Paul Ryan is out, and a new congressional Republican Party is waiting to be born
The outgoing speaker was never able to connect with voters
Latest from Coffee House
All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Thursday
The mind of Donald Trump, as explained by Anthony Scaramucci
When Anthony Scaramucci announced that he was writing a book about his time with Donald Trump, the joke was that it should be entitled ‘Ten Days That Shook the World’. This, he says, does him an injustice because he managed 11 days as White House communications director before being fired — after a lava flow
Circe has been recast as the girl next door – it’s a sign of the times
When poor old battered Odysseus landed on Circe’s island having lost all his ships (except his flagship) when he tangled with the Laestrygonians (their king liked to eat Greek flesh and swallowed up most of his crews, yummy) Circe — witch, sorceress and goddess in her own right — turned the few survivors into swine,
The Spice Girls sang about empowerment – better than the #MeToo whinging
The recent news of a Spice Girls reunion will, I suspect, be greeted by some former fans with nostalgic longing and others with an embarrassed cringe. But whether you’re a fan or foe, I think it’s worth remembering that golden decade of Girl Power — the 1990s — when it was bliss to be young
Why catastrophising is my idea of a good time
When, on a test of general knowledge, the highly educated score far worse than chimpanzees, university degrees may be overrated (definitely). But something more interesting may also be going on. According to the newly released Factfulness by Hans Rosling, we would-be smart people would improve our results on multiple-choice questions about the current state of
Wednesday
Zuckerberg’s Facebook hearing makes me fear for the future of democracy
Mark Zuckerberg came to Washington this week. Just an ordinary, common-sense guy, with matching hoodies in his roll-on, and a company that was worth well over half a trillion dollars before it emerged that it had shared its subscribers’ personal information, instead of sticking to its real business of selling that information to advertisers. The … Read more
Donald Trump’s love-in with Putin comes to an abrupt halt
In his inimitable fashion, President Trump has put Russia on notice that the era of playing kissy-face with the Kremlin has come to an abrupt halt. “Get ready Russia,” he announced. It’s bombs away for the Trump administration. The Bolton doctrine has now become the Trump doctrine. Trump’s tweet is being decried as taunting Vladimir
On foreign policy, Trump is more like Obama than he would like to admit
You could call it the John Bolton effect. The president’s new National Security Adviser has only been in the job a few days, and already Donald Trump is threatening war with Russia on Twitter: Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice
The fall of Milo Yiannopoulos
It seems the phenomenon of Milo Yiannopoulos – the brief, bright arc of his invention – is over. I do not want him to fall without being understood so I will tell you the strange tale of our encounters last year. Monsters should be understood, and pitied, for our own sakes. It is midsummer and he is staying at
Tuesday
Trump has never been more endangered
Good gracious! David Brooks, a charter member of the Never Trump movement, suddenly raises the white flag in his column today. Brooks is despondent. His efforts to expose Trump’s perfidy have failed. Instead, a very bad man, we are told, reigns supreme. The catalogue of woe is extensive. According to Brooks: “We have persuaded no … Read more
America’s defeat in Syria is complete
The Syrian civil war is in its endgame, and the ‘political solution’ that the leaders of the Western democracy talk about is in sight. That is one meaning of the appalling images from the chemical weapons attack on Eastern Ghouta. In 2011, Western intelligence agencies unanimously declared that Bashar al-Assad was finished, and that it
Monday
Did John Kelly really think he could bring order to Trump’s chaotic White House?
Anyone who hadn’t heard about the Washington Post story on the increasing problems facing White House chief of staff John Kelly shortly after it was published Saturday evening certainly had by Sunday morning. That’s when America’s most-watched tweeter drew the world’s attention to it. “The Washington Post is far more fiction than fact. Story after … Read more
Friday
Putin’s cronies take a hit from the US
“I’m afraid we no longer have oligarchs. That was a concept of the ’90s,” Russia’s deputy prime minister Arkady Dvorkovich told Bloomberg TV earlier this year. The United States government disagrees, and one of its departments released a statement today with the stark headline “Treasury Designates Russian Oligarchs, Officials, and Entities in Response to Worldwide … Read more
In defence of Paul Manafort
Poor Paul Manafort. Manafort, who tried to extricate himself from the Mueller investigation by filing a civil case alleging prosecutorial overreach, was skewered by federal judge Amy Berman on Wednesday. By the time Manafort showed up in court, his lawyer was furiously back-pedalling about what they were demanding. ‘I don’t really understand,’ Berman said, ‘what … Read more
Why won’t America join the war on plastic bags?
Bangladesh was the first to ban them back in 2002. Other countries, from Rwanda to Macedonia, have followed and in many places they are being taxed out of existence. Yet the United States’ reaction to the global drive to tackle the scourge of disposable plastic bags is, largely, a collective “meh”. What is it with America and its love affair with the plastic … Read more
Thursday
Why does nobody seem to care that Isis has used chemical weapons?
