Andrew Sullivan is soliciting examples of what one might term The Iran Behind the Headlines. Here’s one I blogged about last year. As Alex Tabarrok put it at the time: Only one country in the world has eliminated the shortage of transplant kidneys. Only one country in the world has legalized financial payments to kidney
What next for Sarah Palin? Todd Purdum’s Vanity Fair profile is designed to be, as Jason Zengerle puts it, brutal. But, as the Economist’s Democracy in America notes, there are times when it also, perhaps unwittingly, makes one feel a little sorry for Governor Palin. Whatever her shortcomings, she wasn’t the one who put her
Thomas Sowell is a clever fellow who has made important contributions to any number of debates. Alas, he seems to have abandoned the ship of sanity to swim with the loonies. A sad business. A quadrupling of the national debt in just one year and accepting a nuclear-armed sponsor of international terrorism such as Iran
Good news! At least for me. From a list of “Health Myths”: 5. Cracking your knuckles will cause arthritis. Knuckle-crackers are no more likely to have arthritis than those who don’t make annoying popping sounds with their fingers. Nice, for once, to come across some good health news. It doesn’t happen often… Thanks to Ezra
Not all change is necessarily or automatically regrettable. Even in cricket. Nonetheless, anytime anyone from the ICC talks about future plans you know that something terrible is on th ecards. No surprise then that David Taylor, president of the world’s worst governing body, suggests that what we what to see is four day tests and
Fraser’s most recent post is one of the funniest things I’ve read this week. Regardless of the detail lurking in the government’s numbers, this is the sort of thing that proves that this is a decrepit, exhausted government. Who would have thought that it would all end with cabinet ministers haranguing people about blog posts?
Unsurprisingly, Fraser made some sound points in his two recent posts on immigration. But the main lesson, surely, to be drawn from his argument is that the problem lies with British welfare policy rather than British immigration policy? Fix the former and some of the economic concerns about the latter might be reduced. Then again,
Tamara Lush is a pretty groovy name, you’ll agree. But, sadly, not groovy enough to merit entry into the draw for the annual Name of the Year contest, a perennial celebration of the extraodinary variety, vivacity and eccentricity of American names. Controversy abounded in 2009 as, for the second year in succession, the voting public
Andy Murray serves against Serbia’s Victor Troicki in a Men’s Singles match in the third round of the 2009 Wimbledon Tennis Championships at the All England Tennis Club. Photo: Carl de Souza/AFP/Getty Images. So that’s week one out of the way at Wimbledon and it’s a case of so far so good. Not just for
Way back in carefree college days in Dublin, I had a friend who considered Dwight Yoakam one of the great artists of the late twentieth century. Since the glory of country music had yet to be revealed to me, I scoffed at this. Not that I was alone in doing so, mind you. Another friend
Clearly this is the website for MPs. And, er, journalists. Yup, it’s Falseexpense.com. Happily, they assure parliamentarians that “We do NOT violate the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act (1981) of England and Wales.” Which is a relief… [Via Bruce Schneier.]
Michigan native Amy Sullivan on the latest scandal in the Motor City: Monica Conyers, Detroit councilwoman and wife* of House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, pled guilty today in a bribery case and now faces five years in prison. Conyers is only in her first term on the council, but had already previously made headlines for
Here’s a disturbing report from one of the great institutions of the land: They cannot be assimilated and absorbed into the British race. They remain a people by themselves, segregated by reason of their race, their customs, their traditions and above all by their loyalty to their religion, and are gradually and inevitable dividing Britain,
Long-time readers may recall that one of this blog’s minor amusements is chronicling the ridiculous extent to which some Americans – mainly, it must be said, on the right – go in their efforts to decry the baleful influence of soccer upon the American ideals of manly sporting excellence. There was, for instance, this example
Although I’ve long felt that the Unionist parties would have been well-advised to call Alex Salmond’s bluff and have an independence referendum as soon as possible (like, er, this year), the notion that Gordon Brown might decide to hold a referendum on Scottish independence the same day as a general election strikes me as a
Robert Bruce (1274 – 1329), King of Scots from 1306, breaks the handle of his battleaxe as he kills the English knight Sir Henry de Bohun with a blow to the head before the Battle of Bannockburn, June 1314. Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images. Mercy, how can one forget that this is the 695th anniversary of
In one sense, of course, John McCain is correct to say: “The president saying that we didn’t want to be perceived as meddling, is, frankly, not what America’s history is all about.” And while one may say that, more often than not, the United States has been one of, for want of a less crude
If you knew that you were likely to be framed by the police, would you go ahead and commit the crime anyway, reasoning that you had nothing to lose? Would that be the sensible thing to do? Then, at trial, suppose you decided that, even though you were innocent of the charges brought against you,
We’ll get back to Iran in due course, but first here’s a miserable moment from today’s press conference at the White House. Asked by some ghastly hack from McClatchy about his smoking (and the so-called “frustration and fear” that comes from stopping smoking), Barack Obama replied: Look, I’ve said before that as a former smoker
Iain Dale, however, thinks Cameron passed with flying colours. I suppose it was merely a matter of time before the “Why Won’t Obama Come to the Aid of the Protestors?” meme spread to this side of the Atlantic and now, courtesy of the good* Mr Dale, it has. And apparently Gordon Brown and David Milliband