The Republicans gave us Trump, and the Democrats gave us just about the only candidate so compromised and unloved that she could lose to Trump. Utter catastrophe ensues....   (read more)

"I wholeheartedly agree with Donald Trump in his number-one issue in this campaign; and I wholeheartedly agree with Clinton in her number-one issue in this campaign: DON'T vote for Hillary Clinton... and DON'T vote for Donald Trump." - Governor Gary Johnson...   (read more)

Governors Johnson & Weld are in favour of a balanced budget, term limits, and end to military adventurism, a simplified tax system, continued immigration to strengthen our immigrant nation, and strong protections for civil liberties including marriage equality. In other words, they believe in what most Americans do: fiscal responsibility, and social tolerance....   (read more)

The rise of Trump, and Trumpism, is the worst thing I've witnessed happen in or to American in my lifetime. It is a hundred times more dangerous and damaging than 9/11, as it strikes at the very heart of what America is and represents. Right now, simply, America is having a close call with fascism....   (read more)

Here's a bit of contemporary history for you. After the 2008 election, but before the handover of power, Bush invited Obama over to the White House for a one-on-one sit-down meeting, in which he begged the incoming president to preserve just two programs......   (read more)

Spend just a few minutes watching these delightfully entertaining two-minute videos introducing you to your real, thrilling alternative to Dipshit (Romney) and Spendthrift (Obama)....   (read more)

I really think everyone ought to watch the recent speeches by President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu at the U.N. The vivid moral clarity shown here - about orgiastic religious violence, about a nuclear-armed and messianic terror state in Iran, about a citizenry-slaughtering dictator in Syria - is much needed, and frankly awesome....   (read more)

So, as you will or will not have read, U.S. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, just before his big visit to London, executed the blinding diplomatic maneuver of slagging off London's epic seven-year preparations for the 2012 Olympic Games....   (read more)

Okay, I know I'm turning into a broken Fuches on this subject - but as long as Egyptians are still pouring daily into Liberation Square and facing down machete-wielding government thugs, the least I can bloody well do is keep on blogging. Speaking of heroics, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times has been dispatching daily from Tahrir Square for several days now (despite serious risk of violence or disappearance). This video is awesome, especially if you happen to be of a feminist bent....   (read more)

If you've been ruling a country of 80 million people by fear for 30 years, you can certainly roust up a few hundred, or even a couple of thousand, thugs on a week's notice - to go out and rough up peaceful protestors, to instigate violence, to foment chaos. So that you can cling to power as the saviour from chaos. Bastard....   (read more)

We owe it to the brave men and women of Tahrir Square - and to our own history and values - to make one thing very clear: We stand with the peaceful throngs pleading for democracy....   (read more)

I was privileged to be able to turn out on Saturday to stand with the incredibly brave Egyptian people in their struggle for freedom. It was a wonderful, inspiring day....   (read more)

One degree centigrade. Iron grey skies. Freezing, blasting wind across Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. This was officially one of those "You Don't Have To Enjoy It / You Just Have To Fucking Do It" runs....   (read more)

The Egyptian regime has done what police states always do in a crunch - they cracked skulls, rounded people up in unmarked vans, and hauled them off to secret prisons. In a modern totalitarian twist, they've also blocked Twitter....   (read more)

First-of-their-kind anti-government protests have rocked Egypt. As many at 15,000 people gathered yesterday in al-Tahrir Square in Cairo. Word on the street is that there will be a demo outside the Egyptian Embassy in London (Mayfair), today--from 3pm to 6pm....   (read more)

If you haven't already got a program, here's your concise guide to a few of the new Iraqi ministers (not a few of whom have pretty interesting and, in some cases heroic, backgrounds)....   (read more)

Well, it looked like it was happening again. ("It" being student protests-cum-riots.) I passed this one police constable (PC) who looked like he was completely loaded for bear...   (read more)

Apparently your student population isn't pleased about paying ANYTHING for a higher education......   (read more)

It's like the Battle of Algiers out there. I counted no fewer than 41 police vans on, or just off of, Parliament Square....   (read more)

I happened to catch some bits of the last Prime Minister's Questions. This man is a total knob - a muppet of the first rank. And Mr Cameron gives him a well-deserved, and well-executed, spanking....   (read more)

Sometimes it takes a friend to remind you of who you really are....   (read more)

"The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good, in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it." - John Stuart Mill...   (read more)

George Will, whose intellect, erudition, and facility with language I have always admired greatly (while disagreeing with him on a number of issues), has just published four columns in a row on Israel, dispatched from Jerusalem, and appearing in the Washington Post....   (read more)

Proud to be an American again today. A federal judge has ruled that the state's ban on same-sex marriage violated the 14th Amendment's rights to equal protection and due process of law....   (read more)

This morning I sent the following to my MP, the Rt Honourable Malcom Rifkind, MP for Kensington....   (read more)

...   (read more)

