Neat. This is an "official" photograph from the UK Prime MInister's Office. I've actually walked up those stairs when I was covering Harper's first visit to 10 Downing Street in 2006 (A Mr. T. Blair was the occupant at ...   more »

The fact that the least conservative, least divisive Republican in the 2008 race is the last one standing—despite being despised by significant voices on the right—shows how little life is left in the movement that Goldwater began, Nixon brought into power, Ronald Reagan gave mass appeal, Newt Gingrich radicalized, Tom DeLay criminalized, and Bush allowed to break into pieces.... Buckley, Jr.,’s mission statement, in the inaugural issue of National Review, in 1955, that the new magazine “stands athwart history, yelling Stop”; and to Goldwater’s seminal 1960 book, “The Conscience of a Conservative,” in which he wrote, “I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size.   more »

The top 20 of of the 1,933 posts archived here are ranked here from those with the most views in May to the least, with their original posting date in brackets. ...(Thu 01 May 2008 03:52 PM EDT) So tell me again: Why did we spend $3.4-billion on these things?

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David Runciman, writing in the London Review of Books, says the British media has been too "slow" with their coverage of the U.S. presidential primaries: If nothing else, the existence of the internet has destroyed the claims of the mainstream media in Britain to be able to offer any insight into this election. The BBC, whose coverage of British politics looks increasingly lame, has been hopeless at Obama v. Clinton. It’s not enough any longer for a correspondent to paint some local colour about the weather or the quirks of the voting system before asking a seasoned observer from the New York Times or Washington Post to explain to a British audience what it all means.

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