73 Comments

While I agree with Alex's comments about the verdicts, I believe the real issue is liberal judges who ignore the law and use their political beliefs to give plaintiffs what they seek. It happened with Trump and anyone else who is not a flaming liberal. The Carroll verdict is outrageous and ludicrous at the same time. There was zero evidence that Trump raped this woman. For those of you not keeping up this is a dem/liberal conspiracy against conservatives going on around the country. I wouldn't have said this 5-6 years ago but it is clear to me now. The father who was arrested last night at SOTU is a prime example and what happened to Alex with the Whitehouse is even more egregious. I am not a fan of American voters despite what TV & Movies say they are not the sharpest tools in the shed unfortunately. The beat goes on......

Expand full comment

Liberal judges and jury pools, it’s all about where the trial is. The Blob wants all the cases to be in DC, so they will try to federalize everything. But you don’t see any of these crazy verdicts coming out of Amarillo, TX or Pensacola, FL.

Expand full comment

exactly. the JURY ordered the damages. A DC jury is not the same as a Casper WY jury.

Expand full comment

I agree, but let's not forget the media, which largely shapes what the average juror knows.

Expand full comment

You are exactly right about the judges. Alex needs to understand that this is the difference between originalists (Scalia et al) and “wise Latinas” (Eg racists) and others who don’t know what a woman is. When you get judges and justices who believe the constitution is a “living document” you don’t have the rule of law, you have rule of whim. And a country can’t last long that way. This is the goal of the left: no law where every election is a fight to the death because a majority can then do anything to a disfavored minority such as the rich or as the democrat slave owners did to blacks.

By the way, I can’t wait to see the suits against the “science”, “genetics”, “biology” and reality deniers who are trans. I’m sure they’ll go just as far as this. /sarcasm

Expand full comment

As a retired attorney, nothing scares me so much as the left’s use of lawfare in court’s populated by fully indoctrinated leftist judges that can and will rationalize their way around previously clear laws to accumulate power, suppress dissent and attack their skeptics, critics and opposing opinions into a silent oppressed class ground under neo-Nazi leftist boots. Our judiciary is becoming more and more an instrument of the left rather than an objective arbiter of disputes.

Expand full comment

We must remember that 'OUR' representstives = cheap-corrupt-clows; are complicit of current judiciary and moral corruption. WE'VE GOT WORK TO DO. VOTE and get involved...OR meekly perish. Thank you Alex.

Expand full comment

So perfectly stated. I too am retired attorney and I believe that nothing threatens civil order more than lawfare. No other issue is as likely to lead to violence than this.

Expand full comment

As planned. No accident here.

Expand full comment

our modern legal system could have you fined a gorillion dollars depending on your voter registration in that state, so the only sensible solution i can see is to bring back dueling

Expand full comment

"Government is a gang, but not merely as meritorious as a private gang because it claims legal legitimacy. It pillages and uses violence but under the cover of law, and seeks legitimacy not through competition but through the myth of the social contract."

- Jeffrey Tucker

Expand full comment

St Augustine had a perceptive take on it:

"Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on."

"The City of God," https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/45304/pg45304-images.html

Expand full comment

Ooh good one. For my files

Expand full comment

Ryan, you might also like 🙂 the end of that paragraph:

'...Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, "What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor."'

Expand full comment

As Steyn repeatedly says, “….in the dirty, stinking, rotten, corrupt US Justice system….”

Expand full comment

Ha, yeah, the US Justice system had a good run, but it's not looking so hot now

we really should change it up & start arbitrating disputes with some other method like staring contests for a while & see if that's an improvement

Expand full comment

Voting Trump yet, Alex!?!??

Expand full comment

AFAIK he's still voting for biden, but at least he's not throwing his vote away on a 3rd party candidate

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/alex-berenson-vote-democrat-trump-2024-gop-get-destroyed-nominee

Expand full comment

I've been waiting to see his latest on this as it will be time for me to drop my subscription if all his bally-hooing turns out to be, well, just a bunch of bally=hooing.. Complain, be enraged, and keep voting for the people with a D by their name. Typical liberal insanity.

