Moonshiners of Dawson County

Once a year in the cool fall weather, Dawsonville, Georgia, hosts the Mountain Moonshine Festival.  Since moonshine is illegal, however, the main feature is a car show -- especially restored old classic moonshiner rods that they used to use to run the shine down into Atlanta, and elsewhere.

However!  Lo and behold, somebody actually got a permit out of the state of Georgia to make moonshine for lawful sale.  The old times are here again, except for the illegal hotrodding.

Dawsonville Moonshine Distillery joins Milledgeville –based Georgia Distilling Co. as two of only a handful of “legal” moonshine producers in the country.

“We are testing equipment now that we have the green light from the state,” Dawsonville Moonshine owner Cheryl Wood told The Gainesville Times. “We will be in production in August.”

The distillery will rely on a 250-gallon copper still, two 415-gallon stainless steel mash tanks, a 1,050-gallon stainless steel mash tank and an ample supply of grains and sugar. It will sell its bottled corn liquor to a wholesaler, which will then supply it to a distributor, who will sell the product to retailers.

The company wants the liquor ready for the 45th annual Mountain Moonshine Festival on Oct. 26-28, according to the Times.

Sounds like a good time. In spite of the 90-proof high test, it'll be a family-friendly event. The high school marching band will come play, and there will be a lot of old cars and folks who are really proud of all the work they've put into making them shiny again.

You may remember this old movie, starring Robert Mitchum. See 11:11 and following.

Grim Cooking: Frijoles Charros

You may remember my preference for outdoor cooking in the summertime, to keep the heat out of the house.  This is never wiser than when cooking with dried beans, which need hours of soaking and then hours of heat to maximize their softeness.

Frijoles Charros is such a recipe.  There are a number of variations on it, but it follows the old frontier model of dried beans and salt pork as its base.  You saw plenty of versions of this north of the border as well.  "Pork and beans" is an easy staple, and the base ingredients don't require refrigeration.

Here's a fancy version of the recipe, involving chorizo sausage. The version you see being cooked here omits the sausage and bacon in favor of more sugar-cured salt pork, because that's just what I happen to have on hand today.  We're using home grown peppers and tomatoes.  The oregano came from our herb garden.

The key to cooking beans over the fire is to revisit it regularly to stir the pot and add fresh, cold water.  When the beans are tender, it should be ready to go.

Originalism and the IRS

Apparently the IRS doesn't think any more of altering the law by executive fiat than the Labor Department. It creates an interesting question.

A July 18 report by the Cato Institute’s Michael Cannon has revealed a critical flaw in the Obamacare law that could ultimately prove to be its undoing. Namely, if states refuse to set up an insurance exchange under the law, the federal government lacks authorization to dispense some $800 billion in subsidies through a federally operated exchange.

This is important because, coupled with states’ option to implement the Medicaid expansion or not, it appears the key player in defunding Obamacare going forward will be the states. The Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare found that the law’s mandatory Medicaid expansion was unconstitutional, effectively giving states an opt-out provision that many now plan to take.

In short, if states refuse to expand Medicaid, and there is no funding for the insurance exchanges, Obamacare will effectively be defunded.

To deal with this flaw, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on May 24 simply issued a regulation effectively rewriting the law that would allow the federal government to fund the exchanges.

On the one hand, clearly the Democrats who passed the ACA never even thought of the possibility that the States would simply refuse to play along. Congressional intent -- at least Democratic Congressional intent, since no Republicans voted for the ACA -- was that these exchanges should exist, and be government-funded. It's easy to imagine that, if they had realized the States might not play along, the Democratic Congress who passed the ACA would have included authority for the Federal government to do it instead.

The problem is, the law doesn't say that the Federal government can do it. There's no authority in the statute, and the Congress that approved the ACA doesn't exist any more. It was explicitly rejected by the People in 2010's landslide elections. The current Congress wouldn't approve this change to the law.

