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It was a bad week for those on the left who try to censor their opponents. First, Meta announced it would ditch the fact-checkers who think they are entitled to be the final arbiters of truth and censor anyone who dissents. Now, the media’s favorite professor of climate alarmism, Michael Mann, has been forced to pay nearly $600,000 in legal fees to National Review after a frivolous lawsuit that alleged they defamed him.

National Review’s editors wrote on Friday, “For more than eight years, the climate scientist Michael Mann harassed National Review through litigation over a blog post — until, eventually, the First Amendment brought an end to his attack. This week, a court in our nation’s capital ordered Mann to pay us $530,820.21 worth of attorney’s fees and costs, and to do so within 30 days. It is time for him to get out his checkbook, and sign on the dotted line.”

During discovery, Mann stated he viewed his lawsuit as a way to “ruin National Review.”

The editors go on to recount the sad story of their legal battle with Mann, “Science — to which Mann is supposed to be devoted  — inevitably involves disagreement. And yet, Mann proved incapable of handling dissent. Instead of engaging in debate, he sued us — for defamation and for the infliction of emotional distress. This, suffice it to say, is not how debate in America should work.”

It has not been all good news for National Review as it recalled, “The legal system hasn’t covered itself in glory, either. Our own justice was repeatedly delayed, and, when it arrived, it was via the back door rather than as part of a ringing endorsement of the right to free speech. And, disgracefully, both of our co-litigants, Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg, have been ordered to pay damages.”

Here is a February 2024 video of Mann taking a victory lap on those Steyn and Simberg rulings and trashing the idea of free speech with PBS’s Christiane Amanpour which re-aired on December 26 as part of a series of Amanpour’s most memorable moments of 2024:

Mann’s crusade against National Review dates back to 2012 when Steyn called Mann’s “hockey stick” graph “fraudulent.” Mann additionally went after Simberg for comparing him to child molester Jerry Sandusky, a jarring comparison to be sure, but one that shouldn’t be any legally worse than all the Hitler comparisons we get from the media on a regular basis. National Review is right to feel as if the news is a hollow victory. Mann successfully sued two people for what should have been considered constitutionally protected speech, but at least the censorship campaign of a small, petty man who can’t handle dissent suffered one defeat. In addition to labeling Mann as a professor and author, whenever he joins a reporter from now on, he should be identified as a failed censor.