Expand full comment

yeah, i get this. i'm a subscriber too & i took a long break from this site when this came out.

i try to strike the balance between not supporting commies with my hard-earned $, but also, you know, supporting genuinely good people whose content I enjoy but I guess have some sort of mental disability which keeps them voting D

Expand full comment

Agree---although after last night's rant filled war on half the country, I just can't financially support someone who would knowingly place the dementia patient in the seat of world power for four more years. I've had it...........

Expand full comment

that hate of the union last night was rough!

i haven't had an old man yell at me for 90 minutes straight like that since that time i asked my grandpa if he could take me to the mall so i could get my ear pierced

Expand full comment

Lolol

Expand full comment

I didn’t watch because just the sight of him fills me with disgust. Every word that comes out of his mouth is a lie…a demonic miracle. When he was inaugurated I shouted at the TV that he was “evil”. Since evil can mean the absence of good, I should have been more precise. Biden is wicked!

Expand full comment

D Thomas - “Hate of the Union” was brilliant. Perfect.

Expand full comment

To me, it should be impossible for Alex Berenson to vote Biden. The main reason is that the Biden Admin and the Dems in general (in the Admin or in Government) and outside Gov (eg, academia) we so instrumental in the Censorship Industrial Complex. And that is so evil.

Also, I think Alex is a liberal. But not a Woke / Progressive (ie, neo-Marxist). Biden and the Dem party are now captured by the Woke / Progressives.

Third, and I am less sure on this (maybe someone will reply and remind me), but. I think Alex favors Israel. (I am not Jewish, and I do, esp after the unspeakable atrocities of Oct 7.)

Biden has been a Schizo “friend” of Israel. Again, Biden is captured by the Woke / Progessives, and so he cannot really help Israel the way he should. What will Trump do? I think he will help Israel quickly and decisively, and there will be peace because the bad guys will stand down.

Expand full comment

It's inconceivable that a punitive damages award so wildly disproportionate to the (alleged) actual damages could stand. The US Supreme Court has held such vastly overinflated punitive damages violate due process. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_of_North_America,_Inc._v._Gore.

But the chilling effect is inevitable. You can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride (in the wrong jurisdiction, like DC).

Expand full comment

Me: They're trying to intimidate me!

Government:

No one's trying to intimidate you cried a bureaucrat

Me:

Then why are you telling me "you sure have a nice house there...we'd hate to see you lose it?" I asked.

Government:

We're not intimidating you...we're intimidating everyone with lawfare.

Me:

Why?

Government:

Because we can. What difference does that make?... nobody else is complaining about our intimidation?

Expand full comment

Okay, so let's debate the science. I believe that there are a whole host of climate scientists who disagree with the so-called consensus of 98% of scientists. And--could the label of "skeptic" or "flat earther" be defamation as well? Didn't Biden called anybody who disagreed with the "science" neanderthals. Sounds scandalous to me. Science is not a classroom's show of hands, or as Einstein once replied to the claim 100 scientists do not agree with your theory of relativity, "one will do."

Expand full comment

Do not apologize for long, detailed articles.

This period in time is as scary a time I have seen in my 63 years. People have lost their tethering to reality and logic. That logic is considered right wing or worse is as frightening as anything could be.

It is all part and parcel of same anti-logic that has us changing language to normalize what has never been normal.

I do not know how we get out of this era of alternate realty but, first we need to slow the speed at which we are spiraling.

We are like a patient whose heart has stop beating and we need to be shocked several times just to get a pulse. Once the pulse has been established we need to work on bringing ourselves back to full health.

While many of us have received our fair share of shocks, there remains a disproportionate amount of powerful voices keeping too many in their Manson like cult grip.

