Damon Linker writes at THE WEEK:
Is National Review doomed?
The conservative movement’s leading magazine faces a lawsuit that could bring it to its knees.
This part made me laugh:
The ideological descendants of the Birchers have since taken their revenge. Today they are the conservative movement’s most passionate supporters and foot soldiers. But they demand a steady diet of red meat, and National Review now exists in part to provide it.
Really? John Birchers?
Here’s a somewhat less volatile point of his argument, but still equally funny:
‘In July, Judge Natalia Combs Greene rejected a motion to dismiss the suit. The defendants appealed, and last week D.C. Superior Court Judge Frederick Weisberg rejected the motion again, opening the door for the discovery phase of the lawsuit to begin’
I guess he didn’t do much research into that fiasco and judge Natalia Combs Greene to see the whole story of how she reversed the plaintiff and the defendant in her ruling, which was later nullified by a competent judge.
Let’s say for the sake of entertainment purposes that Mann does win the lawsuit, how will he prove damages? Given Mann’s own propensity for self promotion, vitriol, and foot-in-mouth moments, IMHO Mann does more damage to his own reputation than anyone else. If Mann winning that lawsuit that were to happen, it would probably be a symbolic damages award, like $1. If the judge really wanted to send a message about frivolous lawsuits from climate scientists, he could make it 97 cents.
Read it all here: http://theweek.com//article/index/255756/is-national-review-doomed
But, the funniest part of it all, is the writer himself, Damon Linker, who could be a every-Mann climate scientist clone.
What’s politics?
M Simon says:
January 30, 2014 at 4:09 pm
” … The moral socialism is in fact Drug Prohibition … ”
—-l
Are you in favour of any of the current anti-drug laws or do you feel that there should be no Drug Prohibition at all?
Not a good week for Damon Linker — he’s also been ripped a new one by Jerry Coyne for a clueless article criticising the New Atheists.
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2014/01/28/damon-linker-wants-atheists-to-struggle/
The problem is legal costs. Linker observed: “Small magazines often lose money and only rarely manage to break even. They certainly don’t have substantial legal budgets.” Steyn said that legal costs have thus far exceeded $500,000 and this is just on motions. I don’t know anything about National Review’s financial structure, but the costs of litigation are punitive. Mann has run up high legal costs himself but while Mann has portrayed the case as an individual against a larger entity, the reality is more likely that green-sympathizing organizations/individuals/foundations have funded Mann’s case. Their ability to outspend National Review should not be underestimated.
timetochooseagain says:
January 30, 2014 at 6:18 pm
M Simon quotes approvingly a bunch of protectionist nutjobs, and then calls other people socialists.
Well. I lol’d.
You have to admit that they got the UN right.
What Doug Huffman said and MSimon said!
Chad Wozniak says:
January 30, 2014 at 8:13 pm
From Time Magazine – not because it is particularly good. Just mainstream.
http://healthland.time.com/2013/10/28/study-marijuana-compounds-can-kill-some-cancer-cells/
Compounds derived from marijuana can kill cancerous cells in patients with leukemia, according to a recent study. [links at the link]
Testimonial:
http://www.cureyourowncancer.org/elias-coopers-story-treating-leukemia-with-cannabis-oil.html
By January 2013 Elias’s condition had advanced so far that chemo was the option Elias’s doctor left him with. Since Elias was opposed to chemo his wife, Debra Cooper, went online and started to look for alternative treatments for her husbands condition. Thank God for that decision because it is what has saved his life.
