Sweden's Collapse (VIDEO)

I can't think of a more attractive person --- and I mean "attractive" as literally attracting people to her ideas with so much persuasive, logical, and common sense power --- than Katie Hopkins.

Here's she's interviewed by Mark Steyn at Fox News:

Rolling Stone Asks Why Justin Trudeau Can't Be President of the U.S.

The magazine's cover story reads, "Justin Trudeau: Canadian Prime Minister, Free World's Best Hope."

The problem: Of course, he's not. Canada isn't anywhere near the leader of the free world, Justin Trudeau or not.

Leftist are insane. More insane than ever.
See Twitchy, "Wow. Rolling Stone has a cover so bad even Chris Hayes calls it ‘unseemly’."

And here's Mark Steyn:

Stop Importing Islam (VIDEO)

From Mark Steyn, "At the Very Least, Stop Importing More of It."

Mark Steyn on 'The O'Reilly Factor' (VIDEO)

At great segment.

I miss Mark Steyn:

One-Year Anniversary of Charlie Hebdo Attacks

Well, it's been year since Charlie Hebdo, but just over two months since the Paris attacks. One would think France is a changed country at this point, but you can bet deadly political correctness is already creeping back in. More people will die in the Islamic jihad. It's only a matter of time.

Mark Steyn has more, "The Ghosts of Charlie Hebdo."

No pullout quote will do justice. Read it all at the link.

And buy Steyn's book, "Lights Out: Islam, Free Speech and the Twilight of the West."

Mark Steyn Explains Presidential Primary Politics

At Fox News:

I'm Reminded of Mark Steyn with All the Climate Change Hysteria and Hypocrisy this Week

I haven't heard much recently on the Mann vs. Steyn lawsuit, so I checked over at the dude's blog, and behold: "The Science is Settled!"

And check out his books, Climate Change: The Facts, and The Undocumented Mark Steyn.

Alton Nolen 'wasn’t just mildly Islamic in the nothing-to-do-with-terrorism sense, he was super-Islamic in the really-totally-no-terrorism-to-see-here sense...'

From Mark Steyn, "Winning Heads and Minds":

Colleen Hufford was born in 1960. Life is full of grim twists and cruel vicissitudes, but in mid-20th century America it would not have occurred to anyone that one needed to worry about going to work and being beheaded by a colleague. Yet that's what happened to Ms Hufford on Thursday: She turned up for her job at at the Vaughan Foods food processing plant in Moore, and Alton Alexander Nolen decapitated her.

Why would he do that? Well, as the initial reports were at pains to assure us, it's nothing to do with terrorism. That's true, in the sense that Mr Nolen is not a card-carrying member of an officially credentialed state-recognized terrorism-provider such as ISIS or al-Qaeda. It's true in the sense that he's not on any official US Department of Homeland Security terror watch list, because, under the geniuses running American national security, that honor is reserved for my fellow Hillsdale cruiser Steve Hayes. And, of course, it's also true in the sense that Mr Nolen is a recent convert to Islam and, as David Cameron and Barack Obama and many others are ever more eager to emphasize, terrorism is nothing to do with Islam. Mr Nolen had the Muslim greeting "As-salamu Alaikum" - "Peace be upon you" - tattooed upon his abdomen. And he'd tried, without success, to persuade his co-workers at Vaughan Foods to convert to Islam. So he wasn't just mildly Islamic in the nothing-to-do-with-terrorism sense, he was super-Islamic in the really-totally-no-terrorism-to-see-here sense.

So Colleen Hufford's death was, as Jim Hoft put it, just "a random workplace beheading". Indeed, many commenters at KOCO-TV seem more outraged by the mentioning of Mr Nolen's religion than by the beheading....

