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For the first time ever in the known history of Portcullis House there came before us, unsuspecting Westminster villagers, something of a mirage: the figure of the Rt Hon Baroness Thatcher looking heavenly in a sharp-cut royal (Tory) blue suit.
The Barons have spoken; we just don’t know what they said

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Timothy Garton Ash
Ever since I learned how to read sentences in English I have been reading one and all stories by Timothy. As an outsider to Central and Eastern Europe Timothy reported stories which many of us assumed were impossible to put down on paper. He dared to imagine Europe I did not even dare to dream about such as the prediction back in early 1980s that the Iron Curtain woulod come down in our lifetimes. To boot his vision is captured for prosperity in different newspapers around the world. Timothy turned communist concrete into dust... Ash is just an amazing fireproof Giant!
This is a crisis of the West that's quite different from all the crises we had during the Cold War, because then we were always brought together again by the common enemy, the Soviet threat, and now we're not. We see "the enemy" in different ways. I think the Iraq crisis brought to the surface something that was latent, and not just since 9/11, but from what I call "the first 9/11," Nov. 11, 1989 [9/11/89 in European notation], not the fall of the Twin Towers but the fall of the Berlin Wall, when the common enemy disappears and Europe ceases to be the center of world politics. If you're sitting in Washington, you say to yourself, Well, what do I need Europe for? It's irrelevant.
And I think somebody like Dick Cheney does say that to himself. I think that's the deepest root of the crisis. Of course, it was exacerbated by a) 9/11 and b) the Bush administration reacting as it did.
• A British historian of the present ponders America, Europe and the future of the West [Deutscher’s Trotsky was thought by two generations – his own and its successor Victory in Defeat ]
• · The pajamahadeen are firing their virtual bullets into the cyber-air in celebration of CBS anchor Dan Rather's death The pajamahadeens are digging their own graves
• · · Brilliant title behind this sad case of a woman basher Legal Precedent Doesn't Let Facts Stand in the Way
• · · · There is some association between the idea that I have a right to be let alone by the government and not having a large dog circle my car Smells like privacy invasion
• · · · · Evolutionary roots of altruism and moral outrage