Author ArchivesJohn

I’ll be in trouble again on Crawley’s blog Will & Testament when the Brits wake up to read my latest comment to William’s latest post. In a post entitled ‘Ann Coulter’s Dirty Mouth’, Will writes: “Recent comments by Ann Coulter, the right-wing political columnist, continue to excite debate across American ...

I’ve discussed my position on global warming many times on and off air and on this blog. But sometimes the dynamics of this debate concern me. The Academy Awards on Sunday night comprised a definitive point in this dialogue in America, with Al Gore (An Inconvenient Truth) gaining star power ...

If any one justification for the abolition of the monarchy could prevail among those who love freedom, this is the best candidate. Prince Charles, in his incredible wisdom, on a tour of the United Arab Emirates, asked a nutritionist, “Have you got anywhere with McDonald’s, have you tried getting it ...

What a leader for news story: “It’s still going to be legal in Arizona for trucks to have splash guards with racist terms and silhouettes of naked women.” It seems that an Arizona state lawmaker wanted to make the use of popular mudflaps like the one pictured here illegal, and ...

I’ve dragged this piece from Libertarian Reason archives, cleaned it up a bit, added some pictures and opened up comments on it for the first time. This was originally written as part of a response to a BBC broadcast back in September 2005. Now, I’ve noticed even some libertarians tending ...

Of the few men who held libertarian ideals and governed a nation accordingly (and there are only a few), Thomas Jefferson was perhaps among the greatest. Why was he so great? For timeless quotations like this: “Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the governing of himself. ...

Typical. Something good comes along, and the government tries to destroy it. It’s a veritable cycle, affecting every good thing, and recently, that thing has been the iPod. First, the French government makes a law prohibiting Apple from selling iPods with an output of greater than 100 decibels to protect ...

The reason I love my wife is entirely selfish. And I’ve told her this, many times. Despite being told so often that only selfless love is valid, it’s what my wife does for me that causes me to love her (as, I’m reliably informed, is the reason she loves me ...

European governments are a bunch of fucks. That is a pure, observable fact, clearly demonstrated in a multitude of ways. And there’s no better example to prove my point about European governments being a bunch of fucks than to describe the attitudes of France, Germany and Norway toward Apple Inc. ...

I rarely read the Independent newspaper, and when I do it’s normally for the (unintentional) comedy value. For those of you who have never read it, imagine a secular version of the biblical Book of Revelation and you’re getting close to how it reads. The Independent’s columnists frequently come off ...

I once wrote about a conversation I had with a friend of a friend, a Christian conservative who told me that he would only watch films that are appropriate for his teenage daughter to see. For him, the measure of a movie’s worthiness is whether or not it is suitable ...

Ladies and Gentlemen! Welcome to tonight’s “shrieking like a cat with a firework up its arse” final! In the steely grey corner…he’s known for his confrontational sandwich board style…give it up for Mr Miserablist Fundie Christian! And his opponent…in the pink fluffy corner, watch out for his/her (not sure from ...

Dr. Walter E. Williams has weighed in on the New York City trans fat ban. This is a great man. On the occasions I’ve heard him on the radio, I have found him compelling, entertaining and downright wise. His response to NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s claim that they’re “…just trying ...

This little episode made me giggle. It happened this week in Belfast: ************************ A certain law firm in Belfast has its own little in-house cafe, which recently did a deal with Starbucks to stock its coffee. A leading member of the law firm walked in and approached the counter. LAWYER: ...

On this post I made mention of my friend William’s competition on his BBC blog, Will & Testament. He is calling the competition Spirit of Lincoln (from inspiration of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address) and asked for entries that were under Lincoln’s 272 word limit. I entered my credo on the topic ...

To all the readers of this blog, to Stephen and his wife and son; peace and happiness this Christmas. John Wright

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote a piece last week* in which she teased 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama about his big ears. Well it seems he can’t quite handle that. Microphones picked up a conversation he had with Dowd after a speech of his in New Hampshire last ...

An old friend of ours, William Crawley (right), has a blog here to which both Stephen and I contribute comments fairly frequently these days. I mention this because, as Libertarian Reason has been rather quiet and time hasn’t permitted Stephen or myself to blog as much as we’d like to, ...

Gwyneth Paltrow’s furious backpeddling after her comments disparaging America at a press event in Spain over the weekend is really fairly pathetic. She says she mistranslated her own words into Spanish and would “never, ever” have said what she was quoted as saying. However, as the irrepressible Michelle Malkin points ...

Today sees the release of a movie called Fast Food Nation, based on the 2001 book by Eric Schlosser of the same name. If you’ve ever read this book, you’ll know what irritates me about it. Like other leftist dross in the same vein, it’s dressed up as ‘investigative reporting’ ...