World

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

Well, according to Dick Cheney, George W Bush was just as almost as bad as your average America-hating euro-weenie or member of the Democratic Congressional caucus. Barton Gellman – whose sourcing is pretty good – reports that: Cheney’s disappointment with the former president surfaced recently in one of the informal conversations he is holding to discuss the book with authors, diplomats, policy experts and past colleagues. By habit, he listens more than he talks, but Cheney broke form when asked about his regrets. “In the second term, he felt Bush was moving away from him,” said a participant in the recent gathering, describing Cheney’s reply. “He said Bush was shackled

As the controversy over torture gathers pace, it is ‘open season’ on the intelligence agencies — investigated by the police and challenged by MPs. Scrutiny is fine, says Matthew d’Ancona — but beware of making life impossible for those responsible for our security ‘One question at any rate was answered. Never, for any reason on earth, could you wish for an increase of pain. Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop. Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain. In the face of pain there are no heroes, no heroes, he thought over and over as he writhed on the floor, clutching uselessly

There isn’t one. That was a trick headline. The line between a state that tortures and the state that does everything in its power to avoid the physical abuse of individuals in its name is what defined the late twentieth century drive against barbarism. When the French were exposed using specially adapted field radios to pass electric shocks through suspected rebels in Algeria it rightly caused outrage in a world still recovering from the reality of the Holocaust.  We are a little less easy to horrify now. But the revelation that our own intelligence services have been prepared to use the fruits of torture, however unwittingly, still has the ability to digust. The response this

The great thing about Mitt Romney is that he’s so darn subtle. Hence the title for his new campaign* book: No Apology: The Case for American Greatness. Gee, I wonder what that means? Romney must be considered the front-runner for the 2012 Republican nomination if only because other would-be candidates have either ruled themselves out (Huntsman), shot themselves in the foot (Palin, Stanford Sanford. [Thanks commenters]) or remain incapable of setting the heather alight even when armed with a can of gasoline (Pawlenty). And since front-runners have won every Republican nomination since 1988 (McCain was unusual in as much as he was a front-runner who slipped and was nearly lapped

Apparently there’s a stooshie over Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama. Whatever. As might be expected, America’s worst Congressman, Peter King of New York, is busy offering his opinion: Robinson’s views are well out of the American foreign-policy mainstream. Rep. Peter King (R-LI) says, “She is definitely from the school of moral equivalency which somehow invariably comes down on the side against vibrant democracies such as Israel and the United States.” Fairness demands that we absolve Mr King of all charges of moral equivalency. After all he’s been a keen supporter of terrorism

As is customary, James and I disagree about Iran. Or perhaps we merely have different ideas about what constitutes the most important Persian questions. James, I think (and I’m sure he’ll correct me if I’m wrong), places the nuclear issue above all others. I’m more agitated by the nature of the regime in Tehran. That is, I doubt that we can prevent Iran from acquiring a nulear capability at some point and that, while it would certainly be preferable if Iran didn’t have the bomb, we might have to get used to the idea that it will. It’s also quite possible, perhaps even probable, that a new regime in Tehran

‘Twat’ is not a swear word. This may come as a surprise to those of us who have studiously avoided using it in front of our mothers-in-law and elderly relatives. But after David Cameron said it in a radio interview, Tory press officers were quick to point out that Ofcom does not consider it to be one. Oddly, in the same interview, Cameron felt the need to apologise immediately after saying that the public were ‘pissed off’; a phrase that one would have thought was far less offensive than ‘twat’. Indeed, Ofcom’s own research suggests that Cameron rather boobed. It records that focus groups considered ‘piss off’ to be a