Poor Michael Jackson. His last words were: ‘Take me to the children’s ward.’ But it was nice of the jockeys in Santa Anita to wear a black mourning band in honour of a man who rode more three-year-old winners than anyone. Mind you, I thought the great Paul Johnson was the best when I happened to tell him over the telephone … [Read More]

Last Saturday, Honduran soldiers marched into the presidential palace, bundled up President Manuel Zelaya and put him on a plane for Costa Rica. The ouster had been ordered by the Supreme Court and approved by the Congress, as Zelaya was attempting an illegal referendum to change the Honduran constitution so he could run for another term. Will someone please explain why … [Read More]

Wonkette, if you have the good fortune of not knowing, is a left-liberal site that manages to consider itself cheeky and iconoclastic while endorsing only the most exquisitely conventional, establishment-approved opinions.  If you’re not located somewhere along that fantastic spectrum of genius that ranges from Chuck Schumer to Arlen Specter, Wonkette will expose you to the world as the misanthropic imbecile … [Read More]

Jacko was the King of Celebrity Eugenics. The late Michael Jackson was a strange individual, but his various obsessions, such as weight loss, whitening his skin, and expensively designing his children, were hardly unique to him. They are shared by more than few of his legion of female fans. To become a superstar, you have to embody some of the inner … [Read More]

A recent syndicated column by Thomas Sowell “Republicans in the Wilderness” includes useful advice but also misleading conclusions. According to Sowell, while “Republican moderates” Bob Dole and John McCain “lost disastrously to Democrats,” Republicans who have stood their ground, like Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich, have been more successful politically. Victorious Republicans have understood that “far more Americans describe themselves as … [Read More]

Speaking on FOX News the same day Sanford dropped his bombshell, former Bush adviser Karl Rove said: “With all due respect to Governor Sanford, I’ve never thought he was a particularly strong candidate. If you looked just beneath the surface in South Carolina, for example, there were a lot of strong conservatives who were very upset with his performance in office… … [Read More]

People often ask me how I can write about Thomas Jefferson or James Madison, Abraham Lincoln or the American Revolution, the U.S. Constitution or the South.  Hasn’t it all been said?  Isn’t there already a mountain of books about them? They are right to think that a great amount of ink has been spilled on these topics.  Where a layman’s intuition … [Read More]

Rolling though picture-perfect hills and fields of maize and barley towards Wembury House, Devon, for the annual Hanbury cricket match. At times it’s a scene from a ‘50s film of a long-ago England, beautiful, tranquil and law-abiding, with glimpses of broad greens, riverside walks and winding country lanes. But then comes the announcement in an English I can hardly comprehend, however … [Read More]

The fascinating news that the ageing William F. Buckley, beset by bladder problems, developed the habit of opening the door of his moving limousine and urinating into passing traffic—revealed by his son, Christopher Buckley in Losing Mum and Pup, his unsparing memoir of his just-deceased parents’ final year—is almost laughably symbolic. CB himself—whose father certainly presented him with much more distressing … [Read More]

Obama is a heavy-duty planner; a command and control kind of guy. He aims to replace cumbersome, heavily regulated medicine—the kind Americans have now—with Kafkaesque, centrally controlled care. He’ll start small—a modest healthcare expansion totaling $2 trillion—and will proceed from there. During the recent ABC News Health Care infomercial, put on for the Big Man’s benefit, the president smirked: “If private … [Read More]