Debras research guided her to “Brave” Mykayla, the 8 year old who is using cannabis oil to treat her leukemia. Mykayla is one of the youngest medical marijuana patients in the US and has had great results using cannabis oil to treat her leukemia. Mykayla and her family have been on many TV news segments and shows sharing her story. Elias and Debra were very impressed at the results shown by Mykayla. They were so impressed that they decided to get Elias his medical marijuana card so he to could try cannabis oil. [links at the link]
From what I gather it is important to get cannabis with the right ratios of the various cannabinoids. A lot of the information is online. A lot of it isn’t. You may have to contact the people involved for assays. Look up “cannabis assays” for a place to get the assays done. You will want an HPLCMS assay (High Pressure Liquid Chromatography – Mass Spectroscopy) assay rather than a GCMS (Gas Chromatography – Mass Spectroscopy). Because GCMS carboxylates the cannabis changing the assay. HPLC is a cold process. GC is not (in this case).
SC Laboratories seems good but I have no experience – personal or otherwise – with them. I just watch their videos with some knowledge of chemistry and experience in making HPLC and GC machines. I did the electronics for read out for HPLC and GC machines.
“Oh now, you know how that side thinks – if you WISH something to be True hard enough, then it WILL be True!!! Right???”
It’s more like in religion. If everybody belive the same then it is experienced more like a truth?
If this is going to be a war of legal fees attrition, you have to wonder if the alarmists really believe all their whining about being up against a well funded machine.
negrum says:
January 30, 2014 at 9:48 pm
M Simon says:
January 30, 2014 at 4:09 pm
” … The moral socialism is in fact Drug Prohibition … ”
—-l
Are you in favour of any of the current anti-drug laws or do you feel that there should be no Drug Prohibition at all?
All these substances were legal over the counter pre 1914 before the Progressives thought they could improve America with Prohibitions.
“Addiction” explains nothing. My view is that “people in chronic pain chronically take pain relievers” – that would explain why so few get “addicted” compared to the numbers that try these drugs. And the pain? PTSD mostly (for which there is no current medical [chemical/biological] test). And the main cause of PTSD in America? Child abuse. Now PTSD has a genetic component. Only about 20% of Americans have the biology for long term PTSD. And of those only about 1/2 get it triggered. We see that in War Vets. About 20% to 25% of them in country return with long term PTSD. Must be a tough place.
Politically it will be a long time before we return to pre-1914 policies. But cannabis legalization is the first step along that road. And that will be done Federally by no later than 2025 with some where around 2020 the most likely date. Once that is done and we get a test for PTSD the rest of the prohibitions will fall. To regulation at first. It will take a long time and a lot more science to get over the fears that our media and government have promoted since 1900. But it will come. Someday.
BTW Law Enforcement Against Prohibition believes that ending all prohibition is a very good idea. You might like this video http://classicalvalues.com/2014/01/peter-christ-on-why-we-need-to-legalize-all-drugs/ where Peter Christ – a retired Police Captain from Syracuse, NY – makes the case as a LEAP speaker. It is kinda long at 37 minutes but I think well worth your time.
Re: It will take a long time and a lot more science to get over the fears that our media and government have promoted since 1900.
The media has been corrupt for a very long time. Thank The Maker for the ‘net.
M Simon says:
January 30, 2014 at 11:12 pm
” All these substances were legal over the counter pre 1914 before the Progressives thought they could improve America with Prohibitions. …”
—-l
Just to clarify – You feel that any citizen should be able to acquire, without hindrance or oversight, any substance classed as addictive, be it cannabis, cocaine, lsd or prozac?
I am assuming that under-age citizens are excluded from this concept, but correct me if I am wrong.
Damon Linker: A Mann-child?
Canman says:
January 30, 2014 at 11:09 pm
“If this is going to be a war of legal fees attrition, you have to wonder if the alarmists really believe all their whining about being up against a well funded machine.”
They probably do believe that. They see their task as bringing about (a sort of) utopia; and see the climate skeptics as the saboteurs that stop them from finishing their project. Why, they ask themselves, could the skeptics achieve this were it not for the fact that they are a well organized army with unlimited resources? Given that warmism has xxx billions in funding a year, the only explanation, in their minds, can be that skeptics must have even more funding.
They see ghosts.
I doubt that National Review is in trouble but if it was I’d chuck a few bucks in the fighting fund.
