So the first question in tonight’s Democratic debate at Drexel University goes to Barack Obama who is asked – as he must have known he would be – to outline the differences between himself and Clinton. And his response? Meh. He flubs it, delivering a nervous-sounding, meandering, indecisive, confused answer that goes precisely nowhere and
November 1st would have been election day had Gordon Brown not been spooked… Here’s a poster the Tories are placing in papers around the country today: The tag-line reads: Tomorrow should have been election day. Your chance to end the horror. [Hat-tip: Iain Dale]
Best* line of the Democratic debate? It’s not even close. Joe Biden on Rudy Giuliani: “He only uses three words in a sentence: A noun, a verb, and 9/11.” *By “Best” I mean, of course, “Only”. UPDATE: At The Corner K-Lo crys foul! Maybe the 10 P.M. hour has killed what little sense of humor
OK, so Hillary was all over the place on whether illegal immigrants should be allowed driving licenses and, sure enough, that’s what Chris Matthews and co focus on immediately. But that’s because Hillary won the debate by a mile and a half and it’s very important for the media to highlight anything that can be
Appropriately enough – this being Halloween don’t you know- Slate has this week been running a series of dispatches from my own native heath (Part 1 here, Part 2 here and Part 3 here). Kate Bolick asks, essentially, why are there so many haunted castles and ghostly apparitions in Scotland? Think what you want. I’m
Just in case anyone was wondering, the Tories would like to hint (ever so gently) that Cameron socked it to those hand amputators in his meeting with them today. Or, in diplomatic language of a spokesman, “Most of the 45 minute meeting was spent discussing co-operation between Britain and Saudi Arabia on counter-terrorism matters, including
Gordon Brown has today handed a huge advantage to the Conservatives. His speech on education shows he has no ideas for it. There will be a five year plan to eradicate failing schools (if only they’d thought of that in 1997, eh?) and our Dear Leader will ask all pupils to consider apprenticeships. Has Brown
The Guardian’s Backbencher column has a particularly delicious titbit this week: “Spotted at New College, Oxford, last weekend: Richard Dawkins, saying grace at dinner.” What’s next, Ian Paisley taking communion at the Vatican?
The Los Angeles Times has an absolute must-read today on the escalating tensions between US and Iranian forces in Iraq and how in the near term this is more likely to spark a war between the two countries than the Iranian nuclear programme. Do read the whole thing.
Alan West, the retired Admiral (pictured left) drafted in by Gordon Brown to be security minister, has an interview in The Sun today. The two things that will make headlines are his statements that dealing with the current threat will take thirty years or so and that the security services have foiled 12 major plots since
I was lucky enough to see Shadowlands at the Wyndham’s Theatre this week and, if you haven’t been, you really should. William Nicholson’s play, originally a TV drama now best known for the movie version starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger, is powerful stuff, a demanding distillation of C.S. Lewis’s personal battle with the problem
Nick Clegg’s announcement that if ID cards are introduced he will simply refuse to register is smart politics. First, it prevents Chris Huhne from gaining a monopoly on eye-catching, activist-pleasing ideas in the Lib Dem leadership contest. Second, it shows that Clegg is prepared to exploit the greater license that the leader of the third
So, Fred Thompson is just a conservative good-old-boy from Tennessee whose folksy charm is his biggest selling point. OK, well then you might expect that Fred would be a champion of traditional Tennessee values. Not so! The Los Angeles Times reviews the 88 cases Thompson prosecuted as a US Attorney in Nashville between 1969 and
American conservatives who seem to think that waterboarding is perfectly ok – and there are, shamefully, many such people including the two leading candidates for the Republican party’s presidential nomination and, judging from his equivocation on the subject, the nominee for attorney-general, should be required to read this detailed post from Malcolm Nance. Mr Nance
Lots of talk about taxis in Washington DC and, more particularly the Mayor’s announcement that DC will switch to a meter system, abandoning the current fare tariff which is based upon a zone system that seems, frankly, arbitrary* in the extreme and unlike any other system I’ve encountered in any developed city anywhere in the
Someone arrived at this blog thanks to a search for: Angelina Jolie George Wallace. Readers are invited to suggest other, even more improbable, Hollywood-Politics couples in the comments section.
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is visiting Britain this week. Fine. These are people we need to be able to do business with, however much one might wish it otherwise. But that’s no excuse for a minister of the crown to embarrass himself like this: On Monday, Foreign Office minister Kim Howells called for Britain
Isaac Chotiner issues a provocation: British coverage of the United States must be really bad if William Hill have been persuaded that Ron Paul is a 12/1 shot to become the next President. This is, I admit, strange. Since Paul had previously been available as a 66/1 chance my suspicion is that, given the likely
Is there a specific word – or neologism – for wanting to write a blog post (or several in fact – and wanting to write them quite badly) but finding oneself utterly incapable of actually doing so?* *For reasons that have nothing to do with being too busy to actually, like, write. To the contrary,
Maybe the Lib Dems shouldn’t elect a new leader at all. In their current leaderless state, they have jumped 4 percent in the latest ICM poll to put them at a respectable 18 percent. The Tories are down three, but still at the psychologically important 40 percent mark. Labour are on 35 percent, a one