The SS National Review: Thursday Idiocy
Tbogg: We were dead before the ship ever sank: "I have written previously about the very distressing, by which I mean ‘high-larious’, legal woes of National Review which is being sued for letting contributor Mark Steyn defame climate scientist Michael Mann for comparing him to child molester Jerry Sandusky on the internet pages of NRO....
Rand Simberg... attacking Mann’s research and, trying to be topical, referenced the fact that he teaches at Penn State as the basis for an oh-so-clever PSU Michael Mann = Penn State football coach/kid rapist Jerry Sandusky analogy.... Mark Steyn... LOL’d and repeated.... When Mann protested, CEI backed down and deleted the offending lines but not the rest of the post.... National Review Editor Rich Lowry... under the impression that he was William F. Badass Jr.... told Mann and his attorneys to pound sand.
If Mann sues us, the materials we will need to mount a full defense will be extremely wide-ranging. So if he files a complaint, we will be doing more than fighting a nuisance lawsuit; we will be embarking on a journalistic project of great interest to us and our readers.[...] My advice to poor Michael is to go away and bother someone else. If he doesn’t have the good sense to do that, we look forward to teaching him a thing or two about the law and about how free debate works in a free country...
Mann didn’t listen to Rich Lowry, and... sued... forcing Lowry to beg for money... because... National Review... couldn’t cover the check Lowry’s dumbass wrote:
As many of you know, National Review is not a non-profit — we are just not profitable. A lawsuit is not something we can fund with money we don’t have. Of course, we’ll do whatever we have to do to find ourselves victorious in court and Professor Mann thoroughly defeated, as he so richly deserves to be. Meanwhile, we have to hire attorneys, which ain’t cheap....
Flush with reader cash the NRO team has so far gone 0 fer 2 with the judges and now their ship is beginning to sink and the crew is jumping overboard because Mark Steyn attacked Judge Natalia Combs Greene. According to Mother Jones:
Earlier this month, Steptoe & Johnson, the law firm representing National Review and its writer, Mark Steyn, withdrew as Steyn’s counsel. According to two sources with inside knowledge, it also plans to drop National Review as a client. The lawyers’ withdrawal came shortly after Steyn... publicly attacked the former judge in the case, Natalia Combs Greene....
Steyn maintains it was his decision to part ways with his attorneys. Yeah. the old 'you can’t break up with me, I already broke up with you, so there!' line.
So, how now, Mark Steyn?... Wednesday’s ruling affirms the thrust of Combs Greene’s order... also concludes that 'a reasonable jury is likely to find the statement that Dr. Mann "molested and tortured data" was false, and published with knowledge of its falsity or reckless disregard for whether it was false or not.' Steyn... still has no legal representation.... And since his Christmas Eve diatribe, the conservative pundit—who had been writing near-daily posts for National Review Online—hasn’t written a single item.... The NRO ship has run aground, the attorneys have bailed, and the cannibal rats of the Good Ship National Review have turned on each other.
