Week of September 21, 2009

Obama's disapproval ratings exceed those of every president since Eisenhower at this early stage--except for Clinton, who had similar disapproval ratings nine months into his first term. And they can't be explained as the inevitable result of the administration's honeymoon period coming to an end: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and George H.W. Bush all saw their popularity rise during the same period Obama's has fallen.

Juan Cole

Khamenei and Ahmadinejad are turning Iran into a pariah state. I warn that if they keep going down this path, they are going to end up like North Korea.

Ian Dunt

Britain's libel laws have shamed us internationally. There's a pernicious peculiarity to libel, which allows for a case to be launched in the UK if someone in the country viewed the article on the net, wherever the website is based. It's just one of the many foolish, irresponsible and profoundly inane aspects of the way libel applies on the net. Another, which belongs firmly in a parallel legal universe where logic is considered frivolous, states that each day a new potential libel begins on a given article, complete with a new statute of limitations. Similar legal nonsense applies to books which anyone at all in Britain has read. Any kind of contact with the UK - digital or otherwise - means the case can be heard here. And it invariably is, because Britain has the most draconian libel laws in the civilised world.

The burden of proof is on the defendant, not the claimant, meaning the writer has to prove he did not defame someone, rather than the other way round. The sheer wrongness of this state of affairs is overwhelming. You shouldn't have to prove you didn't rape or burgle anyone, so why should you have to prove you didn't defame anyone?

Matt Latimer

Choosing John McCain as our standard-bearer would be the height of self-delusion. It would be like putting Camilla Parker Bowles in charge of the Princess Diana Foundation.