So... is the IRS doing the right thing, following the original Congress' apparent intent by revising the law on the fly in a way that older Congress would have approved? Or is it violating the separation of powers by not deferring the legislative question to the current Congress, or to the next one?

Runoffs & A Landslide

Looks like the Mighty 9th is going to a runoff. It's a shame we can't send them both to Congress, really. Dan Collins is endorsed by Zell Miller, and an old mountain friend of the family with a good legislative history. Martha(!) is a conservative firebrand. It almost doesn't matter which one wins: Collins has more actual experience on the job, but Martha(!) is a committed TEA Party activist.

Meanwhile, back in my old ancestral home of Forsyth County, the sheriff looks like he'll have to fight his re-election in a runoff too. You want to know how hard it is to boot out an incumbent sheriff in the Great State of Georgia? This hard:

In that heated race, Paxton seeks to overcome a January incident in which deputies and firefighters found the married sheriff unconscious in the doorway of the home of a female friend who told authorities the sheriff had been drinking. The sheriff denied being drunk.

Used to be even the District Attorneys in Georgia referred to the sheriffs as "the Dixie Mafia." It's a surprisingly powerful office. Our incumbent looks to have been re-elected too, without a runoff, though in a closely-fought election. That's to the good, from my perspective. He's a former Marine, keeps his word, and also he keeps his resources concentrated in the urban parts of the county. We don't see them out here, and that suits me fine.

No runoff for T-SPLOST. The tax increase died in a bloodbath.

Cynic, Justified:

The meat-axe budgetary process called "sequestration" will disproportionately target Defense spending, mandating the loss of untold thousands of jobs starting in January of next year. Many of these will be jobs in private industry that support the Department of Defense, but many more will be actual government jobs.

So I wasn't surprised to see the headline, as Drudge put it, "White House scrambles to prevent defense cut pinkslips before election." I assumed that this meant the White House was trying to pressure key Democratic leadership to do something about the sequestration issue before the upcoming deadline, which is the end of this fiscal year.

I have to admit to having been shocked by their actual tactic.

Obama's Labor Department on Monday issued "guidance" to the states, telling them that a federal law requiring advance notice of mass layoffs does not apply to the layoffs that may occur in January as a result of automatic budget cuts known as "sequestration."

I had thought I was getting dangerously cynical, but in all honesty I would never have guessed they'd stoop to this. It's not that we're going to scramble to save your job; we're just going to scramble to make sure you don't find out you'll be fired until after the election. And we're not going to scramble to change the law that requires the notification, which we don't have the votes to do; we'll just issue "guidance" that the law contains an unstated exception.

What happens if a corporation or a contractor decides to issue notifications anyway, in compliance with the actual law? After this, I'd have to guess that they will be punished in some way. Perhaps they'll find it hard to get future contracts; perhaps instructions will go out that they be first on the chopping block.

I had hoped to discover that I was being too pessimistic about the health of our institutions. Clearly the opposite was true. We'll have to adjust elevation and windage, I guess: down and left.

Freedom, guns, and butter

Steyn is irresistible this week:

Americans, so zealous in defense of their liberties when it comes to guns, are cheese-surrendering eating-monkeys when it comes to dairy products.  On the roads, on the cheese board, in health care, in banking privacy, and in a zillion other areas of life, many Europeans now have more freedom than Americans. 

For the record, I'm consistent in these matters — I want it all:  assault weapons and unpasteurized Camembert, guns and butter.  Certainly, cheese makes a poor attitudinal rallying cry:  "I'm proud to be a Frenchman, where at least I know my Brie!"

Election Day

The biggest issue on the ballot today is the T-SPLOST, which remains a very tight contest down to the wire.

If you like me live in the 9th Congressional District, though, you're electing a Congressman today. There's no way that district is going to vote for the winner of the Democratic primary, so the winner of today's Republican contest will be the victor in November as well.