Judging from the various comments sections, many westerners are willing to live with a certain amount of decapitation rather than abandon the multiculti pieties. It is not a pleasant way to die, in part because it requires more expertise than you might think. A decade ago, a young lady in my employ emailed a backgrounder on the subject to me in my room at the Grand Hyatt in Amman the night before I set off on my motoring tour of Iraq. If you're lucky, your killer will insert the knife from the side, the sharp edge pointing to your front. One skilled thrust forward will cut the jugular, the carotid artery, the esophagus - and it will all be over in seconds. On the evidence of their social media videos, the ISIS boys are not that good: They go in from the front, blade facing backward, sawing back and forth for minutes on end. As I said in America Alone:

Writing about the collapse of nations such as Somalia, The Atlantic Monthly's Robert D Kaplan referred to the "citizens" of such "states" as "re-primitivized man". When lifelong Torontonians are hot for decapitation, when Yorkshiremen born and bred and into fish'n'chips and cricket and lousy English pop music self-detonate on the London Tube, it would seem that the phenomenon of "re-primitivized man" is being successfully exported around the planet.

More at Blazing Cat Fur, "‘SHARIA LAW IS COMING!!!!’ Oklahoma Beheader Celebrated Terrorists, Disparaged Non-Muslims On Facebook."

PREVIOUSLY: "Wait for It! Repsac3 on #OKBeheading: Attacking Islam Just Because the Suspect Tried to Convert Coworkers is Racist!!"

The Slow Death of Free Speech

From Mark Steyn, "The 'Safe Space' is Where Cultures Go to Die."

Linking his new essay at the Spectator UK, "How the Left, here and abroad, is trying to shut down debate — from Islam and Israel to global warming and gay marriage":

I heard a lot of that kind of talk during my battles with the Canadian ‘human rights’ commissions a few years ago: of course, we all believe in free speech, but it’s a question of how you ‘strike the balance’, where you ‘draw the line’… which all sounds terribly reasonable and Canadian, and apparently Australian, too. But in reality the point of free speech is for the stuff that’s over the line, and strikingly unbalanced. If free speech is only for polite persons of mild temperament within government-policed parameters, it isn’t free at all. So screw that.

But I don’t really think that many people these days are genuinely interested in ‘striking the balance’; they’ve drawn the line and they’re increasingly unashamed about which side of it they stand. What all the above stories have in common, whether nominally about Israel, gay marriage, climate change, Islam, or even freedom of the press, is that one side has cheerfully swapped that apocryphal Voltaire quote about disagreeing with what you say but defending to the death your right to say it for the pithier Ring Lardner line: ‘“Shut up,” he explained.’

A generation ago, progressive opinion at least felt obliged to pay lip service to the Voltaire shtick. These days, nobody’s asking you to defend yourself to the death: a mildly supportive retweet would do. But even that’s further than most of those in the academy, the arts, the media are prepared to go. As Erin Ching, a student at 60-grand-a-year Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, put it in her college newspaper the other day: ‘What really bothered me is the whole idea that at a liberal arts college we need to be hearing a diversity of opinion.’ Yeah, who needs that? There speaks the voice of a generation: celebrate diversity by enforcing conformity...

Oh pshaw!

What'a all this talk about crushing free speech?!! Ayaan Hirsi Ali can come to Brandeis and speak whenever she wants, lol!

F-king morons.

Mark Steyn Will Not Kiss Judicial Robes

While Steyn is not out as a contributor to National Review, he's clearly on the hook for the legal expenses he's incurred writing there.

Here's the update, which includes an admission by Steyn that he might need some help, "The Robe to Hell":

Two days after Judge Weisberg's ruling in the Mann vs Steyn case, the offers to chip in for a legal defense fund are still pouring in. I'm genuinely touched by the kindness and generosity of readers. As most of you know, I resisted such offers during my Canadian travails and suggested instead that anyone who wanted to show financial support should take out a subscription to Maclean's. But the scale of expenditures down here is so much greater I may have to break my rule and pass the hat. We'll make a decision in the next few days. In the meantime, if you've got a few bucks to toss my way, there's an autographed copy of my book on free speech with your name on it, or some other item from the SteynOnline store. That way we all win: I get enough funds to fight a full-strength defense; you get some great reading matter, or listening matter, or chest-hugging matter.

The other thing I've been tremendously moved by is the number of lawyers offering their services. I'm thinking this one through very carefully after what happened this last year, but I am poring over the various bits of legal advice. One thing that's not going to change, though, is my inclination to speak up when judges play fast and loose. As I said to Mother Jones:

The misplaced reverence for judges in America is perplexing to me. In my cultural tradition, a judge is just a bloke in a wig. He may be a smart bloke in a wig, or he may be an idiot in a wig. But the wig itself is not dispositive.

