Once again, the most charitable assumption one might make here is that Hinderaker is going senile… and is struggling with increasingly severe… dementia.

Tonight, he applauds a guy who is about to lose a libel trial, in part because the guy is defending himself pro se, and in part because he refuses to apologize for equating (what he claims is) an errant climate chart with being a sexual predator — a pedophile.

Malice per se is assumed there, under well settled US press / tort law.

There can be “no objectively reasonable belief” in the speaker’s mind… that his criticism of a climate chart allows him to claim the climate scientist has committed… forcible sex assaults.

That is to say… a knowingly false accusation of sexual felonies… is libel per se.

The guy has not — and cannot — establish even a shred of evidence that the man he defamed has ever had more than a traffic ticket.

He will lose — and John is a red faced old coot, for throwing in with him. [It’s John’s distain for climate scientists under it all.]

What a… bizarre… world, no?

Out.