Snooty, educated elitist Anne Applebaum reckons DC already has more than enough populists, thank you: ...Small-town Republicans have figured among the most powerful and most prominent Washington politicians for much of the past decade. The result: Washington, however stuffy it may once have been, is no longer in need of "a little bit of reality from Wasilla Main Street." Washington is in...

I am of the opinion that life is going to get more and more surreal in the dying embers of the Gorgon's 'Bonfire of the Sanities'. As of next month, single women getting IVF treatment can name anyone they feel like as the father of their child. Anyone at all, male or female, will be legally the father and all that it entails. That person, male or female, can then be pursued and forc...

I am all in favour of paternity leave, currently the subject of a Downing Street petition. But I cannot see why it should only be available so early in the child’s life. Especially if the child is still breast-feeding, what, with the best will in the world, is the father actually doing all day? Whereas a teenager, in particular, might very well benefit enormously if his or her father were in a p...

With less than two weeks to go before the US might default on its debt, a hard reality is sinking in fast in Washington

The father of Damilola Taylor, the 10-year-old boy schoolboy killed in London a decade ago, yesterday condemned the release of one of his killers next month after only four years in jail.

Welcome to the new Post Modern global reality where almost nothing you see is real and certainly nothing you hear has any meaning. Enjoy it while it lasts because chilling reality has a historical record of making a showing sooner or later and the longer it is frustrated the worse the reality is when it

Reflecting on this story in the Washington Post, which describes Dick Cheney's "regret" that Dubya went all "soft" on issues like waterboarding and secret prisons during his second term, Massie makes an interesting observation: Freed from any kind of electoral or political reality, Cheney was able to rampage through Washington, doing all kinds of damage to almost every institution or office or age...

The BBC, as well as other news outlets, is carrying this story about the father of a dead soldier. The father is complaining about the lack of helicopters and other important equipment. It also turns out that a letter that was due to be sent from Downing Street to the man's father was sent very late. This is a sad and anger-inducing story: the father was interviewed, clearly distressed, on BB...

It has become a shared understanding of our culture in recent years that people are losing touch with the real reality - the one that exists outside our windows - and replacing it with a virtual reality that they imbibe through a screen. In fact, we might go so far as to suggest that the new class divide in our society is between those who gain their sense of reality through a plasma screen and th...

Some decades ago I was a young engineering student and my father send me a copy of a letter that Sir Frank Whittle was to send to the Washington Post. A few weeks ago I came across it in a box, along with the letter my late Father sent me. That letter was dated 1988, so the letter on the greenhouse effect must be earlier or the same date. What stuck me was how a man in the later part of his life c...