WASHINGTON – FEBRUARY 24: U.S. President Barack Obama addresses a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress February 24, 2009 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images. And so it begins. The contrast between Barack Obama last night and George W Bush was striking. Not merely in terms of the content
David Frum gets it: A federal bank takeover is a bad thing obviously. I wonder though if we conservatives understand clearly enough why it is a bad thing. It’s not because we are living through an enactment of the early chapters of Atlas Shrugged. It’s because the banks are collapsing. Obama, Pelosi, et al are
Alex Salmond has been in Washington, where he snagged an audience with Hillary Clinton and delivered a speech at Georgetown University. Hamish Macdonnell explains: In a speech on Monday he took the time to praise Abraham Lincoln. This is what he said: “A man whose spirit and example will light America’s path for centuries to
Oscar commentary is outsourced to the always-splendid Peter Suderman: The half-calculated, half-panicked seesawing between self-important Art and anxious populism means that the Oscars aren’t really an indicator of quality anymore, but rather an indicator of Oscarness. Oscarness does, admittedly, overlap with quality (see last year’s awards), but it is not the same thing. Undoubtedly, the
It’s not been a great couple of weeks for Alex Salmond, has it? First there was the budget hullabaloo, then the SNP was compelled to abandon (at least for the time being) its plans to replace the council tax with a local income tax and now the leaders of the opposition parties have each confirmed
Chris Mullin is a good egg and, what’s more has a pawky sense of humour. So I imagine his diaries, serialised in the Mail on Sunday this week, will be entertaining stuff. What strikes one above all – apart from the digs at Gordon Brown’s expense – is the sheer and ghastly tedium of being
Polly Toynbee is always worth reading. Her latest column is no exception. For all that one might disagree with her, indeed even be infuriated by her, there’s always something useful to be gleaned from her columns. Still, there’s a kind of panicked resignation about this latest one and an implied acceptance that Labour are doomed.
Here’s a question for you: Imagine you are seated at a table with two bowls in front of you. One contains peanuts, the other tablets of the illegal recreational drug MDMA (ecstasy). A stranger joins you, and you have to decide whether to give them a peanut or a pill. Which is safest? So asks
Melanie Phillips makes a pretty remarkable claim at the end of this post: The fact is that Israel faces the nightmare scenario that it now stands alone — and against America. Whether through naivety, ideology or rank malice, there is now a fifth columnist in the White House, undermining the cause of the free world.
The Economist’s Democracy in America blog raises a good point: whatever happened to Howard Dean? That is, why does the former chairman of the DNC receive so little credit for the party’s resurrection? And why is he not being considered to be Secretary for Health and Human Services, given that, as governor of Vermont, he
Mind you, it’s not just the Irish police who are confused by foreign languages. A reader emails this piece of Fleet Street entertainment: That reminds me of XXX’s story chasing a British felon somewhere on the Spanish Costas. He got an interview with a doctor who slagged off the guy on the run but the
Not much gets past the Garda Siochana… HE WAS one of Ireland’s most reckless drivers, a serial offender who crossed the country wantonly piling up dozens of speeding fines and parking tickets while somehow managing to elude the law. So effective was his modus operandi of giving a different address each time he was caught
Mike Crowley has a characteristically interesting piece on Hillary Clinton’s State Department, asking the question: “Huge expectations, big egos, turf wars: Is Clinton’s State Department just like her campaign?” Even allowing for the fact that this may be a marginally premature question there’s some good stuff in there. Old habits die hard however, and there’s
Test match cricket is something else, isn’t it? Patrick Kidd has a splendid line making the point that test cricket is terrific because it is “a game in which it is much more exciting when something almost happens than when it happens all the time.” Granted, cricket’s detractors might cite this as evidence to support
I admit it, I didn’t anticipate this one: Shark Attacks Drop; Expert Cites Ailing Economy. [Thanks to reader JT]
I suspect Peter is right and that David Davis’s remarks about “the Davis agenda” will raise a few eyebrows. But I find them encouraging. There’s an obvious upside to Davis returning to the front bench at some point since, despite the Tory parties advantageous position in the polls, the party could do with the extra
Ezra Klein asks why the Democratic party doesn’t treat “unreliable” Democrats quite as badly* as the GOP hunts down “Republicans in Name Only” such as Arlen Specter. There are few consequences to being a Blue Dog Democrat. Labor doesn’t come into your district and fund a challenger who attacks your votes to cut entitlement spending.
Things you never thought you would see: the French government advising against wine consumption… In the midst of the winter gloom, President Sarkozy’s administration has chosen this moment to tell its people to stop drinking wine. You are hearing right. The Ministry of Health has issued rules for reducing the risk of cancer and one of
There’s some good stuff in Michael Henderson’s column on the so-called Stanford debacle* today, even if he indulges himself with a rather rosy,soft-focus view of cricket’s past. The ideal of the village green bathed in evening sunlight with the vicar standing as umpire and children playing by the boundary and all that is a powerful,
It’s a rather terrible story, but this AP headline is a keeper: Berserk chimp heard during frantic 911 call as owner pounded him with a shovel. It wasn’t the chimp that called 911…