World

I really don’t know what to make of this. As politics it’s bizarre, as a kind of performance art it’s mesmerising. And popular. More people watch Glenn Beck than Mad Men. He reaches three million viewrs, which makes him Fox News’s biggest star. As Dave Weigel points out, he’s influential: Beck’s ramblings are helping drive the opposition – he might say resistance – to Obama’s healthcare reforms. It’s not just Obama of course. There’s an entire conspiracy determined to destroy the American republic. It’s made up of Obama, Left, International, Graft, ACORN-style organizations, Revolutionaries, Hidden Agendas. These words are not chosen by accident. Take the first letter of each word

Patty Murray, Herb Kohl, Johnny Isakson, Michael Enzi, Mike Crapo, Jeff Bingaman, Tom Carper, Daniel Inouy, Thad Cochrane, Blanche Lincoln… You need to be a pretty keen political junkie to know that each of these men and women are current members of the United States Senate. Nor have I cheated by including recent arrivals such as Roger Wicker who are still freshmen and, consequently, justifiably unknown to the rest of the country, never mind internationally. Still, its remarkable how many Senators make no impression whatsoever upon Washington. (Of course, one often has cause to regret the impression made by those that do insist upon making waves, news and bad legislation.

The loathsome Peter King is at it again. Speaking to Politico, he’s up in arms that some people think torturing prisoners is wrong. King, channeling both the sense of outrage and of political opportunity felt in parts of the GOP, defended in detail the interrogation practices — threats to kill a detainee’s family, and or to kill a detainee with a power drill — detailed in a CIA inspector general report released yesterday. “You’re talking about threatening to kill a guy, threatening to attack his family, threatening to use an electric drill on him — but never doing it,” King said.  “You have that on the one hand — and on the other you

Well, sort of. If one only paid attention to what Hillary Clinton or (some of) the relatives of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing said, you might gain the false impression that his possible release (or transfer to a Libyan jail) was some kind of admission that he is in fact innocent. It’s important to remember that this is not the case. If – or possibly when – Abdebaset Ali al-Megrahi is released, it will be on the compassionate grounds that he is a dying man whose cancer is inoperable and terminal. It is not an act of clemency* pardon or commutation. Even so, one can see why such a

I’m far from being a zombie aficionado, but isn’t this obvious? If zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilisation unless dealt with quickly and aggressively. That is the conclusion of a mathematical exercise carried out by researchers in Canada. They say only frequent counter-attacks with increasing force would eradicate the fictional creatures. My confidence in this research is not, mind you, boosted by this Professor Robert Smith? (the question mark is part of his surname and not a typographical mistake) and colleagues wrote: “We model a zombie attack using biological assumptions based on popular zombie movies. “We introduce a basic model for zombie

Sure as eggs is eggs, you can count on some folk being terribly exercised each time it is “revealed” that lots of boys named Mohammed, or some variation of the prophet’s name, are being born in europe. This time it’s the revelation [link fixed] that in four Dutch cities Mohammed is the most popular name for boys. Oh no! The Muslims are coming! Never mind that Mohammed is only the 16th most popular boys name in Holland as a whole, better by far to raise the spectre of an Islamic “takeover” of Dutch cities. Never mind that this sort of fear-mongering has become an annual tradition. Did you know, for

I’d never heard of xeroderma pigmentosum until Bronx Banter alerted me to Rick Reilly’s latest ESPN column. I generally consider Reilly an intolerable jackass but this column is very good. Just the thing to leave you feeling a little warmer on a wet Friday afternoon. Even Red Sox fans should tip their hats to the Yankees and, most particularly of course, the kids themselves: The team facing Yankees ace AJ Burnett a few weeks back at Yankee Stadium has to go down as the oddest in baseball history. For one thing, it plays only at night. The players have no choice. Even one minute of sunshine can kill them. They’re