Conservatives for Patients’ Rights (CPRights) have a video up decrying government healthcare. The NHS has its problems; no-one would say that it is perfect. However, it does a pretty damned good job and it does so regardless of someone’s ability to pay. While we don’t see the faces of private healthcare – or those who [...]

I’m sure a lot of people saw the Louis Theroux programme on the problems of meth addiction in Fresno, CA. Following on from that, it seems worthwhile to point out the Montana Meth Project, a very hard-hitting series of advertisements that started as a privately funded initiative, only in Montana, but has since become publicly [...]

To all my readers in the USA. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. xD.

Norm Coleman has conceded victory to Al Franken in the Minnesota senate race after eight months of recounts and litigation, as reported by the Star Tribune. It has been obvious for some time that Franken was going to have the election given to him; delaying by Coleman was to keep the GOP’s ability to filibuster [...]

Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was “civis Romanus sum”. Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is “Ich bin ein Berliner”. I appreciate my interpreter translating my German! There are many people in the world who really don’t understand, or say they don’t, what is the great issue between the free [...]

Tim Pawlenty, the GOP governor of Minnesota, announced at a press conference today that he will not seek a third term. Plenty of people (including myself) have been talking about Pawlenty as a GOP challenger to Obama in 2012. Finishing his job in 2010 would give him time enough to run ‘unencumbered’. Instinctively, Pawlenty is [...]

Congratulations to Governor John Baldacci (D) who today signed a bill legalising same-sex marriage in Maine after LD1020 passed the state senate by 21 to 13, having passed the state house yesterday by 89 to 57. Congratulations also to Sen Dennis Damon who sponsored the bill. The law does not compel religious organisations to perform [...]

Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania is leaving the GOP for the Democrats (NPR, BBC). Assuming that Al Franken is declared the winner in Minnesota, the Democrats will have a filibuster-proof sixty votes. This is going to shift the spotlight very much to Minnesota in the short and medium term. The (sort-of) incumbent, Norm Coleman, is [...]

The thesis of Garreau’s 1981 book, The nine nations of North America, is deceptively simple. Not only, he argues, are the borders between the states of the USA and between that country and Mexico & Canada are artificial constructions – they clearly are – but that they are irrelevant. There are commonly recognised regions with [...]

New Mexico has abolished its death penalty, the Seattle Times reports. Gov. Bill Richardson (Dem) was a former supporter of capital punishment; he has changed his position and, the bill easily having passed the NM house and senate, signed it into law. New Mexico has a substantial Catholic population – on the order of a [...]