|
Bottum: McCain and the Hoyas
I'd missed it earlier in the week, but over at Salon on Tuesday, Mike Madden noted that after the Georgetown-West Virginia game on January 26, John McCain called Mark Salter, his "longtime speechwriter/Senate chief of staff/intellectual alter ego," to describe the goaltend (er, block, I mean; yes, block) by which Patrick Ewing Jr. had won the game. "A Georgetown alum," Madden notes, "Salter has season tickets in the front row at the Verizon Center; about the only thing that gets him more fired up than Mitt Romney is Big East basketball. (At the bar after the Super Bowl Sunday night, he cursed at the TV when the Boston Fox affiliate compared the Giants' win to Villanova's 1985 NCAA tournament upset win over Georgetown)." Seems pretty newsworthy to me, but Madden pushes it into the mystical territory of the true Georgetown fanatic where my daughter and I dwell when he adds: "The Hoyas have been a near-perfect predictor of McCain's fortunes this year.
Speaker's corner
Suspected drunk drivers in Britain are sometimes asked to try to say, without slurring: "The Leith Police dismisseth us". That was the Leith Police's only claim to fame until now. Now they are all over the internet after somebody leaked some e-mails between the Leith Police and an irate citizen. The correspondence began: Dear Sir/madam/automated telephone answering service. Having spent the past 20 minutes waiting for Leith Police Station to pick up a telephone, I have decided to try e-mailing. Perhaps you would be so kind as to pass this message on to your colleagues by means of smoke signal, carrier pigeon or ouji board. As I'm writing there are 11 failed medical experiments (I think you call them youths) in West Cromwell Street who seem happy to play a game which involves kicking a football against an iron gate with the force of a meteorite.
Obscurity and confinement for migrants in Europe
They are in railroad depots. They are in old grain stores and recycled factories. Some are brand new, others are in adjuncts of prisons. One is on a ship anchored in the Dutch port of Rotterdam. From Ireland to Bulgaria, from Finland to Spain, detention camps for foreigners have mushroomed across the European Union. They have emerged mostly over the past decade, as the region has grown less and less welcoming to migrants. There are now 224 detention camps scattered across the European Union; altogether they can house more than 30,000 people - asylum-seekers and illegal immigrants awaiting deportation - who are often held in administrative detention for as long as 18 months. In a number of EU countries, there is no upper limit on detention length. "Detention is a very serious measure in a democratic society - governments deprive people of their liberty when they are convicted of a serious crime," said Katrine Camilleri, a refugee lawyer in Malta with the Jesuit Refugee Service, which on Dec.
Bottum: McCain and the Hoyas
I'd missed it earlier in the week, but over at Salon on Tuesday, Mike Madden noted that after the Georgetown-West Virginia game on January 26, John McCain called Mark Salter, his "longtime speechwriter/Senate chief of staff/intellectual alter ego," to describe the goaltend (er, block, I mean; yes, block) by which Patrick Ewing Jr. had won the game. "A Georgetown alum," Madden notes, "Salter has season tickets in the front row at the Verizon Center; about the only thing that gets him more fired up than Mitt Romney is Big East basketball. (At the bar after the Super Bowl Sunday night, he cursed at the TV when the Boston Fox affiliate compared the Giants' win to Villanova's 1985 NCAA tournament upset win over Georgetown)." Seems pretty newsworthy to me, but Madden pushes it into the mystical territory of the true Georgetown fanatic where my daughter and I dwell when he adds: "The Hoyas have been a near-perfect predictor of McCain's fortunes this year.
Speaker's corner
Suspected drunk drivers in Britain are sometimes asked to try to say, without slurring: "The Leith Police dismisseth us". That was the Leith Police's only claim to fame until now. Now they are all over the internet after somebody leaked some e-mails between the Leith Police and an irate citizen. The correspondence began: Dear Sir/madam/automated telephone answering service. Having spent the past 20 minutes waiting for Leith Police Station to pick up a telephone, I have decided to try e-mailing. Perhaps you would be so kind as to pass this message on to your colleagues by means of smoke signal, carrier pigeon or ouji board. As I'm writing there are 11 failed medical experiments (I think you call them youths) in West Cromwell Street who seem happy to play a game which involves kicking a football against an iron gate with the force of a meteorite.
Obscurity and confinement for migrants in Europe
They are in railroad depots. They are in old grain stores and recycled factories. Some are brand new, others are in adjuncts of prisons. One is on a ship anchored in the Dutch port of Rotterdam. From Ireland to Bulgaria, from Finland to Spain, detention camps for foreigners have mushroomed across the European Union. They have emerged mostly over the past decade, as the region has grown less and less welcoming to migrants. There are now 224 detention camps scattered across the European Union; altogether they can house more than 30,000 people - asylum-seekers and illegal immigrants awaiting deportation - who are often held in administrative detention for as long as 18 months. In a number of EU countries, there is no upper limit on detention length. "Detention is a very serious measure in a democratic society - governments deprive people of their liberty when they are convicted of a serious crime," said Katrine Camilleri, a refugee lawyer in Malta with the Jesuit Refugee Service, which on Dec.
|
