Entries for August 23, 2006

The first arrests and disclosure of the London bomb plot were news in this country on the morning of August 10, two days after Sen. Joe Lieberman lost the Democratic primary to Ned Lamont. I speculated on Fox News that the London plot may have reminded voters that we are really threatened by vicious terrorists and that that may prompt them to be more supportive of George W. Bush and his fellow Republicans. Now we have some polls that tend to support that view.

The latest Guardian poll shows the Conservatives ahead of Labor by a 40 percent to 30 margin, with 22 percent for the Liberal Democrats. British politics is back to normal: From the 1960s to the 1990s the party in power trailed in the polls most of the time, as I have previously noted. Here's one prediction...

I missed the apprehension of Mexican drug lord Javier Arellano-Felix by the U.S. Coast Guard last week. (August 16 item) A Mexican political scientist asked me a reasonable question when I confessed I had not heard of this important development: Why does the American news media devote so much more attention to the arrest of the alleged killer of JonBenet Ramsey and so little to the apprehension of a major Mexican drug lord? I suppose our news media have reason to believe that their audiences are interested in the Ramsey murder. And for television it's a natural, with all those pictures of the adorable little girl in fancy outfits. But still--enough!