Peter King Watch

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 and torture for years. Politicians who address terrorist rallies and salute IRA thugs and murderers as “brave men and women” carrying out a “legitimate guerilla struggle” might be wise to avoid being quite such a rent-a-quote on these matters.

Whatever one thinks of Mrs Robinson’s time in New York, she was a bastion of decency and common sense when President of Ireland, never, as best I can recall, putting a foot wrong when it came to the northern question.