This is one of the hot TEA Party races this year, too. The favorite of the Republican establishment is facing an insurgent campaign from one Martha Zoller, who apparently is a "radio talk show host, conservative swashbuckler, and Tea Party favorite."

I was initially suspicious of Ms. Zoller based on her advertising campaign, which made billboards that read just "Martha!" That kind of thing smacks of the cult of personality, although Hillary(!) did it too, and nobody ever mistook her for a charismatic. I voted for her in the Democratic Primary in 2008, and I'm only sorry she didn't win it.

It's an interesting race for another reason, which is that the counties voting today aren't necessarily the counties that the new Representative will represent. By the same token, many of the voters in today's 9th will actually be represented by the winner of the 10th district contest, in which they have no say today.

That's a strange way to do business.

As green as you can afford to be

Walter Russell Mead on environmentalism as a luxury good:

An age of energy shortages and high prices translates into an age of radical food and economic insecurity for billions of people.  Those billions of hungry, frightened, angry people won’t fold their hands and meditate on the ineffable wonders of Gaia and her mystic web of life as they pass peacefully away.  Nor will they vote George Monbiot and Bill McKibben into power.  They will butcher every panda in the zoo before they see their children starve, they will torch every forest on earth before they freeze to death, and the cheaper and the meaner their lives are, the less energy or thought they will spare to the perishing world around them. 

But, thanks to shale and other unconventional energy sources, that isn’t where we are headed.  We are heading into a world in which energy is abundant and horizons are open even as humanity’s grasp of science and technology grows more secure.  A world where more and more basic human needs are met is a world that has time to think about other goals and the money to spend on them.

And, as he points out, greens should be glad Gaia in her ineffable wisdom put the oil share here instead of in, say, Nigeria or North Korea.

H/t Ace.

Born to hunt

Despite my professional sympathy, this is a chilling insight into the uncompromising fierceness of the scariest fish:

Sand tiger foetuses ‘eat each other in utero, acting out the harshest form of sibling rivalry imaginable’.  Only two babies emerge, one from each of the mother shark’s uteruses:  the survivors have eaten everything else.  ‘A female sand tiger gives birth to a baby that’s already a metre long and an experienced killer,’ . . . .

A new book, Demon Fish, receives an approving review from Theo Tait in the London Review of Books.  Tait muses over our disproportionate reaction to the shark danger:

Even in the US, a global hotspot, you are forty times more likely to be hospitalised by a Christmas tree ornament than by a shark.  Meanwhile, to supply the shark fin soup trade alone, an estimated 73 million sharks are killed each year.  Many shark populations have declined by 70 per cent or more in the last thirty years.

Sure, tell that to my amygdala.  As the reviewer concedes, they're down there below the surface, and they eat us alive.  My amygdala doesn't find Christmas ornaments daunting in the least.  No one's going to make a fortune directing a blockbuster movie about people that stab themselves with glass icicles, or whatever it is they do to put themselves into hospitals at Yuletide (sounds like there's an untold story there).

The Reading Summer Dance

From the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, year 871:

A.D. 871. This year came the army to Reading in Wessex; and in
the course of three nights after rode two earls up, who were met
by Alderman Ethelwulf at Englefield; where he fought with them,
and obtained the victory. There one of them was slain, whose
name was Sidrac. About four nights after this, King Ethered and
Alfred his brother led their main army to Reading, where they
fought with the enemy; and there was much slaughter on either
hand, Alderman Ethelwulf being among the skain; but the Danes
kept possession of the field. And about four nights after this,
King Ethered and Alfred his brother fought with all the army on
Ashdown, and the Danes were overcome. They had two heathen
kings, Bagsac and Healfden, and many earls; and they were in two
divisions; in one of which were Bagsac and Healfden, the heathen
kings, and in the other were the earls. King Ethered therefore
fought with the troops of the kings, and there was King Bagsac
slain; and Alfred his brother fought with the troops of the
earls, and there were slain Earl Sidrac the elder, Earl Sidrac
the younger, Earl Osbern, Earl Frene, and Earl Harold. 

