Daniel Larison is correct: This lack of understanding is the crucial part in any tiresome exercise in sports nationalism: “Our manly sport has subtlety and form, and it reflects the true nature of the universe, whereas their stupid children’s game is pointless and boring.”… Europeans can make the same boredom charge against baseball (and they
Tom Harris writes: There’s never a whip on Fridays; Friday sittings are reserved either for government-sponsored adjournment debates (when there’s no vote) or for Private Members’ Bills. I always enjoy the very different atmosphere that prevails on Fridays; there’s always a sense of camaraderie which cuts across party divisions, probably because everyone present is volunteering
Ramesh Ponnuru disputes my suggestion that he is on the side of the Traditionalists in their battle with the Reformers over the future of the GOP. His view is that: The point of my column was to question the wisdom of drawing the battle lines in those terms. Those of us who think that the
At the Irish Left Review there’s an interesting analysis of The Wire written by Seannachie (a sometime commenter here) that views the show as, in some respects, an allegory of contemporary capitalism while also looking at how it can be seen to straddle the Bush and Obama eras. I wouldn’t agree with everything he says,
Unlike Clive, I thought Rachel Sylvester’s article on Twitter one of the most confused pieces I’ve read all year. On the one hand she wanted to say smething about Twitter, on the other she bemoaned the fact that nobody trusts politicians. Unfortunately she tried to link these two things in a single column and pretend
How would the SNP have delat with the banking crisis? The FT’s Jim Pickard points out that “This is a valid question. The rescue of the Scottish banks has cost British taxpayers an estimated £2,000 per household. If Scotland was independent, the figure could have been closer to £13,000. How would it have coped?“ Mike
Further to this post on Dublin pubs, my father reminded me of the great, wistful moment in The Long Goodbye when Terry Lennox tells Marlowe: “I like bars just after they open for the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and everything is shiny and the barkeep is giving himself that
I’m guessing that we’ll know Barack Obama’s plan to turn the United States of America into a european socialist hellhole will be complete when he comes out as a soccer fan. Here’s Stephen H Webb in First Things: The real tragedy is that soccer is a foreign invasion, but it is not a plot to
Here’s how Ramesh Ponnuru frames the debate: The traditionalists push for upper-income tax cuts. The reformers want to cut the payroll taxes paid by the middle class. Traditionalists often deny that global warming is real. Reformers just want to make sure that our answer to it is cost-effective. The traditionalists want to hold the line
Good news for the New York Times; bad news for the Atlantic. Ross Douthat is going to be Bill Kristol’s replacement on the op-ed page. Even better, in addition to his columns, Ross will be blogging at the NYT. This is splendid news and it’s hard to think how the NYT could have made a
President Evo Morales of Bolivia is not everyone’s cup of tea. And Bolivia remains a country that has no need to search for additional problems. That said, Morales is a voice of sanity on the subject of the Drug War. Washington’s reponse? Fall into line, sonny. Or else. As Jaime Deramblum explains in (where else?)
Glenn Greenwald is, as Julian Sanchez says, back on the warpath. This time he’s blasting the continued use of anyonymous sources and what he sees as their corrupting impact upon journalism. Greenwald makes some perfectly good points but I doubt that the situation will change anytime soon, even at papers that claim to disdain the
In the grander scheme of matters, a West Indian series victory which left England thinking they should really have won the series 2-1 was not a bad result. England can argue that they were the better side for most the series and only just failed to turn their superiority into victory. For the West Indies,
The Long Hall: photo by Flickr user inaki_naiz. Used under a Creative Commons License. An important article in the New York Times on the decline of the traditional Irish pub. This is a serious matter and one that merits pondering. If there’s any upside to present economic difficulty it lies in the hope – faint
An interesting, and telling, line from Jonathan Powell’s article on why we should not over-react to the latest outbreak of Republican violence in Northern Ireland: Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness were determined to carry the Republican movement into peace as intact as possible. They moved slowly to avoid the traditional split and lost very few
That’s how Jon Stewart described Barack Obama and Gordon Brown. Actually, Brown comes out of it fine as Giftgate receives an airing on the Daily Show. Bonus: there’s chuckling at Hillary Clinton’s expense too. A trifecta then. The Daily Show With Jon StewartM – Th 11p / 10c Brown in the USA Daily Show
Way back in 1994 the Economist reported on this whole World-Wide-Web thingy: This sort of reads like ancient history now, but of course some, even many, of the problems people were wrestling with then (how to make online publishing pay!) remain largely unsolved. I think 1994 was when I got my first email address; it
It’s hard to know how to describe Gene Weingarten’s piece in the Washington Post’s magazine, except to say that it is one of the most heart-breaking, moving, humane, pieces of journalism I’ve read in years. And one of the best. In a sense, mind you, even saying that trivialises the story. It’s about how a
An interesting post, as always, from Jim Manzi: I’ve written often about the need for renewing the conservative- libertarian fusion, why I think this is a natural alliance, and the terms on which I think it should be forged. The actions of an assertive liberal (in the contemporary American sense) government are starting to illustrate
James writes: “Too often, politicians on the right, wrongly and short-sightedly, cede the moral high ground to the left. Conservatives in Britain have been particularly guilty of accepting, or at least not disputing, the left’s claims to moral superiority and merely arguing that their approach is more effective.” Well that’s not a problem the libertarians