Usually, it’s impossible to argue with people who make comparisons between the incumbent US administration and various past totalitarian systems, particularly when the argument turns to a comparison between George W Bush and the Austrian guy with the Charlie Chaplin moustache. Whatever you think of George W Bush and his administration - still a mystery [...]

On Crooked Timber, Henry Farrell has already emptied his glass of constitutional champagne and makes several quite reasonable predictions about the future of the formal and informal relations between the EP, the Commission, and the Council with respect to Commission appointments.

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The incompetent or the incoherent?
It’s hard not to giggle. The Economist is probably the most prestigious name in the business press in the US. The editors’ backhanded compliments to Bush don’t cover a contempt for his bungling, even as they support his efforts point by point.
[A]s Mr Bush has often said, [...]

I didn’t know this until just now, but the signing ceremony for the EU constitution is going to start in a few minutes. Le Monde is reporting that the signing starts at 11:30 this morning Europe time - about ten minutes from now. The ceremony is in Rome - where the EU was [...]

Trying to explain the inner workings of EU governance to non-Europeans is a bit like trying to explain the importance of the American League’s designated hitter rule to baseball neophytes. So it’s in the spirit of the 2004 World Series Champion Boston Red Sox that I present my European press review, written for Slate, for [...]

A warm welcome to the latest additions to our collective, Claudia and Doug Muir.

The first European newspaper to endorse George W. Bush ist the German mass paper “Bild”.
“With Bush, we know what to expect. With John Kerry, nobody knows what he stands for, what he stands against, and where he wants to lead America and the world.” So writes Hugo M?ller-Vogg, ex-editor of the more respectable [...]

It seems the big science news today is the discovery of a new species of homind in a dig on Flores Island in Indonesia. Homo floresiensis, who apparently was about a metre tall apparently lived as recently as 13,000 years ago - much more recently than any known homnid other than humans, and there [...]

2000 British readers of the Radio Times voted Homer Simpson for President. The cartoon character tops a list of several fictional TV characters, which UK tellly viewers would prefer as US president. According to the BBC, “The West Wing’s” “real” fictional US President, Josiah Bartlet, polled second, only slightly ahead of radio therapist Frasier (link [...]

“It is better to take time to get it right.”
When Jos? Manuel Barroso asked the European Parliament with these words not to vote on his current commission line-up, European Parlamentarians welcomed his decision, downplaying that he was rather late for the party, emphasizing that he showed up at all. But of course, the EP [...]