Free Republic

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...

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...

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...

Michael Mann took the stand for the third day at the trial of his own making to start Week 3. Mark's cross-examination continued in full force today. By the end of the day, Mann's lawyers were clearly flustered as illustrated by their attempts to rebut Mann's own testimony (in vain). C.S. Lewis (yes, that C.S. Lewis) once said, "Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others." We witnessed a lot of blame in Room 132 of the DC Superior Court today, so hell must be near. As Mark detailed in exhibit after exhibit, Mann, despite his protestations...

Programming Note: As you may have heard at the end of Day 7 of the trial, Room 518 in the DC Superior Court has been experiencing some hot air. Literally. Apparently the temperature control in the room is out of control. So the trial beginning tomorrow has been moved to Room 132 (new link here). Mark's cross-examination of Mann continues tomorrow, so be sure to tune in! Week 2: Trial of the Century Let's start our recap of the week with the First Amendment. As the bipartisan Project Democracy puts its, the First Amendment was designed to equally protect not...

Mark is in Washington resting up in preparation for the resumption of his trial at the DC Superior Court on Monday morning - and wondering whether he'd have been better off in a New York courtroom. Oh, wait... Jury Awards E. Jean Carroll $83.3 Million in Second Defamation Case Against Donald Trump On the other hand, that's half of what the DC jury awarded Giuliani's plaintiffs. So it's all relative. In the meantime, here are Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer with their dramatised reconstruction of the most recent events. In this episode, Ann herself becomes the target of Michael E...

...for the plaintiff, that is. This is supposed to be the last day of his case. We shall see. The big revelation on Thursday was Mann declaring that he had not spent a dime of his own money on his defamation suit these last twelve years, and that he did not owe any debt for those twelve years of legal services at no cost whatsoever. A lot of observers in Courtroom 518 of the DC Superior Court seemed to think this was a big "Gotcha!" moment. Not me. It was mere bleak confirmation of what I had always suspected. I...

After 12 years of wandering in the wilderness of the D.C. court system, Michael Mann’s defamation case against Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg has finally gone to trial. Opening statements were delivered today. The trial is being live-streamed, and I got the court’s app to work just in time to hear Steyn’s opening. The case, as you likely recall, arises out of an internet post written by Simberg, which Steyn quoted and added a few comments to. The two posts drew a parallel between Jerry Sandusky, the disgraced Penn State football coach, and Mann, also a Penn State employee and,...

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...

"Keep an open mind." That was Judge Irving's counsel to the jury at the close of Day 5 of Mann v. Steyn. Why would the Judge feel the need to state "keep an open mind" barely a week into the trial? Well, let us count the reasons. The morning began with Mark back on the stand being "questioned" by the Plaintiff's council about the meaning of this word or that word and whether or not he had read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn when he was 10 (just kidding, though we would not have been surprised by such an inane...

Mark is in Washington resting up in preparation for the resumption of his trial at the DC Superior Court on Monday morning. In the meantime, here are Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer with their dramatised reconstruction of the last day's events, including what Powerline's John Hinderaker described as Steyn's "bravura performance" of his opening statement. Simply click below:

..The trial of the century, Mann v. Steyn, is finally in court after twelve long years. And neither snow nor rain nor according to Axios, an "expansive and record-breaking Arctic air outbreak," could stop today's proceedings. Although the trial began late (due to the aforementioned "record-breaking" freeze), there is a judge, a courtroom, and almost a full jury - the whole kit and kaboodle of American jurisprudence. Mark's fans came out en masse - in Washington, DC, no less! — which compelled the honorable Judge Irving, presiding, to scramble for an overflow room to accommodate everyone (see below if you...

This sounded so exciting I thought I must try to book tickets. And then I remembered I've been stuck doing the out-of-town tryout for twelve years: NEW: Climate Change Is ON TRIAL ⚡️ Michael Mann & Mark Steyn will battle in court. The case will explore the hockey stick climate graph that rattled the world. Mark Steyn claims it's a fraud. Michael Mann believes it is our future. Find out: https://t.co/I7D8bzGPts pic.twitter.com/GuMKIRLXdT — Ann McElhinney (@annmcelhinney) January 11, 2024 More from Ann and Phelim here. Aside from their daily podcast, my former publicist Amy K Mitchell (whom some of you...

Joe Manchin’s decision to kill off sweeping US climate legislation has been called “nothing short of a death sentence” for younger people and a livable climate on Earth, amid an outpouring of anger and despair from activists, scientists and even many of the US Senator’s Democratic colleagues. Manchin, the centrist West Virginia senator who has become a millionaire through his founding of a coal-trading company in his home state, dealt a crushing political blow to Joe Biden’s agenda on Thursday night when he made clear he would not support any spending to curb the climate crisis in a proposed bill....

A Washington, D.C. judge has ruled that the conservative think tank the Competitive Enterprise Institute cannot be held responsible for an outside blogger’s 2012 online attack on a prominent climate scientist. At the same time, the judge decided that a jury should decide whether the blogger, Rand Simberg, should be held liable for his post, which excoriated Pennsylvania State University climatologist Michael Mann and suggested that he had engaged in fraud. Mark Steyn, an outside blogger for the National Review, another conservative publication, also should face a trial over his own post, two days after Simberg’s, Superior Court Judge Alfred...

Climate pseudo-scientist Michael Mann is litigious, but his track record is poor. Nearly nine years ago, he sued National Review, Mark Steyn and the Competitive Enterprise Institute over a post that Mark did at The Corner, which read in part: Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change “hockey-stick” graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus. And, when the East Anglia emails came out, Penn State felt obliged to “investigate” Professor Mann. Graham Spanier, the Penn State president forced to resign over Sandusky, was the same cove who investigated Mann. And, as with Sandusky and Paterno, the college...

The two most non-essential professions on the planet right now are that of Big Climate alarmist and his attorney in a vanity lawsuit. Yet Michael E Mann, inventor of the global-warming "hockey stick", and his counsel John Williams are disinclined to let their lousy eight-year-old defamation suit against me shelter in place for a couple of months, and the other day they made a surprise move. By which I mean a deranged and desperate move. Before we get to that, let me make a general observation: You'll have noticed that millions of people around the world are what one might...

March 26, 2002 Tree Rings Show a Period of Widespread Warming in Medieval Age By KENNETH CHANG A new study of old tree rings shows that 1,000 years ago, long before power plants and sport utility vehicles, temperatures across North America, Europe and Asia rose in a period of unusual warmth. In warm weather, trees thrive and grow a thick ring of wood in their trunks for that year. In cold years, growth slows and the tree ring is thin. Temperatures were known to be warm in Europe between 900 and 1100, what is known as the Medieval Warm Period....

Yesterday there was a rare development in the sclerotic adjudication of the Mann vs Steyn case: the US Supreme Court declined to hear my co-defendants' interlocutory appeal (a six-year waste of everyone's time), so we will now be proceeding to the trial I asked the court to order way back in 2013, before several of our witnesses had died. So, with climate alarmism on my mind, I thought this would make for a timely edition of The Mark Steyn Show: a full-length climate-change forum before an audience of Mark Steyn Cruisers from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, India,...

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up an appeal involving a prominent climate scientist who sued an iconic conservative magazine and libertarian think tank for defamation. In a closely watched request to the Supreme Court, the National Review and Competitive Enterprise Institute asked the justices to intervene in a suit brought against them by scientist Michael Mann. The case, which pits climate scientists against the free speech rights of global warming skeptics, drew interest from lawmakers, interest groups, academics and media. SNIP Mann, the plaintiff, is best known among climate scientists for his “hockey stick” graph, which showed...