Free Republic

It has been a good week for President Obama — apart from the moment when Colonel Muammar Gaddafi called him “my son”. He has won the support of Russia, and maybe China, on pressing Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions. The remarks by President Medvedev were conditional, to be sure, but solid enough that Obama could stand smiling by his side and announce his success to the world. In opening the UN Security Council session yesterday he called for “the day when nuclear weapons have been banned”. He put this theme, toxically eccentric a few years ago, right at the...

Pop superstar Madonna's Re-Invention tour has been slammed by American critics - for overloading the show with "naive" political statements. The "American Life" singer, 45, kicked off the US leg of her tour in California on Monday but failed to impress critics with her attempts to "wipe the slate clean" by ditching her trademark raunchy routines. The Los Angeles Times sniped, "This promised to be Madonna's tour de force, a reappraisal that put her work in new and revealing contexts. But time and again she fell short of the challenge." Many critics were unimpressed by the images of the Iraq...