They put both the troops to flight; there were many thousands of the
slain, and they continued fighting till night. Within a
fortnight of this, King Ethered and Alfred his brother fought
with the army at Basing; and there the Danes had the victory.
About two months after this, King Ethered and Alfred his brother
fought with the army at Marden. They were in two divisions; and
they put them both to flight, enjoying the victory for some time
during the day; and there was much slaughter on either hand; but
the Danes became masters of the field; and there was slain Bishop
Heahmund, with many other good men. After this fight came a vast
army in the summer to Reading. And after the Easter of this year
died King Ethered. He reigned five years, and his body lies at
Winburn-minster. Then Alfred, his brother, the son of Ethelwulf,
took to the kingdom of Wessex. And within a month of this, King
Alfred fought against all the Army with a small force at Wilton,
and long pursued them during the day; but the Danes got
possession of the field. This year were nine general battles
fought with the army in the kingdom south of the Thames; besides
those skirmishes, in which Alfred the king's brother, and every
single alderman, and the thanes of the king, oft rode against
them; which were accounted nothing. This year also were slain
nine earls, and one king; and the same year the West-Saxons made
peace with the army.

Since Tex Wants to Talk Fashion...

...how would you like to learn about bras from the 1400s? Believe it or not, this represents a serious revision of our understanding of historic costume.

In an interview with Associated Press, Beatrix Nutz, the lead archaeologist for the find, said, “We didn’t believe it ourselves,” she said in a telephone call from the Tyrolean city of Innsbruck. “From what we knew, there was no such thing as bra-like garments in the 15th century.”

Up to now there was nothing to indicate the existence of bras with clearly visible cups before the 19th century. Medieval written sources are rather vague on the topic of female breast support....

Doubtless they were discreet. Even in my lifetime, we used to refer to these things as "unmentionables."

Mustard Seeds

Some years ago, the king of Thailand ordered that his subjects make lots of origami doves. These doves, symbols of peace, were to be airdropped into the southern portion of Thailand, a place called Pattani after an older, Islamic kingdom.

Fifty Thai aircraft distributed one hundred and twenty million paper doves, in an attempt to demonstrate good will to the people of that restive province.

Did it work? Of course it did not. The local insurgents passed a rumor that the doves were coated with contact poison, and that it was all a plot to kill off the Muslim population. Whether or not the local peasantry believed the rumors, peace still has not come to Southern Thailand.

Yet we can admire the spirit of the thing, even if in practical fact it did not work. It was a nice try, a fine and a romantic deed. Perhaps a few of those doves fell on a heart ready to receive the message; perhaps someday we may yet see a wild crop grow out of that good soil.

I feel much the same way about the Swedes who recently piloted a single small plane into the forbidden airspace of Belarus, and air-dropped teddy bears on parachutes with messages of freedom. (Thanks to Tom for passing this one along).

The stiff hand of tyranny is not so easily moved, but it was a bold and romantic gesture. Perhaps a few of the messages will resonate. Perhaps we may yet see a crop grow out of the rare seed that fell on good ground.

Distribution

Not quite in time for its 100th anniversary, the Panama Canal is undergoing a widening project that may generate a cascade of changes for American ports and distribution systems.  Higher fuels costs are pushing shippers to use larger, slower vessels.  Access to the canal would make the trip to East Coast or Gulf Coast ports only about two weeks slower than delivery to the West Coast, and slightly cheaper; what's more, it avoids the increasing problems of congestion in West Coast ports.  Norfolk, Virginia, already can accommodate 50-foot drafts.  Charleston and Savannah have plans in place for deeper-water ports.  All these southeastern ports have some cost advantages over New York, whose sky-high real estate costs require costly drayage to send goods to Pennsylvania or New Jersey for storage before ultimate transport.  The Gulf Coast, I'm afraid, is bringing up the rear, but there are possibilities here as well.

