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The Belfast Telegraph printed another letter of mine today. It was a response to an Irish Language enthusiast pontificating about “Irish language rights.”
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/letters/article3509436.ece
In her letter (Write Back, March 5) Janet Muller talks about language rights and, in particular, Irish language rights, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she already has the right to speak and […]

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Condoleezza Rice is a brilliant, shining light of a woman who I’ve always admired at a distance. Regardless of what you think of the Bush administration generally, Secretary of State Rice has always been exceptionally great at her job; she’s a believer in freedom, free markets and capitalism, and she’s a dependable and competent […]

 

 Mary Beth Brown on Condi Rice: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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There is so much that is wrong about rights; more specifically the way people speak and think about them. The topic is becoming pretty hot here in Northern Ireland at present with a Bill of Rights creeping ever closer. At its most basic a Bill of Rights will be a contract obliging the government to […]

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Jonathan Rauch writes:
“The eclectic McCain is a handyman, not an architect. His skills and positions are well suited to fixing the Bush-era mistakes and getting the country to listen to Republicans again. But he is not a man of ideas like Reagan, Barry Goldwater, or Newt Gingrich. He could lead the party out of the […]

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“The Virtue of the Labour Government.” Now there’s a sentence I never thought I would write. Those who have followed our musings for even just a little while will have seen our denunciation of much of what the Labour government has done. But they’re not all bad. Most them are as rotten as a bucket […]

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As Crawley reports this morning, it appears Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has trodden on a landmine of British legality with some comments made as part of his foundation lecture at the Royal Courts of Justice.
In short, Williams’ comments are a thoughtful discussion-opener on the question of whether the United Kingdom should allow Muslim communities […]

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Michael Kinsley had an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times on January 12th entitled ‘Libertarians deserve a listen‘. I agree! And I was interested to see the story. The same thing appeared in the Washington Post on the same day titled slightly less favourably The Church Doctrines of Pope Ron Paul, […]

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Apparently the presidential candidate favoured by black people is Barack Obama, who is black. Is this a coincidence? Is it wrong to ask that question? And, when a black person, upon being asked why they support Obama, answers “Because he’s the only one that sticks to his principles” is it wrong to […]

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Having this ideology can be a wearisome thing, because I rarely agree with anyone. Usually I’m up to the challenge of disagreeing with everyone I meet, but in the past few days I’ve just been exhausted by it. Either they’re a religious zealot or they’re an atheist; I’m neither. Either they’re an […]

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My article on the virtue of rational self-interest stirred up a bit of debate between one of our regular comment-leavers, Dave Powell, and I. Finishing up his contribution to the debate Dave left a link to an article by George Monbiot in which Monbiot has a little pop at libertarians and libertarianism - or least […]

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You may think it a ridiculous question. I do. The people who should celebrate religious festivals are the people who want to celebrate them. The people who should not celebrate religious festivals are people who do not want to celebrate them. We’re all individuals with different values, different religious beliefs, different […]

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This is about as good as it gets for a conservative presidential candidate pledging to be as tough on national crime as he was tough on New York crime as mayor. And before he was mayor of New York? He was prosecuting the mob. And they didn’t like that:
“The bosses of New […]

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Making politics sexy might just be the only way to get people to the polls. Released only today by the folks over at barelypolitical.com, I predict this will be the hit of the summer:

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Upon being asked about a scene in the film Love Actually wherein Hugh Grant, playing the UK Prime Minister, calls the United States a ‘bully’ and suggests it is “no longer a friend” of the United Kingdom, Blair responds: “When that bit of the film is played, often the audiences would applaud at the end […]

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What an exciting day for citizens of France who identify with the values of individualism and the principles of liberty. “Au revoir, Jacques Chirac, and bonjour to a new U.S.-friendly French president who identifies with the American dream and happily affirms that the French like burgers, Madonna and Miami Vice,” the Washington Post reports […]

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I’ll be in trouble again on Crawley’s blog Will & Testament when the Brits wake up to read my latest comment to William’s latest post. In a post entitled ‘Ann Coulter’s Dirty Mouth’, Will writes: “Recent comments by Ann Coulter, the right-wing political columnist, continue to excite debate across American political blogs. The […]

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I’ve discussed my position on global warming many times on and off air and on this blog. But sometimes the dynamics of this debate concern me. The Academy Awards on Sunday night comprised a definitive point in this dialogue in America, with Al Gore (An Inconvenient Truth) gaining star power within the powerful […]

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Now this is the kind of leading sentence I like in a news story: “It’s still going to be legal in Arizona for trucks to have splash guards with racist terms and silhouettes of naked women.” It seems that an Arizona state lawmaker wanted to make the use of popular mudflaps like the […]

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New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote a piece last week* in which she teased 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama about his big ears. Well it seems he can’t quite handle that. Microphones picked up a conversation he had with Dowd after a speech of his in New Hampshire last Sunday:
“You […]

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