An excellent column by Paul Waldman on the Ghastliness of Tim Russert. (Note for British readers: he’s America’s version of Paxman except twice as smug and half as useful) Waldman makes the reasonable point that Russert and his ilk help ruin Presidential debates. On Tuesday in Philadelphia Russert was at it again, demanding if the
If you happen to be in New York City this evening and feeling in the need to get your protest on, might I suggest you join Jewcy’s Michael Weiss et al and cause merry havoc outside the Anti-Defamation League’s HQ:: The ADL National Meeting is in town from Nov. 1st though Nov. 3rdJoin the good
I don’t even know how to play the guitar but by god I want one of these babies: Surprise: They’re from Colombia! [Also via Jewcy who, rightly, vote these cool not creepy]
David Frum on Karen Hughes: My column for this weekend’s National Post will try to explain why Karen Hughes so signally failed as US Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy. Hint: It’s not because she is a shallow and ill-informed person with scant experience of the world outside America’s borders but dangerously unlimited confidence in
If one were to compile a list of all the issues in which elite – and, er, libertarian – opinion is most completely out of touch with “ordinary” people’s concerns, there’s a more than decent chance immigration would be at the top of the list. As Garance reports from Iowa, it may also be the
Today’s Tory poster for the election that never was: Yesterday’s Halloween poster is here.
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
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,
Jim Hacker, immortalised forever in the classic BBC comedies Yes, Minister and Yes Prime Minister prepares to deliver a Prime Ministerial televised address to the nation. But what, if anything, should he say? And how should he say it? Plus, reflections on media management, clothing, make-up and much much more in this classic clip. Verily,
Megan on the horrors of travelling in the United States these days: You know, I never really understood why making the trains run on time was so important for Mussolini, but after last week, I can understand how that became one of fascism’s main selling points. She kids, of course. I’ve always thought, however, that