When I was a kid in school, they were always trying to teach us about distribution systems, but I never could understand how anyone could be interested.  I suppose I thought everything magically appeared where people needed to use it.  Now the process fascinates me:  all that intricate balancing of supply and demand, speed and cost, so vulnerable to disruption and so ready to repair itself if allowed.  I'd love a chance to pick the brain of the supply analyst who's quoted at length in the linked article; he seems to have a birds-eye view.

H/t Photon Courier.

The great escape

C.S. Lewis on how unnatural it is to be a gentle hero:

The knight is . . . not a compromise or happy mean between ferocity and meekness; he is fierce to the nth and meek to the nth. . . . 

The medieval ideal brought together two things which have no natural tendency to gravitate towards one another.  It brought them together for that very reason. It taught humility and forbearance to the great warrior because everyone knew by experience how much he usually needed that lesson.  It demanded valour of the urbane and modest man because everyone knew that he was as likely as not to be a milksop. . . . 

If we cannot produce Launcelots, humanity falls into two sections -- those who can deal in blood and iron but cannot be "meek in hall", and those who are "meek in hall" but useless in battle -- for the third class, who are both brutal in peace and cowardly in war, need not here be discussed.  When this disassociation of the two halves of Launcelot occurs, history becomes a horribly simple affair.  The ancient history of the Near East is like that.  Hardy barbarians swarm down from their highlands and obliterate a civilization.  Then they become civilized themselves and go soft.  Then a new wave of barbarians comes down and obliterates them. . . . 

The ideal embodied in Launcelot is "escapism" in a sense never dreamed of by those who use that word; it offers the only possible escape from a world divided between wolves who do not understand, and sheep who cannot defend, the things which make life desirable.

~ Present Concerns, "The Necessity of Chivalry" (1st published in Time and Tide, Aug. 1940).

Fly Abatement

This is a fantastic idea. There are always flies around a horse farm, and fly abatement is one of the things we spend a fair amount of time (and some money) dealing with. It's necessary, but never fun... until now.

Manolo loves the shoes

I wear the same pair of shoes 365 days a year, but it doesn't prevent my enjoying Manolo's Shoe Blog.  What could be more charming than elegant, expensive shoes that someone else buys and wears for my entertainment?  Today The Manolo gives thoughtful advice to a reader who wishes to spiff up her husband:

The Manolo frequently gets the plaintive missives from the women who wish to restyle their men folk into something more put-together, something less sloppy, rustic, disastrous, and/or menacing.   “Manolo,” they frequently cry out, “my husband dresses as if he were Larry the Cable Guy’s younger, messier brother.  Please help.”

This is not a problem I encounter. If anything my husband probably is shaking his own head in forlorn sympathy.  The Manolo suggests discrete gifts and praise for the significant other, but personally, I rather like a man who is sloppy, rustic, disastrous, and/or menacing.  I distantly admire one who is well put-together, but as a kind of pet:  someone I'd want to pair with one of the women who would wear those fabulous shoes.  We would watch them gambol in the yard, perhaps put on dance music for them.

The Manolo also showcases Helen Mirren this week, a stylish, intelligent actress I always enjoy watching at work.  I just borrowed a copy of "The Queen" from a friend and found it a first-rate production with a fine screenplay.  When Tony Blair first visits the Queen, he is awkward and abashed but a bit full of himself as the youngest PM ever.  The Queen calmly notes that he is her tenth Prime Minister.  The first was Winston Churchill.  Like Churchill, Blair was destined to ride high then be dashed on the rocks, but the Queen is still there.