After many years in America, I have never felt so foreign as reading the pile-up of commentary from supposedly sophisticated persons tutting about how my "assailing" the judge will not be "helpful" to the case. This absurd prostration before the bench is one of the biggest structural defects in this country. Jim writes to Mark's Mailbox as follows:

I'm certainly on your side on this one but would recommend not criticizing the judiciary or previous judges ("incompetence of the previous judge", "an act of jurisprudential hygiene", "procedural bungling", etc.) while the case is pending. The judges all work together and don't like litigants to take potshots at their colleagues and procedures. For a judge to bristle against comments like that is human nature and while it may not overtly cause the judge to rule against you on motions, etc., it is likely to subconsciously influence the judge against you.

Focus on the actions/claims of the plaintiff, not on the judges. You've apparently been through litigation before so you might have a strategy for doing this, but from my vantage point it's a bad idea.

So it's "human nature" for a judge to go into a big queeny huff because one of his supplicants is doing insufficient robe-kissing? So much for judicial temperament. David Appel headlined his post on the case "Who Knew? Judges Don't Appreciate Insults From Defendants" - implying (without evidence) that Judge Weisberg's ruling is some sort of pique at my dismissing his colleague Combs-Greene as an incompetent. As Mr Appel's first commenter responds:

It's a far bigger insult to the judge for you to imply they are not impartial - letting some perceived insult influence the case - than anything Steyn has said.

Exactly. Or as Tyler Null tweets:

If that uppity-peasant theory is true, we're all f**ked.

Continue reading.

And visit Steyn's online store if you're like to pitch in that way a bit.

Mark Steyn Out at National Review — UPDATED! CORRECTION APPENDED

There's an update on the case of Michael Mann v. Mark Steyn, from Jonathan Adler, at Volokh, "Mann v. Steyn – Mann wins round two." (Via Instapundit, who worries about Steyn representing himself in court.)

Basically, there's a new judge, who's rejected Steyn's motion to dismiss and lifted a stay of discovery.

But what struck me is that National Review's apparently thrown Steyn under the bus, "Trial, and Error":

As readers may have deduced from my absence at National Review Online and my termination of our joint representation, there have been a few differences between me and the rest of the team. The lesson of the last year is that you win a free-speech case not by adopting a don't-rock-the-boat, keep-mum, narrow procedural posture but by fighting it in the open, in the bracing air and cleansing sunlight of truth and justice.

I don't read National Review all that often. Indeed, Steyn and VDH are the main reasons I visit the site. I posted on Steyn's December entry, "The Age of Intolerance." It turns out that he came under fire for it. While I recall reading Steyn's response, "Re-Education Camp," I hadn't noticed his dearth posting at National Review. Here's the last one, dated December 24th, "Mumbo-Jumbo for Beginners."

One of the things I've learned about blogging is that when the going gets rough, you're going to tough it out by your lonesome. That is to say, don't expect others to join you in your blog battles, and when they do, be sure to count your blessings and share your gratitude. It's lonely out here sometimes, a lesson Steyn learned sometime ago:

As to his [editor's] kind but belated and conditional pledge to join me on the barricades, I had enough of that level of passionate support up in Canada to know that, when the call to arms comes, there will always be some “derogatory” or “puerile” expression that it will be more important to tut over. So thanks for the offer, but I don’t think you’d be much use, would you?

Steyn's editor had problems with the former's humorous references to left's homosexual fascists as "fruits." Personally, I'm lol at that stuff, but the in-your-face style of freedom-to-blog advocacy often causes self-said allies to turn tail at moment's notice. People simply don't like confrontation, and they certainly don't want to lose followers on Twitter. The horrors!

More a V-Dare, "Mark Steyn Out at NATIONAL REVIEW?"

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg, who is editor at National Review Online, tweets:

.@irishspy @AmPowerBlog @DirectorBlue news to me. His column is in the current issue.
— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahNRO) January 25, 2014

And here it is, "Yes, We Can (Say That)."

CORRECTION: Just want to be on the record that Steyn is not "out" at National Review. He's not published at "The Corner" for nearly a month, but he's still a columnist for the magazine. Sorry for the mistake.

