Go Ahead, Make …
Judges acting as congress are the main reason we have a constant “culture war” here in the United States. Almost every one of the cultural moral issues that our society fights over and gets hot about, were “decided” by judges instead of laws passed by Congress. From prayer in school, to gay marriage, to abortion and so on, the judiciary’s frankly tyrannical hold on American life is antithetical to representative government and has caused no end of mischief to the Constitutional Republic of the United States. Judges acting as congress are a blight.
I have to say I totally agree with Conrad Black’s comments on the brilliant in-depth piece into which I will segue` upon coming to the end of my introduction. I got to know him as a very young businessman/sportsman during my time in Toronto when Black was an up-and-coming takeover mogul. In more recent years he has seen the rather more penurious side of the court system, albeit he still has a net worth of some $80 million. Today it seems, one could argue quite strongly that the courts and justice system is/are out of control. Consider the far-reaching decisions adjured against the will of We The People for example as judges acting as congress shredded the Constitution and republican government with Roe v. Wade, and the decisions about homosexual marriage; they made vile practices into constitutional rights. I believe Conrad’s own experiences with the system turned on a light bulb about how rotten the system is, since the courts instead of protecting civil liberties, have often been mere enforcers for out-of-control government lawyers. Many judges are not umpires but advocates, indeed judges acting as congress.
In this particular instance, Conrad comes down very supportively for the battle Mark Steyn currently is embroiled in, the details of which I’ll spare you, since the investigative reportage is minutely detailed as per Conrad’s meticulous attention to detail (he also uses words that Bill O’Reilly would take years to go through with his “word of the day” segment in closing out his show). Unfortunately Mark Steyn and National Review are caught up in the vortex of leftist corruption that has overtaken America. The D.C. Superior Court judge handling this litigation, it turns out, surprise, surprise, is a hardcore leftist, who, based upon her decision, has the same legal acumen as our first Affirmative Action Harvard-trained lawyer-cum-president. Her decision not to dismiss this action based upon long standing legal precedent, was a disgrace. The decision by an appellate court not to allow Steyn access to Mann’s emails under FOI (yes, this is the global-warming-nut of “hockey-stick” fame) is a travesty of justice. The system is not just broke folks, it is totally corrupted when it comes to litigation that has political overtones, ruled by judges acting as congress.
Mark Steyn is to be applauded fervently for his stand against tyrannical forces that would in an instant, throw wet blankets galore upon freedom of the press while elevating spurious litigation from the sore losers on the left. Steyn’s critics try and paint him as a drama queen who writes about musical theater, who (gasp!) is also a high school dropout. As to the first point, one might not share his taste in showtunes; but as to the second, to paraphrase Churchill, “Some high-school dropout!” The uncredentialed Steyn is one of the most intelligent, articulate, witty and broad-minded people in the public arena today and like Conrad Black, a trans-national treasure. And yes, his stand is not about personal gain or drama: it is based on principle and deep-rooted conviction. You can’t read his writings and watch his speeches and believe otherwise. And, win or lose (though I pray he wins), this high-school dropout will have proved himself a consequential public figure in the United States, as both he and Conrad Black already have in their native Canada.
And so on to Conrad Black and his piece …
Conrad Black
The debunking of formerly oracular Global Warmer and proto-Gorite Michael Mann should have been a routine matter, conspicuous only for the skill and originality of the polemicist involved—I mean Mark Steyn, of course. To review: Rand Simberg at the Competitive Enterprise Institute published a blog post in which he made the amusing suggestion that Mann
could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.
Steyn, a friend of mine for many years, cited Simberg’s piece in a post for National Review Online and added a shower of causticities of his own:
Not sure I’d have extended that metaphor all the way into the locker-room showers with quite the zeal Mr. Simberg does, but he has a point. 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.…
If an institution is prepared to cover up systemic statutory rape of minors, what won’t it cover up? Whether or not he’s “the Jerry Sandusky of climate change”, he remains the Michael Mann of climate change, in part because his “investigation” by a deeply corrupt administration was a joke.
Neither Simberg nor Steyn was accusing Mann of any crime—the reference to Sandusky was a joke prompted by the fact that Sandusky and Mann were employed by the same university. Yet Mann took the unusual step of suing Steyn, National Review, and CEI for libel. Since New York Times Co. v. Sullivan was decided in 1964, public figures seeking to win defamation suits have been required to prove defendants acted with “actual malice”—intent to defame or reckless disregard for the truth. If the Supreme Court did not believe in 1988 that Larry Flint’s parody interview of Jerry Falwell, in which the late evangelist confessed to losing his virginity to his own mother in an outhouse, constituted libel, it is hard to imagine that Mann thinks he can do anything more than intimidate Steyn and Simberg with court filings and legal fees.
