by Mark Steyn
May 30, 2014
When you get embroiled in as many time-consuming legal matters as I do, it's always fun to have something bigger at stake than a mere courtroom victory. I find, otherwise, it's all a bit of a bore. When the Canadian "human rights" commissions came after me and my friend Ezra Levant, we turned the tables and put the "human rights" system itself on trial. The eventual repeal by Parliament of the disgusting and indefensible "hate speech" law was personally far more satisfying than the not-guilty verdict the British Columbia "Human Rights" Tribunal graciously bestowed on me and Maclean's: By that stage, we had way bigger fish to fry.
In my current case, global warm-monger Michael E Mann is suing me for defamation for calling his famous climate-change "hockey stick" fraudulent. I maintain it is fraudulent, that it was fraudulently promoted by the IPCC and by Al Gore (as the great iconic all-you-need-to-know image of global warming), that Mann himself is fraudulent (falsely claiming on an industrial scale to be a Nobel Laureate) and that, indeed, even his court filings are fraudulent (falsely claiming to have been "exonerated" by the British Government and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and all kinds of other "Climategate" inquiries that have never ever investigated him). So I'd like to win that case in the DC Superior Court, not only because losing it would have me, as Charles P Pierce in Esquire gloats, "pricing steam-grates along Yonge Street in Toronto for possible future housing", but because it would also be the worst setback for free speech in America in the half-century since New York Times vs Sullivan.
But as important a goal for me is ending the climate of fear that Mann and his fellow ayatollahs of alarmism have imposed on a critical field of science and in the broader sphere of public policy. The ugly thuggery that the Warmanos use against anyone who steps out of line - most recently seen in the hockey-sticking of distinguished Swedish scientist Lennart Bengtsson - ought to appall any real man of science. So I'd like to end the protection racket of the Clime Syndicate and put them out of the intimidation business.
As you know, at the end of last year I parted company with my co-defendants National Review and our shared counsel because of my dissatisfaction with the way they were fighting (or, in fact, not fighting) the case. I spent some time and effort looking around for new lawyers, and I'm proud to say that I have Dan Kornstein, the man behind the single most important free-speech legislation this century, as my lead counsel on this case. We're mounting a big-picture First Amendment pushback against Michael Mann, a bullying enforcer whose only response to critics on at least three continents is to demand that they be silenced, banned or fired. …
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