A decision at the European Union summit in Brussels to link EU spending to the budgets of member states that are planning austere fiscal measures would not have happened without UK action, the prime minister claims
Energy analysts are still digesting news from the US last night that the US National Commission investigating the Macondo oil spill had found that both BP and Halliburton had known about problems with the cement used to seal the well, but did not act o…
Lauren Booth and her sister Cherie Blair are becoming the sort of spoof characters who can no longer be covered in the serious parts of the paperAn enormously proud day for both this column and the country, as the Blair-Booth family make their official Lost in Showbiz debut, being the sort of obviously spoof characters [...]
Dana Milbank sees Obama’s appearance on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show as less than a triumph. I agree.
On Comedy Central, the joke was on President Obama Wednesday night.
The president had come, on the eve of what will almost certainly be the loss of hi…
After enduring torments in George Orwell’s 1984, Winston Smith learnt to love Big Brother. After the midterm elections, which are also likely to be painful, Barack Obama should learn to love big business.
An excellent piece by John Heilemann describes how Sarah Palin could become the next president. Will she run, he asks? She’s already running, he answers. Could she get the nomination? You betcha. Well, supposing she goes forward to the general el…
Almost all Democrats and even some Republicans were sure the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a measure opposed by most Americans when Barack Obama signed it in March, would be popular in short order. The electorate is timid about far-rea…
I am startled by the news that NPR has sacked Juan Williams, apparently for saying this on The O’Reilly Factor:
I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when…
How deferential should society be to its experts? Joe Klein recently drew attention to the “classic American myth” of the political amateur, possessed of ordinary integrity and plain common sense–Mr Smith Goes to Washington, and all that. Reg…
Last night WV Senate candidates Joe Manchin, supposedly a Democrat, and John Raese, the Tea Party favourite, met (along with the Mountain party and Constitution party candidates, deservedly trailing far behind) in their only planned TV debate. I though…
West Virginia is one of the poorest and most beautiful states in the union; recently it has been one of the most interesting to students of US politics. As a new (for the moment, part-time) resident, I am following with particular curiosity the battle …
From Peter Baker’s profile of Obama in the NYT magazine:
As we talked in the Oval Office, Obama acknowledged that the succession of so many costly initiatives, necessary as they may have been, wore on the public. “That accumulation of numbers on th…
The New Republic has posted some interesting pieces on the politics of climate change. Bill McKibben deplores the anti-science stance of the Republican party. Jim Manzi replies that McKibben and other climate-change activists have relied too much on st…