You’d have to stupid to think an Ivy League* education must be a necessary qualification to be President of the United States but you have to be even dumber to consider it a disqualification. And, to be sure, there are many ways of answering the question Bill O’Reilly asked a prominent American politician the other
Martin Bright argues that “the British people deserve a hung parliament”. I’m not sure that’s quite correct. It might be more accurate to say that David Cameron’s Conservatives have not quite convinced the electorate that they merit a large majority. (Nor, for that matter, have Labour persuaded anyone other than true believers that they merit
Sadly Youtube doesn’t seem amply stocked with footage of Gram Parsons. But here’s one of the next best things: Emmylou Harris performing her great tribute to Gram, Boulder to Birmingham:
It’s that time of year and that time of the decade. So, what’s the best XI of the last ten years? In some ways it is a disappointingly easy selection. But here it is anyway: 1. G Smith 2. V Sehwag 3. R Ponting 4. S Tendulkar 5. B Lara 6. A Gilchrist* (Wkt) 7.
Previously, I’ve argued that even if General David Petraeus does have political ambitions there are any number of obstacles that might make it difficult for him to make a successful bid for the Presidency. All those points still stand. Nevertheless, it’s worth noting that the CENTCOM commander is this year’s recipient of the American Enterprise
It’s always heads they win, tails you lose with the euro-sceptics isn’t it? For instance, they were adamant that they didn’t want a high-profile figure such as Tony Blair to become President of the EU Council. No Big Beasts please, we’re British! Now it turns-out that they’re equally disappointed that an unknown Belgian and a
The River Ettrick, running high and fast, at 2.45pm this afternoon.
The national newspapers may not be terribly interested in the Paul Clarke case but, happily, legal blogger Jack of Kent is. He’s produced a detailed account of the case, and the law, that I highly recommend. Mr Clarke may not be the ideal poster boy for liberty but it’s equally clear that this is of
Sure, plenty of Democrats thought George W Bush “stole” the 2000 election (and conservatives would have reacted similarly had Al Gore been pronounced the victor by the Supreme Court) but did Barack Obama steal the 2008 election? Apparently our nutty American cousins believe so: PPP’s newest national survey finds that a 52% majority of GOP
Photo: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images If there were a World Cup for Being Sanctimonious, Ireland would qualify every time. So, mind you, might Scotland. The aftermath of last night’s match in Paris has been predictably entertaining. One refereeing blunder (though it’s quite pssible the referee was unsighted and so did not, in fact, “bottle” the decision)
On the whole I’m sympathetic to the Obama administration’s desire to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court in New York City. That is, dealing with this kind of terrorism is a matter of law-enforcement as well as, in other respects, a military matter. And yet, despite all the talk about how putting KSM
Since I outlined a modest case for dithering on Afghanstan last month, it probably behoves me to admit that, politicaly though perhaps not militarily, the time for consequence-free dithering seems to be running-out. Con Coughlin’s story in this week’s magazine damns Obama’s approach to the Afghan problem, not least because the President, according to Con,
David Cameron’s response to the Queen’s Speech was, of course, dictated by both convention and political nit-picking. Nonetheless, I agree with Sunder Katwala that it’s rum to see a Conservative leader complaining that the government isn’t proposing enough legislation. A useful reminder that whatever else they may be, Dave’s Conservatives do not take an especially
Peter Suderman notes that the Democrats’ health care plans have to play a finesse: on the one hand they promise that everything will get better; on the other they reassure you that most things will stay just the same. Tricky! Worse, much worse, for those of us who hope that Congress passes or kills health
What’s your favourite moment from The Wire? Here are 100 great lines from the best TV show of the decade. [Hat-tip: Radley Balko]
The glib answer to this is to suggest that she’d do the party a great service by not running at all. Yesterday I wrote that she’s a “wrecker not a uniter” and that she could hijack the primary season to disastrous effect. That’s clearly one possibility. But there are others, including some which might actually
Remember the outcry after the discovery that Paul Clarke could face five years in prison for the “crime” of finding a sawn-off shotgun in his garden and handing it in to his local police station? No, me neither. Well, blog-land has not been happy about this but, as a reader points out, our friends at
Well, kind of. America’s most famous hockey mom is on Oprah this week, promoting her memoir. There’s going to be an awful lot of Sarah Palin this week. In the Wall Street Journal, Weekly Standard and his own book, Matt Continetti tries to make the case that Palin is, or rather could be, a populist
The thing about cricket, or one of the things about it, is that the game makes few allowances for ability. The strong are persecuted just as surely as the weak are found out. There is, literally, no hiding place. Indeed, the strongest players may suffer more than the weakest. For with ability comes increased expectation
You might think that this story can’t be true or that’s been made-up to provoke everyone’s inner Littlejohn. But no, not so. It is true and, alas, an enraging, dispiriting business. A former soldier who handed a discarded shotgun in to police faces at least five years imprisonment for “doing his duty”. Paul Clarke, 27,