A Surprising Turn in the Quest for El Cid

Another book I've been reading lately -- I tend to read several at once -- is Dr. Richard Fletcher's The Quest for El Cid. The first five chapters dig into Spanish history as at that time, chiefly the Islamic portions but with some introduction to the Christian kingdoms that were clinging to the mountainous north. Then suddenly Chapter Six begins thus:

While the caliphate of Cordoba was in its death-throes and Fernando I was learning the art of government in Castile, another struggle was being played out several hundred miles to the north. In the summer of 1030 Olaf Haraldson, the recently ousted king of Norway, tried to win his land back from the regents who were governing it in the name of the great Canute, ruler of Denmark and England. Olaf was defeated and killed at the battle of Stiklestad... he was to be venerated as a saint, St. Olave [sic]. In the battle he had been aided by his young half-brother Harald, son of a member of one of Norway's many princely dynasties, a chieftain known as Sigurd Sow.

Yes, I know this story very well. I once wrote a poem about Sigurd Sow. It was part of a novel I wrote in China -- never published, and almost lost, but that a dear and beloved friend of mine happened to keep a copy.

This is another of the old poems, in the form of a drapa. A drapa is a flokk with a refrain, so that it was sometimes called a draepling. It was a high form of Norse poetry fit for extolling the father of a great king; but Sigurd Syr, as he was known in the Heimskringla, was not a great warrior. How to praise him in the old Norse terms?

This is a rather technical form, and the references are obscure if you aren't versed in Norse mythology and the older sagas. Still, not many try the drapa these days, so it may be of interest to some of you.

Rare the good king not a killer,
wise sleeper in his stronghold.
Ox-slain Egil Yngling
the Thing-thrall put to fleeing:
A dead king never dreaded.
When Old Starkad came to Sweden
Haki then Hugleik's land claimed. --
Where now is the hall-holder...

Aun, always the weak-slayer,
his sired he'd Odhinn offer;
He ran before Upsala's chieftain.
But Yngvar's son, Anund the Breaker,
Took the war-shield only
slaying his father's slayer.
Rare few are remembered wiser --
...the kingdom-ruler of wisdom?

One remembered is Sigurd
stepfather to the Digre,
father of the Hardrada,
Old lord of the northhold.
Shade from his hat, that broad-brim,
we remember as rain without thunder. --
Where now is the hall-holder,

Nothing with him dragons wanted,
Nor warriors who disdained golden
Grain. Loved him thrall and bonder:
He cared for cattle, but battle
He found empty of the glory
That forever draws the fighter.
No man’s thralls were freer. --
The kingdom-ruler of wisdom.

More from Mr. Steyn

From "Don't Cross the Forces of Tolerance," about the quivering sensibility of the leaders of Boston and Chicago in the face of the outrageous preference of Chick-Fil-A's president for first wives and Biblical principles:

Mayor Menino subsequently backed down and claimed the severed rooster's head left in Mr. Cathy's bed was all just a misunderstanding.  Yet, when it comes to fighting homophobia on Boston's Freedom Trail, His Honor is highly selective.  As the Boston Herald's Michael Graham pointed out, Menino is happy to hand out municipal licenses to groups whose most prominent figures call for gays to be put to death.  The mayor couldn't have been more accommodating (including giving them $1.8 million of municipal land) of the new mosque of the Islamic Society of Boston, whose IRS returns listed as one of their seven trustees Yusuf al-Qaradawi.  Like President Obama, Imam Qaradawi's position on gays is in a state of "evolution":  He can't decide whether to burn them or toss 'em off a cliff.  "Some say we should throw them from a high place," he told Al-Jazeera.  "Some say we should burn them, and so on.  There is disagreement . . . .  The important thing is to treat this act as a crime."  Unlike the deplorable Mr. Cathy, Imam Qaradawi is admirably open-minded:  There are so many ways to kill homosexuals, why restrict yourself to just one?  In Mayor Menino's Boston, if you take the same view of marriage as President Obama did from 2009 to 2012, he'll run your homophobic ass out of town.  But, if you want to toss those godless sodomites off the John Hancock Tower, he'll officiate at your ribbon-cutting ceremony. 

