Author: admin

When I first went to Britain to live, it was during the dark days of the miners’ strike and the three-day week and the two elections of 1974. It pretty swiftly became apparent to me that the Labour government headed by Harold Wilson and, later, by Jim Callaghan, was making a royal mess of things….

As you might expect of a nation which, in the writings of its domestic and imported socialist intelligentsia, gave birth to the myth of “capitalism,” the British papers have been full of discussion this week about the implications for capitalism of the current crisis in the world’s financial markets. Some say, with Jeff Randal of…

From both left and right today come righteous appeals to truth and against the mealy-mouthed media’s unwillingness to call a lie by its proper name. In the Washington Post’s blogs, Michael Kinsley asks: “Why Do Lies Prevail?” and cites as the “lie” under the Kinsleyan microscope the McCain campaign’s complaint that Barack Obama had insulted Sarah…

In a feature that runs every Monday in The Washington Post under the heading: “Department of Human Behavior,” a Mr Shankar Vedantam regularly provides grateful readers of that organ with scientific proof that the sort of liberal and progressive attitudes that most of them harbor are more, well, scientific, than the alternatives. Today, for instance,…

I don’t know about you, but I’m having a hard time keeping up. The swirl of rumor and counter-rumor about poor Sarah Palin means that the media’s scandal machine has been put into overdrive. But now I’m beginning to think that the machine may have been overloaded and is now beginning to choke and sputter…

My friend Ramesh Ponnuru called Senator Obama’s address to the greater Democratic convention at Invesco Field last night a “dishonest” speech, and I think I see what he means. But to me it goes way beyond dishonesty. Dishonesty is sort of honest, when you think about it. At least, in affirming the truth of a falsehood,…

Michael Kinsley is full of outrage that the Republicans should be trying to characterize Barack Obama as an elitist, but at least he is not surprised. That’s the kind of thing they always do. “With so much going their way in this election, the biggest challenge the Democrats face is simple: The Republicans just play the…