In every pro-Palestinian European forum I hear the left yelling with fervor: "We want freedom for the people!" Not true. They are never concerned with freedom for the people of Syria or Yemen or Iran or Sudan, or other such nations. And they are never preoccupied when Hamas destroys freedom for the Palestinians. They are only concerned with using the concept of Palestinian freedom as a weapon against Israel....   (read more)

I'm very pleased to say, and feel obliged to say (after my spew of vitriol about Brown), a few quick, heart-felt, gushing things about the new PM, Deputy PM - and 'our Liberal Conservative government' (to borrow Cameron's phrase)....   (read more)

Yesterday our Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, out on the campaign trail, had a very pleasant, smiling chat with a local woman, then jumped in his limo with his wireless mic still attached, and proceeded to completely slag her off....   (read more)

So I was walking to work across Westminster Bridge this morning, when I slowly overtook three blokes in camouflage shorts and carrying little donation kitties and one of whom had a backpack with a Union flag on a little pole flying out the back....   (read more)

There's a pretty important and powerful line of argument against the nationalisation of health care. I figured right-wing nut-job columnist Mark Steyn would have done the best job articulating this....   (read more)

This, right here, just a few minutes ago, was - not only the only household in the world - but almost certainly the only household in history in which Democracy in America (unabridged) was being read aloud while Sir Mix-A-Lot played in the background....   (read more)

"I understand why war is not popular, but I also know this: The belief that peace is desirable is rarely enough to achieve it. Evil does exist in the world." - Barack Obama...   (read more)

I'd forgotten, until reminded late this morning, that today is 7/7 - the fourth anniversary of the London Tube and bus bombings. So today seems a good, if not entirely un-controversial, day to point up the recent report: Sharia Law or 'One law for all'? from the think-tank Civitas...   (read more)

Last night I had the privilege and honour of turning up for the nightly, running protest rally outside the Iranian Embassy, on Prince's Gate, opposite Hyde Park, in London....   (read more)

As you will no doubt have noticed, Iran continues to burn - both with the oppression of the mullahcracy, and also with a tremendous desire for freedom and human rights. There's a semi-organised protest/rally outside the Iranian Embassy every night this week, 6-9pm....   (read more)

I told him that really a Tube Strike is pretty much like the weather - no one can do anything about it, so everyone just works around it, and I like running, anyway. Well, by the end of yesterday, I've changed my position. My position now is: Frack TFL....   (read more)

Daniel Hannan, whom I've extolled previously, has a tongue like a serpent's tooth, an indominitable protectiveness over liberty - and a seriously mean streak towards Gordon Brown....   (read more)

"On the current course, nuclear terrorism is inevitable. Indeed, if the United States and other governments keep doing what they are doing today, a nuclear terrorist attack on America is more likely than not in the decade ahead. With a ten-kiloton nuclear weapon stolen from the former Soviet arsenal and delivered to an American city in a cargo container, Al Qaeda can make 9/11 a footnote."...   (read more)

Here are two extremely energizing political commentators upon whom I've stumbled in my various trawlings of the rightward edges of the InterWebs. Both are young, both are hip, both are right-wing nutjobs, both have beef, and - perhaps most importantly - both are funny as all heck. Seriously....   (read more)

Anyone who knows anything about the European Parliament - and you're really better off not - will know that one of the few non-horrifying things about it is that British guys who are totally opposed to the European project can get elected as Ministers to the European Parliament (MEPs) and then turn up and rubbish the place anytime they are allowed to speak....   (read more)

As you will have read (and some of you thoughtfully commented upon), Dutch MP Geert Wilders was refused admission to the United Kingdom yesterday due to his political views... Below is the speech that Mr Wilders would have delivered in the House of Lords, had it not been banned....   (read more)

"Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion....   (read more)

The fact that McCain lost me has now freed me to vote my conscience: to vote Libertarian - the Party of Principle....   (read more)

Everyone likes Joe Lieberman. Well, some people, like Erin, are disappointed in Joe Lieberman. But everyone likes (and respects) him. He's like your favourite, goofy, Jewish uncle. Uncle Joe....   (read more)

I've been sort of making a conscious decision not to weigh in too much, or at all really, on the U.S. presidential election. This for a few reasons:...   (read more)

I know I've been a little hot and heavy with the political, and also the pro-military, stuff. I've had one or two unsubscriptions from dispatch lately, presumably as a result. I confess these give me pause (and, okay, sting a little, too) - though of course A) I have no expectation that people will always read my stuff, and B) if I weren't annoying anyone, I probably wouldn't be saying anything very interesting...   (read more)

...   (read more)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the Somali-born feminist, writer, and politician who has been living under 24-hour guard since a promise to kill her was found pinned to the body of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gough...   (read more)

We know what's going on. Nicholas Kristof details it in in today's New York Times. It's easy to speak up. In U.S., e-mail your Senators and Congressperson. In U.K., fax your MP....   (read more)

"Defying the suicide bombers and head-hackers, courageous Iraqis went to the polls in huge numbers. Before the vote, the naysayers told us that the indelible purple dye on each voter's finger would mark them out for punishment by 'insurgents'. Instead, it became a defiant symbol of the country's freedom....   (read more)