Last week, having tried and failed to kill him with the more traditional lethal injection, the state of Alabama suffocated Kenneth Smith to death for his role in a 1988 murder-for-hire. In this unprecedented method, which the state has called …
Andrew Sullivan: What I got wrong about Trump
Andrew Sullivan is one of America’s best known political observers and writers. He is an independent-minded conservative who supported Obama, was a leader of the gay marriage movement, and has since argued forcefully against Donald Trump. His Substack is one …
The Democrat extortion racket will backfire
In a viral speech earlier this month, the newly elected Argentine president Javier Milei accused Western leaders of embracing a vision of economic “collectivism” that will lead “to socialism, and therefore to poverty”. And in many ways, he’s right.
Signs …
California’s elite crowns its own AOC
“This district is the birthplace of the Black Panther Party,” Lateefah Simon proudly narrates, as she walks past murals of black nationalists. The camera then pans to shots of the University of California, Berkeley campus. “We taught the nation how …
After MAGA, a new Trump rises
As America inches ever closer to its next election, the rest of the world is now forced to face the fact that Donald Trump is almost guaranteed to be the Republican nominee, and the favourite to return to the White …
Dean Phillips: America’s first AI candidate
As Washington and the political world spent yesterday pouring over Nikki Haley’s disappointing performance in New Hampshire, another less well-known challenger was also licking his wounds. On the same night, Dean Phillips was hoping to pull off a surprise victory …
New Hampshire revealed America’s true divide
New Hampshire, then, was far from Donald Trump’s difficult second album. If anything, it was another performance of his Greatest Hits. His path to the White House is firmly in sight; Nikki Haley’s primary challenge, by contrast, has been rendered …
Ron DeSantis and the failure of pseudo-Trumpism
Now that Ron DeSantis has dropped out of the Republican primary race and endorsed Donald Trump, the race for the party’s presidential nomination has become more than just a battle of personalities — finally, it is a battle of ideas. …
David Mamet on Hollywood, Hamas and Donald Trump
Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and director David Mamet has, in his own words, gone from a Hollywood veteran to “the hermit of Santa Monica”. Celebrated for his plays American Buffalo, Glengarry Glen Ross, and Speed-the-Plow, Mamet has dedicated his formidable energy …
The American Crack-Up
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function”. His formula is justifiably famous, but it’s …
The media can’t live without Trump
Here we go again. About 30 minutes into counting the first votes of the Iowa caucus, the Associated Press, CNN, NBC and various other news networks called it for Donald Trump.
There was little doubt that the former president wasn’t …
Why American cities are squalid
The Thursday before Christmas, I woke up in downtown Sofia, leisurely drank a coffee, and jumped on a metro that took me directly to the airport. In less than an hour, I was at the gate for my flight to …
Is Iowa the next step to civil war?
In the silence of the Civil War’s Antietam battlefield on a winter day, bucolic hills give way to rows of small, white gravestones in the nearby cemetery. Wandering over the deadliest ground in American history, a melancholy visitor may be …
The Sopranos is a Freudian comedy
Thinking back on The Sopranos over the years, I’ve granted a sort of holy status to the scene in “Second Opinion” (Season 3, Episode 7) where Carmela is bluntly lectured by an elderly psychiatrist. She’s expecting some gentle double-talk from …
Should Britain lead the war in Yemen?
“The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living,” Karl Marx observed. When it comes to British military adventurism in the Middle East, that certainly rings true.
The recent history of British interventions …
