Blair is an amazing politician. Whether he has been tragically wrong or whether he competently chose the best options all along is indeed hard for us to know, and for him. However much he fought with Brown, it was the combination that has been good for the UK. Brown is too much of an egalitarian to be a good PM. Egalitarianism is the real threat of soul-destroying autocracy in this country: enforced global mediocrity. I hope Cameron is actually some kind of vaguely sensible libertarian like the kind that write the Economist, though that such a smart author as Andrew Brown doesn't seem to like him doesn't bode well.

If an American is ever trying to politely escape a tirade of anti-Americanism from a random English person, just bring up Blair. Some English people hate America because they see their democratic country doing what the American government wants, not what the population wants. But the same people hate Blair more for enabling it all. Though I agree with Andrew Brown; there may never have really been a better choice once Bush got elected. Americans deserve what they get from the British for not having worked harder to head of that clear catastrophe. Blair cannot be blamed for the loss of the Clinton / Gore administration he worked so well with.

Speaking to pages 3 & 4 of this article: I always thought Dawkins was crazy to be so combative & undermine evolution by aligning it with atheism. But having read this article, and seen that creationism is even spreading back to the UK, I think now he is right, at least mostly. Evolution is only a battle. But I think rather than fighting the war at the border between the natural and the supernatural, we should fight it at the border of science and non science. It's essentially the same thing, but easier.

It's pretty easy to show that the attempt to justify biblical literalism was a blind alley that lead us to where our science is now. Don't let the debate get dragged into the part of evolution that is still theory (how & why it happens), focus on the part that is established fact ( that it happens, that species change occurs), and show how ludicrous the whole biblical literalism game is. Do people really want to go back to the days when scientists tried to figure out how all extant species fit in the ark? That's where biblical literalism takes you, and that war was lost hundreds of years ago.

What we as scientists and public policy makers need to understand is how our public education fell apart enough that our culture could have forgotten some time in the late 20th century that we finished all this in the 19th century. If we can't solve this problem, science will be moving to Asia in the 21st century.

I was in North Carolina when the Bakers (remember Jim & Tammy?) were getting sent to jail, and the folks were saying "The devil pulls hardest on those doing the Lord's work."

I thought the same thing as you about how she should have a crowd right behind her. I assume Bill looked so large because of the zoom on the cameras --- the same reason the VP & Speaker always look so large at state of the union addresses. She / her stage managers should know better than that.

And yeah, her speech was terrible. I hope she stays in the Senate & becomes the next Ted Kennedy. She could probably do more good putting in 50 years there than anyone could do being president.

This is the best thing you've posted since Colbert roasting Bush (though the Swiss anti-world cup commercial was a close second.)

Hurrah, I think this is fantastic news. The biggest problem with liberals / the left is their tendency towards autocratic egalitarianism --- the fiction we are all the same and want to do the same things, are equally intellectual or artistic even though we aren't equally tall or heavy. The biggest problem with libertarians is turning their backs on social responsibility. If these two groups could get together & find a way to unify their positives & neutralize their negatives, this country may become a way better place.

To be fair, Iraq has been a steadily increasing mess, so they have been right every time they said the next six months were crucial. They don't seem to have been right about what to do about it though.

Wow, when I was growing up, the police could use force, but not pain. They could carry you out, but not inflict pain on you.

Yes this guy was a jerk and a possible danger to the other patrons and librarians. Until he was handcuffed and held by two officers. If those two guys couldn't carry him, why didn't they just phone for back up?

And *how* can all these letter writers think inflicting pain on an innocent man is OK? Innocent? UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY. Oh yeah, that's not true in America anymore either. Trials are optional.

I'm glad I left. Tell my mom I'm never going back.