Ireland

Good lord, it’s like the last thirty years never happened: the Irish government wants a new law to prohibit blasphemy. If passed then, astonishingly, the courts will be asked to decide if the supposed victim has been sufficiently outraged for there to have been an offence. Remarkable. And expensive too since it could cost you up to €100,000 and a visit from the Gardai Siochana to confiscate the “offensive material”. As Carol Coulter explains: For that to happen, a court will have to be satisfied the matter published is “grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of

Jaysus lads, Henry Farrell is correct to observe that this New York Times piece seems to have been inspired by Myles na Gopaleen’s great Catechism of Cliche. It’s all there: “land of saints and scholars”, a “wellspring of poets and balladeers” replete with “ruddy-faced fishermen” and all the rest of it as the writer, an Irish-American making his first trip back to the oul’ sod, waxes hyper-lyrical about the rise and fall of the Irish economic miracle. The real Ireland, of course, is a poor but jolly place, amply stocked with all the characters a visitor needs to imagine himself an extra in Ryan’s Daughter or, god help us, The

Brian Cowen: Frightening when clothed; terrifying when naked. Photo: JOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Meanwhile in Ireland there’s much hilarity over the story of a Banksy-style prankster who hung portraits of the Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, at the Royal Hibernian Academy and the National  Gallery of Ireland. It turns out Mr Cowen is indeed an oil painting. Or two, in fact. As the Irish Times reports: “He was shown holding his underpants in one painting and a toilet roll in the other.” All a spot of harmless japery you might think. But no, apparently not! A detective from Pearse St Garda station visited the offices of Today FM yesterday afternoon looking for email contacts

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 that by June 2007 there were more than 50 separate entries under his name, Prawo Jazdy, in the Garda Pulse system. And still not a single conviction. In the end, the vital clue to his identity lay not with Interpol or the fingerprint database but in the pages of a Polish-English dictionary. Prawo jazdy means

Responding to Stephen Walt’s hypothetical (What if Gaza were full of jews?), Megan McArdle compares the Israel lobby to the Irish-American lobby. Ross Douthat says, OK, but the IRA was still considered a terrorist organisation. Daniel Larison dives into the weeds of US attitudes towards Irish terrorism. He writes: The IRA was a genuine terrorist group, but it was listed as such by our government most of all because it was a sworn enemy of one of our closest allies. The record seems clear: terrorist groups that are useful to us or harmful to states we officially oppose are given a pass, while those that target us or our allies

Apart from a couple of pre-prepared items, there’s not likely to be too much blogging in these parts for the next couple of days. The reason? I’m off to Trinity College, Dublin to speak at the College Historical Society’s* US presidential debate on Wednesday. We shall be arguing the motion “This House Would Vote for Obama”. They were having some trouble finding folk who would argue for McCain so I may be on the opposition side – in which case I shall make the case for Bob Barr, not McCain. Actually, whichever side of the motion I’m on, I shall be making a case against McCain. Just possibly against Obama

Patrick Hillery, President of Ireland from 1976-1990, has died. From the Telegraph’s obituary: As president, Hillery’s main achievement was the restoration of stability to the office; this he accomplished largely through invisibility and silence. If only other Presidents – and especially ones with more power – could be persuaded to follow Paddy Hillery’s excellent example…