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A universal franchise is, of course, a Good Thing. Yet, via Kieran Healy, comes news of this Pew finding: There is little evidence that the recent news about Obama’s affiliation with the United Church of Christ has dispelled the impression that he is Muslim. While voters who heard “a lot” about Reverend Wright’s controversial sermons
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We knew everything we needed to know about Bertie Ahern from the moment his mentor Charlie Haughey declared that of all the young thrusters in Fianna Fail, Ahern was “the most skillful, the most devious, the most cunning of them all”. It’s tempting to conclude that this endorsement provided sufficient grounds for barring Ahern from
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Another splendid Sarah Lyall dispatch from London, this time on the nonsense of Boris vs Ken in the London mayoral election. It’s a fine, entertaining, breezy read but the best bit is the final verdict on Boris: “He bumbles a lot, but he’s a lot cleverer than you think,” said Lizzie Vines, a 50-year-old Devon
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“It would give me the greatest of pleasure watching non-compliant tax-payers going to jail. That’s the kind of person I am.” Bertie Ahern, then Minister of Finance, 1993.
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I mentioned some of the factors that make Jim Webb, the Democratic Senator from Virginia, a less than entirely compelling Vice-Presidential pick for Barack Obama, here. To recap: when he campaigned for the Senate in 2006 Webb was, not to put too fine a point on it, hopeless on the campaign trail. You could see
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Homophobia Rife In British Society, Landmark Equality Survey Finds screams the Guardian’s headline. Really? Well, up to a point: Britain’s 3.6 million lesbian, gay and bisexual people see themselves confronted by huge barriers of prejudice at every level of society, according to the first authoritative poll of their views. The poll, commissioned by the equality charity
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The invasion of Iraq may have been deeply unpopular in much of the world, but this is the sort of horrific story that has done the United States much more damage than the initial decision to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime. And, alas, it’s hard not to think that this damage is entirely deserved. The shame
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Setting aside the issue of whether or not a House of Lords committee can accurately be considered “influential”… Record levels of immigration have had “little or no impact” on the economic well-being of Britons, an influential House of Lords committee has said. Well, that’s not the point. Or at least it’s not the point as
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Oh god. Here she goes again. ABC’s Jake Tapper reports that: In a speech in Philadelphia today, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, will compare herself to Philly icon Rocky Balboa. “Well, could you imagine if Rocky Balboa had gotten half way up those Art Museum steps and said, ‘Well, I guess that’s about far enough?'” Clinton
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Intro of the Day: NIKOLSKOE, Russia (Reuters) – Fourteen members of a Russian doomsday cult on Tuesday abandoned the remote underground bunker where they had been hiding for nearly half a year awaiting the end of the world. So who are these people? Alas, the story doesn’t give many details, offering just this tantalising glimspse
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Attention cricket fans: this is the best video you will have seen in ages. Left Arm Chinaman reconstructs the miserable first test between England and New Zealand… using blu-tack. Genius. [Via Will at The Corridor]
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Anthony Holden in The Observer: Carmen is back at Covent Garden for the first time since last summer’s Orwellian smoking ban and I’m delighted to report that the Royal Opera has taken not the slightest notice. If there’s any opera in which onstage smoking should be mandatory, this is it. Cigarette girls and soldiers alike
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James Forsyth looks at Northern Rock’s annual report and finds that its opening line is: “2007 was a difficult and challenging year for Northern Rock” Indeed so. I do hope that these words were chosen deliberately however. It rather ruins the fun if they weren’t.
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From today’s edition of The Scotsman: AS A town steeped in its common riding* traditions, the Royal and Ancient Burgh of Selkirk has tended to concentrate on reliving its past. It proudly proclaims itself as being the venue where William Wallace was declared Guardian of Scotland and on the second Friday** of June the streets
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So here we are again. After Armstrong, Benaud, Constantine and Dexter we come to John Edrich’s XI. 1. John Edrich (ENG) (Capt)2. Matthew Elliott (AUS)3. Bill Edrich (ENG)4. George Emmett (ENG)5. Russell Endean (SA)6. Farokh Engineer (IND) 7. Godfrey Evans (ENG) (Wkt)8. Steve Elworthy (SA)9. Richard Ellison (ENG) 10. Phil Edmonds (ENG)11. Tom Emmett(ENG) Poor Godfrey
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Ha! Those canny Germans! they published the fingerprint of German Secretary of the Interior Wolfgang Schäuble (link is to a Google translation of the German original). The club has been active in opposition to Germany’s increasing push to use biometrics in, for example, e-passports. Someone friendly to the club’s aims captured Schäuble’s fingerprint from a
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God forgive me, but I do enjoy tales of woe from the Manhattan dating scene. The latest dispatch from the front lines comes courtesy of Rachel Donadio in today’s New York Times and happily it doesn’t disappoint. At the outset the experienced reader knows this is going to be a corker: Some years ago, I
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You want to know more about the state of the sports memorabilia market? Of course you do. From my piece in this week’s Spectator: As was so often the case, P.G. Wodehouse reached deep into the heart of the matter: collecting sporting memorabilia requires dedication, a willingness to speculate, a tolerance of risk and, too
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Courtesy of Charles Moore in this week’s Spectator: Reviewing Stephen Robinson’s new biography of Bill Deedes in these pages last week, Peregrine Worsthorne was fierce against his old colleague. Worsthorne said that Deedes lacked the ‘willingness to tell the truth to power’ which is ‘indispensable’ to journalism. Bill did indeed hate confrontation, to a fault,
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This time in poor Colombia: Funded in part by the Bush administration, a six-year military offensive has helped the government here wrest back territory once controlled by guerrillas and kill hundreds of rebels in recent months, including two top commanders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. But under intense pressure from Colombian