Major Hasan Is Honest About Himself, Unlike the Rest of Us...

From Mark Steyn, at National Review, "Know Thine Enemy":

On December 7, 1941, the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor was attacked. Three years, eight months, and eight days later, the Japanese surrendered. These days, America’s military moves at a more leisurely pace. On November 5, 2009, another U.S. base, Fort Hood, was attacked — by one man standing on a table, screaming “Allahu akbar!” and opening fire. Three years, nine months, and one day later, his court-martial finally got under way.

The intervening third-of-a-decade-and-more has apparently been taken up by such vital legal questions as the fullness of beard Major Hasan is permitted to sport in court. This is not a joke: See “Judge Ousted in Fort Hood Shooting Case amid Beard Debacle” (CBS News). Army regulations require soldiers to be clean-shaven. The judge, Colonel Gregory Gross, ruled Hasan’s beard in contempt, fined him $1,000, and said he would be forcibly shaved if he showed up that hirsute next time. At which point Hasan went to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, which ruled that Colonel Gross’s pogonophobia raised questions about his impartiality, and removed him. He’s the first judge in the history of American jurisprudence to be kicked off a trial because of a “beard debacle.” The new judge, Colonel Tara Osborn, agreed that Hasan’s beard was a violation of regulations, but “said she won’t hold it against him.”

No, wouldn't want to do that. It was only "workplace violence" you see...

Continue reading.

Mark Steyn on Breakdown in America

A great interview, with Michael Coren:

Obama's Act of Supremacy

Mark Steyn does it again with a fantastic essay, at National Review, "The Church of Obama":

Announcing his support for Commissar Sebelius’s edicts on contraception, sterilization, and pharmacological abortion, that noted theologian the Most Reverend Al Sharpton explained: “If we are going to have a separation of church and state, we’re going to have a separation of church and state.”

Thanks for clarifying that. The church model the young American state wished to separate from was that of the British monarch, who remains to this day supreme governor of the Church of England. This convenient arrangement dates from the 1534 Act of Supremacy. The title of the law gives you the general upshot, but, just in case you’re a bit slow on the uptake, the text proclaims “the King’s Majesty justly and rightfully is and ought to be the supreme head of the Church of England.” That’s to say, the sovereign is “the only supreme head on earth of the Church” and he shall enjoy “all honors, dignities, pre-eminences, jurisdictions, privileges, authorities, immunities, profits, and commodities to the said dignity,” not to mention His Majesty “shall have full power and authority from time to time to visit, repress, redress, record, order, correct, restrain, and amend all such errors, heresies, abuses, offenses, contempts, and enormities, whatsoever they be.”

Welcome to Obamacare.

The president of the United States has decided to go Henry VIII on the Church’s medieval ass. Whatever religious institutions might profess to believe in the matter of “women’s health,” their pre-eminences, jurisdictions, privileges, authorities, and immunities are now subordinate to a one-and-only supreme head on earth determined to repress, redress, restrain, and amend their heresies. One wouldn’t wish to overextend the analogy: For one thing, the Catholic Church in America has been pathetically accommodating of Beltway bigwigs’ ravenous appetite for marital annulments in a way that Pope Clement VII was disinclined to be vis-à-vis the English king and Catherine of Aragon. But where’d all the pandering get them? In essence President Obama has embarked on the same usurpation of church authority as Henry VIII: As his Friday morning faux-compromise confirms, the continued existence of a “faith-based institution” depends on submission to the doctrinal supremacy of the state.

Continue reading.

And at Blazing Cat Fur, "Mark Steyn on The New Yorker's Hatred of Catholics, and Barack Obama Becoming Henry VIII."

Michael Coren Interviews Mark Steyn

Via Blazing Cat Fur:

'Diaper Need Awareness Day'

You gotta read this piece from Mark Steyn, at National Review, "Adult Babies: There’s almost nothing you can’t get government to pay for."

Mark Steyn on BBC

Steyn's always a treasure, even when his host is without a freakin' clue (via Blazing and Pundette):

Ezra Levant and Kathy Shaidle on Mark Steyn's 'After America'

At Blazing Cat Fur:

And more at Pundette's, "Steyn Mania!"