A new era of chemical warfare is upon us—an era of chemical warfare as psychological warfare. The poisoning of Russian double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, England, has dominated the headlines. But another development, from around the same time as the Salisbury attack first became known, is revealing for the attention it hasn’t … Read more
Why the Democrats won’t win big in November
Is a big blue Democratic wave poised to sweep the Republicans out of Congress in the 2018 mid-term election? To listen to much of the media, you might think so. A couple of weeks ago, the Washington Post quoted Nate Silver, the Yoda of Dem pollsters, who suggested that the “Democratic wave in 2018 may … Read more
Martin Luther King’s vision is being betrayed by progressives
Martin Luther King is easily misrepresented in our era of heightened identity politics, and of scepticism towards grand unifying ideals. For him, the campaign for black civil rights was firmly rooted in a very grand moral and political vision. Today’s progressives have largely lost sight of this wider vision; indeed the thought of it embarrasses
In The US of A, it’s a woman’s, woman’s, woman’s world!
New York If Albanian television had shown the programme CBS did last week — with a woman who has sex on camera for a living describing how she had unprotected Bing-Bing with the president — I think even Albanians would feel so diminished they’d move to Kosovo. But this is America, and it’s a woman’s,
Wednesday
Does Donald Trump wish he owned a newspaper?
Edward Luce warns today in the Financial Times that Donald Trump’s fusillades at Amazon and its proprietor Jeff Bezos are more than simply addled bluster. They represent, we are told, a coherent strategy to undermine independent media. “Trump,” Luce writes, “has already tilted the playing field towards his media allies.” Pshaw! Trump isn’t hurting Bezos. He’s … Read more
Mohammed bin Salman’s fake news
Some people will believe anything, so other people will say anything, especially if they’re desperate. The headline news in Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman’s chat with the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg is bin Salman’s statements that both Israelis and Palestinians “have the right to their own land”; that Saudi Arabia has “a lot of interests” … Read more
Does Melania’s cold shoulder explain Trump’s Twitter tantrums?
The First Lady has far more influence than her critics realise
Tuesday
Cynthia Nixon and the growing celebritisation of US politics
She was the angry one from Sex in the City, and now Cynthia Nixon is venting her spleen on behalf of the voters of New York. Last month, Nixon launched her pitch to challenge incumbent Andrew Cuomo as the Democratic candidate for the governorship of New York, invoking the wrath of many New Yorkers over … Read more
Gina Haspel’s nomination to head the CIA is a new low
Mere days after 9/11, Dick Cheney said the United States would have to work “the dark side” to prevent future attacks. Many Americans, obviously still jarred, didn’t seem to mind the vice president’s tough guy approach. But even as the War on Terror unfolded, at no time did the George W. Bush administration admit to … Read more
Can Scott Pruitt win his battle against the Green Blob?
Scott Pruitt is the greatest-ever Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. To be fair, though, the competition was never exactly stiff. The bar was set low right from the start, under the Nixon-era administrator William Ruckelshaus. Ruckelshaus is best known for his decision to ban the use of the insecticide DDT in the US. This, in turn, … Read more
Parkland’s secular saints shouldn’t be immune to criticism
Oh America, what have you done to your kids? Consider David Hogg, the 17-year-old survivor of last month’s massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida and now omnipresent media agitator for tighter gun-control laws in the US. That young Mr Hogg’s instant reaction to being criticised by a news anchor was to
Monday
Why are Harvard and MIT selling out to the Saudis?
Harvard and MIT will sell anything to anybody, regardless of the national interest
The perfect recipe for a Trump meltdown
President Trump has invited Russian president Vladimir Putin to the White House. This news is rocking Washington, but it shouldn’t really come as a surprise, at least no more than Trump’s willingness to meet with the portly pariah of Pyongyang. I have long suspected that Trump would like nothing more than to hold a state … Read more
Are you a winner or a loser in Trump’s trade war?
China ’s imposition today of tariffs on 128 imports from the US was inevitable – and is no doubt exactly the reaction that Donald Trump wants, giving him the excuse to announce yet more tariffs in addition to those on steel and aluminium imports which he has already imposed. After all he did say, even
A trade war with China sounds terrifying – but the US is doing the right thing
Nobody likes the sound of trade war, and rightly so. China’s new retaliatory tariffs against US products feel like the beginning of something bad: an escalating tit-for-tat trade conflict between the world’s richest countries which could choke the global economy. But there are good reasons to think that, far from being another silly move by
Saturday
For conservative Catholics, Pope Francis’s hell remarks commit a double heresy
But is he actually wrong?
Does President Trump believe in the resurrection?
Easter weekend must be interesting for the interfaith First Family
Friday
If Trump is Bertie Wooster, who is Jeeves?
California, once a citadel of conservatism, now a bastion of liberal progressivism, continues to harbour a few intellectual redoubts on the right. Up north you can find the Hoover Institution, which is located on the Stanford University campus. And down south, near Los Angeles, there is the Claremont Institute, another scholarly outfit which also happens … Read more
On guns and porn, morally elevated citizens should tell the busybodies to buzz off
Will foreign pornographers be the last defenders of the Bill of Rights? America is going through one of its periodic seizures of moral grandstanding, with gun owners and supporters of the Second Amendment now deemed so unclean that one may not even have commerce with them. Under pressure from Twitter mobs and activist bullies, companies … Read more