I usually find these debates demeaning, because they’re not exactly Lincoln vs. Douglas. But I must admit that in the debate with Biden, I found Sarah Palin’s legs absolutely wonderful… <object width=“425” height=“350”> <embed src=“http://www.youtube.com/v/58C8YsTmf_8” type=“application/x-shockwave-flash” width=“425” ...

NEW YORK—The war on terror, as the most inarticulate man ever to inhabit the White House calls it, has now lasted longer than World War II. And take it from Taki, it’s not going away, not in my lifetime, that’s for sure. Insurgencies have a tendency to wear out their enemy and eventually prevail. Malaya (1948-1960) is the only exception. (Thank you Col. Thompson.) In 1946 the French fought an insurgency in Indochina, ...

When I read that actor Robert Wagner had had a four-year-long affair with Barbara Stanwyck back in 1952, my first reaction was that of envy and more envy. Wagner is 77 this year and Babs would have been 101, so when they were canoodling together he was 22 and she was 47. Excellent. Perfect. Young men need older women for sex as much as older men need younger ones later on. It is nature’s fit, a perfect combination which ...

The party’s over, it’s time to call it a day. They’ve burst your pretty balloon and taken the moon away. It’s time to wind up the masquerade. Just make your mind up, the piper must be paid. The party’s over, the candles flicker and dim. You danced and dreamed through the night, It seemed right just being with him. Now you must wake up, all dreams must end. Take off your make up, the party’s over, It’s all over, ...

GSTAAD—Walking up mountains is not only healthy, it gives a man time to think. In fact, climbing in solitude offers one marvellous inner adventures, with epiphanies being the order of the day. There are no boulders where I climb, just a lot of green, steep hills separated by gorges, with lots of cows to keep me company. About 15 years ago, I tried climbing up steep mountains tied to a rope, but it wasn’t for me. I ...

REGENSBURG—The mighty Danube begins in the park of the Furstenberg Palace and flows eastward for a distance of 2,000 miles across ten countries on to the Black Sea. Last weekend, Prince and Princess Heinrich von Furstenberg, the titular heads of the family who live in that palace, gave us a little tour of Walhalla, the German Hall of Fame situated further down the river from their park, in Regensburg, the perfectly ...

“Goblins and devils have long vanished from the Alps, and so many years have passed without any well-authenticated account of a discovery of a dragon that dragons too may be considered to have migrated.” So the Alpine Club was informed in May 1877 by Mr Henry Gotch, the secre-tary, and the news set off great celebrations among sporty but superstitious Englishmen. The golden age of mountaineering, as it was then ...

I just read about Charlie Reese’s retirement. His dignity and grace in his ultimate column is untypical of his profession today. Only two months ago the nation took time out to mourn the death of a courtier to the powerful, and what a time out it was. Three days of crocodile tears by smiling wallet lifters and bald-faced phonies whose absence on earth would not have been keenly felt even by their immediate ...

When Pat Buchanan and I founded The American Conservative back in 2002,  we held a press conference in Washington’s National Press Club. One of the first questions posed was how come Pat, famous for his espousal of family values, could ally himself with “a famous philanderer” like myself. Pat handled it well. One needs a sense of humor at such times, and, thank God, both Pat and I possess it. Basically it had to ...

Having sat on a boat for the last five weeks, I’ve had plenty of time to reflect, and reflect I did. Getting old tends to make one look back, nostaligize for that green light of the dock, and, of course,  the great F.Scott Fitzgerald himself. Yes, he was the master of evoking the grand old days, when Gatsby boys wore white ducks and ran around in open cars, their gals flighty, their hair not yet up, all giggly in ...

Just after the Berlin wall came down, I flew to Berlin with my German-Austrian wife and traveled around the city and its eastern parts. On visiting the Olympic stadium I told the taxi driver that my uncle, a hurdler, was the first athlete the Führer’s gaze fell upon as the parade of the 1936 games began, because we Greeks always go in first, having started the games back in 776 B.C., and because my uncle was the flag ...

Around 15 years or so ago, I was fast asleep late in the morning when I got an ear-splitting telephone call from Greece. It was Vicki Woods, a Telegraph writer, and she sounded anxious. If memory serves, and it does because she wrote a subsequent piece about it which made it in “The Week,” the conversation went as follows: “Oh hello, my name’s Vicky Woods, we’ve met a couple of times….ah at the ...

    “Belgium agrees to Holocaust restitution,” cries a New York Times headline on March 12. This is good news ... except that I was unaware that Belgium had been on the Nazi side 68 years ago. The piece goes on to clarify that campaigners welcomed the decision to compensate those whose propery and gold in Belgium had been looted by Nazi occupiers. But why should occupied Belgium be made to pay? ...

Admiral Fallon resigns as any honest man, and an admirable soldier, because he realizes that the Cheney-neocon network is still at work. We are at best hoping for a holding action in Afghanistan, and the same in Iraq, yet the madmen of the administration believe they can still pull a rabbit out of their hat before next November. Back in New York, a blackmailing bully who has studied Hollywood movies on how to act tough, drags ...

“And so the blood-drenched cycle begins again, each side convinced that it has no option but to make the other suffer.” This from a London Daily Telegraph >editorial. What my favorite London paper did not write about the latest outrage in Israel is that there is an option, and it is in Israel’s corner. The Jerusalem religious college that was attacked last week is the ideological heart of Israel’s ...

“The Steamroller,” as he liked to call himself, sure rolled over the poor prostitute—petite and only 105 pounds—in Washington D.C. I do not suffer from Schadenfreude, but in Spitzer’s case, I will make an exception. The guy’s the phoniest of all the phonies ever to hold public office. He went after innocent people, ruined names and reputations for no reason except to serve his own, and would ...