'Unfortunately, the people she emancipated sold their shares at the first opportunity and invested the proceeds in drink and cheap holidays'. A coldly snobbish remark worthy of the woman herself in full 'we are a grandmother' mode.

'They parade this poor women around the country. She can barely stand or speak and they are making a fool out of a brain injury victim just to push an illogical agenda.'

LEAVE SARAH PALIN ALONE!!!

'“His solution runs psychologically in the direction of disempowering the individual every single time,” Ablow said'.

And here's me, a silly old Brit, thinking that blowing a little girl's brains out disempowers her 100 per cent. Rather like getting drunk,, getting into a car and then running her over. Perhaps this 'doctor's' mind is too highly trained to see the parallel, though.

It might save everyone a lot of time and money if newspapers simply had to carry an official truth warning on the cover. 'This publication is under no legal obligation to present accurate, complete, or unbiased coverage of any news item'. Less costly that Leveson, anyway.

Pity the poor Irish, who failed to benefit from Christianity or representative government, probably by being TOO CLOSE to Britain, in a sort of moth-flamey way.

Page 3, with its simple message that teenage girls exist for the sexual gratification of older men, is a relic of more innocent times, when the likes of genial Uncle Jimmy could molest anyone's daughter any time he liked. Yes, long may it prosper.

Regarding sincerity, check out this Tea Party congressman pressuring his mistress to have an abortion. The idiot actually taped himself...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/10/scott-de...

H, a couple of questions. Do you think a minister who has given his support to homeopathy on the NHS is likely to have any legit science to back his stance on abortion? And don't you think it odd that that same minister should proclaim, very loudly, that his Christian faith has nothing to do with his stance?

The whole thing has a distinct odour of Christians v. the rest of us, which is some way from scientific or indeed libertarian debate. Surprised you took a different angle, really. Was a bit of feminist-bashing really just too tempting to resist?

I agree - the 'drone war' is simply wrong morally, and it's not politically winnable either - any more than the 'War on Drugs'. The problem is that Obama can't stop doing it without handing a propaganda victory to the rabid right, for whom killing foreigners - especially 'ragheads' - is always right and glorious. I have a gut feeling that, when he's re-elected, he might end it or at least drastically dial it down. Wish it was more than a feeling.

Not sure I follow you, H. In the heyday of dead-tree journalism - possibly the Fifties/Sixties, due to rising disposable incomes and relatively few TV channels? - most people bought one local and one national paper, if that, plus a Sunday, if that. Competition was quite ferocious because to win a reader to your paper you had to get him to stop reading another. So shouldn't an advocate of free enterprise propose competing paywall combines, each offering the same basic range of services with varied knobs on (more sport here, more smut there, obsessively detailed royal gossip in some suitable loonybin like the Express), and perhaps a legal obligation to offer everyone a few free items a month?

I'm also a bit baffled by the one-nation perspective you offer. Would the New York Times or South China Daily be behind the same paywall as the BBC or the Daily Mail? How can this kind of system work in a global e-village?