* * * 

But political winds shift.  Once upon a time, Massachusetts burned witches.  Now it grills chicken-sandwich homophobes.  One day it'll be something else.  Already in Europe, in previously gay-friendly cities like Amsterdam, demographically surging Muslim populations have muted Leftie politicians' commitment to gay rights, feminism and much else.   It's easy to cheer on the thugs when they're thuggish in your name.  What happens when Emanuel's political needs change?

A Recommendation: God and Logic in Islam

I want to take a moment to praise a book I have been reading recently. It's a new book by a professor at Indiana University named John Walbridge, entitled God And Logic in Islam: The Caliphate of Reason.

In his introduction he writes that he had three readers in mind: the educated Westerner who may not be fully aware of Islam's intensely rational and scholastic history, but only of the Islam they see on the news; the Muslim reader who is troubled by the crisis of his faith; and the scholar of Islamic studies. He asks these readers to be patient with each other's needs -- the Islamic scholar with the careful spelling out of terms, for example, or the Western reader with the brief history of Western philosophical thought and its effect on modern politics in the West.

His second chapter -- entitled "The Diversity of Reason" -- is surely the chapter that ought most to require my patience, and yet I found it to be extremely insightful reading. I don't think I've ever read such a successful attempt to explain the roots of the clashes in the modern West in concise, brief strokes. The whole chapter is fourteen pages long, and well worth reading even for the educated Westerner who is well aware of the history and accustomed to studying it in much greater detail.

Neither was I disappointed in the rest of the work, which touches on an area I am becoming more and more interested in as time goes along. In any case, for those you seeking a good book for understanding the intellectual tradition of Islam, I must recommend this as an excellent introduction to the subject. Those of you who do not need an introduction, but are ready for more advanced thoughts, will likewise not be disappointed. Well done, Dr. Walbridge.

Poor Mann

Michael ("Hockey Stick") Mann has reached the questionable conclusion that it's a good idea to sue Mark Steyn for defamation, thus setting up a public court battle over the truth of Steyn's allegations concerning ClimateGate.  The quarrel grows out of Steyn's quotation from, and partial agreement with, an attempt to equate Prof. Mann with Jerry Sandusky, not on the subject of pederasty, but because the Sandusky affair calls into question the value of any internal investigation of the ethics of a poohbah at Penn State.  Mann, you may recall, was formally investigated by the university in the wake of ClimateGate, a scandal that earned him the affectionate nickname of "Piltdown" Mann on AGW-skeptic sites.  He received, if not a glowing vindication, at least a dim one -- an acquittal on three counts and a hung jury on the fourth.  Given Louis Freeh's harsh assessment of Penn State's ability to police itself in the context of the Sandusky scandal, it's natural to wonder how vigorously the same university was prepared to scrutinize Mann's affairs.  Penn State has not demonstrated a courageous willingness to embarrass any of its media stars or cash cows in the pursuit of doing what's right.

Mr. Steyn engaged in a bit of apophasis by quoting from another author's harsher article, then stating (without much conviction) that he didn't approve of its excesses in equating the two scandals.  He is a humorist, and given to dramatic and ironic expression.  He set a trap for Mann, who can't complain about the implicit equation of academic fraud with child molesting without continually drawing attention to the linkage himself -- which he's already begun doing, and on Facebook, yet.  Without this squawking, how many people would even remember that Mann was at Penn State, like Sandusky, and that he once was cleared of academic fraud by a university panel?

I look forward to Mann's attempt to prove that Steyn said anything untrue about his scientific data management, a process that, complete with testimony under oath and discovery of emails, may be better calculated to shed light on the controversy than any prior internal investigation.  What's more, as Pundit/Pundette pointed out, the last guys who sued Steyn for defamation not only lost, they set in motion a process that got the underlying Canadian libel statute repealed as an abuse of the freedom of speech in that country.