in the course of our voyage, they turned the tables and interviewed yours truly for a special edition of The...

Greetings from The Mark Steyn Caribbean Cruise, where we are sailing from the Bahamas to Jamaica. That's Leilani Dowding, Tal Bachman and Samantha Smith on stage with me for The Mark Steyn Show. ~I mentioned on Friday that, as part of their increasing dissatisfaction with the lousy Tories'n'trivia drivel of the current GB News output, Tweeters keep dusting off old clips of the way it used to be. I'd forgotten this bit, but it's not bad: 'Something is rotten in Oldham, Telford, Rotherham, Rochdale... on and on' Mark Steyn condemns the police forces that have issued ASBOs to individuals, after...