I appreciate your continued dedication to trying to guide as many of these Squeaky Fromms back to normal society.

Expand full comment

Does this mean we can sue Biden for his SOTU speech last night defaming Trump voters?

Expand full comment

A well-written article, Alex. You deftly summarized nearly two weeks of court battle in two articles.

I am beginning to wonder if we're in error calling the study of climate a science. I thought scientific study relied on being able to prove or disprove a hypothesis or theory. As far as I know, climate predictions have been inaccurate for decades. The climate models seem to be a waste of computer time. Yet the climate alarmists persist in their doom and gloom. They are causing some serious economic expense and soon, serious deprivation. Bastards!

Expand full comment

anything with "Science" in it is not an actual science

goes for computer science, social science, and most especially environmental science

it's good branding, but ultimately you can't take your hot dog for a walk on a leash just because it has "dog" in the name.

i mean, i guess you could but i'd take you just as seriously as i take mann trying to predict the future

Expand full comment

Climate alarmists persist because their self-esteem relies on controlling other people—masses of people.

Expand full comment

Their practice essentially fills the void vacated by religion.

They have their own saints, sinners, high preists, prophets, indulgences, and ceremonies.

I would say that global warming organizations might as well get tax exempt status, but I think some of them already do.

Expand full comment

Despite his claim of being exonerated, Michael Mann did indeed commit fraud. Not scientific fraud, because what Michael Mann does is not science. Michael Mann and other climate "scientists" actually practice statistics, using mathematical models to try and establish correlation between atmospheric CO2 and global temperatures. Epidemiologists do something similar, also not science.

At any rate, the fig leaf that Michael Mann hides behind is that his techniques are accepted as standard in statistics. But just because a technique is standard does not make its every application appropriate. Michael Mann's application of his statistical techniques to his data set were wholly inappropriate and designed to hide what the raw data were showing. That is fraud. Don't take it from me, take it from this guy.

https://youtu.be/8BQpciw8suk

Expand full comment

FREEDOM vs Tyranny. Choose a side. Its not RED vs BLUE, nor is there any gray area now. What side do you choose?

Expand full comment

Here's a critique of Michael Mann's methodology that produced the "hockey stick", by one of the analysts who first brought it to light:

"Mann’s PC step was programmed incorrectly and created two weird effects in how it handled data.

First, if the underlying data set was mostly random noise, but there was one hockey stick-shaped

series in the group, the flawed PC step would isolate it out, generate a hockey stick composite and

call it the dominant pattern, even if it was just a minor background fluctuation. Second, if the

underlying data consisted of a particular type of randomness called “red noise”—basically

randomness operating on a slow, cyclical scale—then the PC step would rearrange the red noise

into a hockey stick-shaped composite. Either way, the resulting composites would have a hockey

stick shape for the LS step to glom onto and produce the famous final result."

Full details at https://www.rossmckitrick.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/hockey-stick-retrospective.pdf

Expand full comment

Climate zealots, particularly the wealthy, elitist variety, seek to make their mark on the world in order to maintain their wealth, their position of authority, and their self-esteem. I would guess that most of them are pagans. Their “religion” is climate change. It substitutes for God, who they abhor because they cannot compete with Him. Many of them, like Mann, will go to any length to justify their viewpoint. They cannot allow their viewpoint to be threatened. Otherwise, their power and self-esteem crumble.

As an aside, I believe God put oil and natural gas in the Earth for a good reason: for humans to discover it and use it to our advantage to make the world a better place. Of course we should take care to use it wisely, efficiently, and in the cleanest way possible. But we should use it!

Expand full comment

Mann might have won but everyone looses.

Is there no appeals process?

Expand full comment

there is. that judgement will get tossed on appeal.

Expand full comment

We all hope. I despair...something I seldom did once upon a time.

Expand full comment

If they wish to appeal to higher courts, they will likely get the ruling reversed (but still with a major loss of $$ - the penalty is the process).

Expand full comment