Remember, truth is a defense in a libel action. Much discovery needs to be done to determine that. Mann will have to start disclosing…..
$500k for what exactly? Filing a few briefs? Big whoop. Mann mentioned in the cg emails that he has some sugar daddy willing to harass pro bono. Until some law firm on the other side pries open their purse strings for the cause, this nonsense will continue. The Salem witch trials continued till the accusations started hitting too close to home. Same will happen here unless we find our own sugar daddy. If steyn loses, some lawyer should step up to represent Mcintyre pro bono vs Mann for libel. How expensive can it be to quote Mann vs steyn case law back at them? After Mcintyre, McKitrick. Then Ball. Maybe then, the idiots backing Mann will begin to understand what’s at stake here.
At http://www.steyonline.com, Steyn has said that he and NR have parted ways on the Mann suit and that he is alone in the fight. NR apparently did not see a possible win against Mann as justifying the cost and risk of defending the suit. In other words, a so-called “conservative” magazine caved. Not my kind of conservatives. Steyn is trying to raise money to continue the fight.
You are referring to the John Birch Society, are you?
As for communist infiltration to America, well. Furthermore, Operation Keelhaul was certainly a most disgusting deed.
negrum says: @ur momisugly January 31, 2014 at 12:13 am
Just to clarify – You feel that any citizen should be able to acquire, without hindrance or oversight, any substance classed as addictive, be it cannabis, cocaine, lsd or prozac?
I am assuming that under-age citizens are excluded from this concept, but correct me if I am wrong.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Any child can get any and all sorts of drugs from his/pusher playmate on the playground. There is nothing to keep those drugs from being adulterated or lethal except the pushers desire not to kill his customer base.
In fact schools are giving kids ‘Speed’ (aka Ritalin, Concerta, Adderall) and in some cases taking parents to court when they object. See: How Public Schools Coerce Parents Into Giving Mind-Altering Drugs To Their Children
…Safer (1999) has presented, although not published, data indicating that from the early to mid-1990s the rate of ADHD treatment (i.e., school-administered Ritalin) among white boys in Baltimore County elementary schools was over 15%…. Among elementary students, 17% of all students and 33% of white boys had been diagnosed with ADHD and the vast majority had been medicated for this condition at some time during the 1997-98 school year
So how does law enforcement handle the drug problem?
So tell me again why we are not making drugs legal and then TAXING them? Perhaps because it is much much more profitable to the people in government NOT to have drugs legal?
Let’s say the judge does reduce the $1 award to 0.97. Mann still wins. Mann wins if he wins nothing. The game is not what the award should or should not be. The game is about intimidation and harassment – the same as revealed in Climategate only more so. As Steyn said, Mann needs to lose very obviously and very publicly or he achieves his objective. Revealing himself as a full-time bully and activist helps the skeptic side, but it needs to be combined with the second-rate graph and an ego untethered to science in a public way to disarm this guy’s tactics and his pseudo-scientific creations of selective data.
Gail Combs says:
January 31, 2014 at 7:20 am
” … Any child can get any and all sorts of drugs from his/pusher playmate on the playground. …”
—-l
This is way off topic, so I will only make the following statement:
NOT in my community. Drug dealers are considered vultures who prey on others under the guise of offering a service. I consider it to be similar to owning somebody’s mind and draining them slowly until they are of no further use. I have dealt with too many addicted people to have any empathy for drug dealers or laws that assist them to deal. I agree that what doctors and schools prescribe should be monitored closely.
I would be willing to debate the matter privately or on a suitable thread.
Fortunately for Steyn, the truth is an absolute defense. Unfortunately for Steyn, modern liberals are tolerant of everything but the Truth and dissent.
Just for the record, the conspiracy in question is fact. David Rockefeller actually admitted it in his memoirs. Buckley was never a conservative.
Screw William F Buckley….he was a Skull and Bones CFR Bilderberg Group agent and as someone once noted…a CRYPTO FASCIST!!
: )