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Day of the Jackal
A young punk who lives on the streets of Los Angeles tried to make his mark during the WTO protests in Seattle.
By Bill Donahue
[12/08/99]

The congressman from Columbine
For Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo, reelection seemed inevitable -- until tragedy struck Littleton.
By Jake Tapper
[12/07/99]

The GOP's Hispanic high hopes
George W. Bush's symbolic gestures to the Texas Latino community have gone a long way. But will the approach work in states like California?
By Gregory Rodriguez
[12/07/99]

A peace that's about to explode
As more than 10,000 NATO troops prepare to leave Bosnia, the Clinton administration is simply hoping stability will last until Election Day.
By Laura Rozen
[12/06/99]

Alan Keyes called me a racist
The GOP presidential candidate can cry "racism" all he wants, but it's his own paranoid egoism that threatens his campaign.
By Jake Tapper
[12/06/99]

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London has had a lord mayor since the Middle Ages, but in modern times, it has been little more than a courtesy title, an annual reward for merchant philanthropists. The lord mayor's nominal jurisdiction is only over the square mile in the center called the City of London.

So when Blair came up with the idea of executive mayors with real power for Britain's larger cities, the only people who bridled were hard-line traditionalists. They objected that it was one more step down the slippery slope toward complete Americanization.

The political parties in Britain particularly loved the idea. A LaGuardia-Walker-Giuliani for London provided the opportunity to promote one of their own to greater glory -- and maybe even tackle some of London's chronic problems, such as traffic gridlock, lamentable public transportation and a failing police force. Party leaders enthusiastically began preparations for the first election to be held May 4, 2000.

But of the three effective parties, only the Liberal Democrats could agree on a candidate. They speedily nominated an unknown, Susan Kramer, who has stayed that way and will inevitably finish a poor third.

The Labor and Conservative parties, however, soon found themselves with splitting headaches, for more or less the same reason. Each had a charismatic front-runner whom their party machines did not want.

On your left, find Ken Livingstone, an unreconstructed far-out socialist. As leader of the last local London administration, Livingstone consistently embarrassed the Labor government with such radical gestures as inviting two leaders of the Irish Republic Army as official guests, long before they were welcome anywhere else in the United Kingdom.

But ordinary members of the Labor Party loved "Red Ken" for introducing cheap subway tickets and other populist measures. Many of them -- perhaps a majority -- prepared to vote for him. Blair, faced with the prospect of his great ideas being subverted by "the founder of the loony left," as he called Livingstone, set about stopping him.

On your right, we have Jeffrey Archer, author of lurid bestselling novels, whose passion is politics. Archer has held a series of high-profile jobs under Conservative prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major, culminating in a seat in the House of Lords. Never mind that Lord Archer's career was littered with allegations of theft and fraud. In order to get into Oxford, he falsely claimed to have been at the University of California. In another gaffe, he walked out of a Toronto store with two unpaid-for suits, insisting he was looking for the shirt department. He also indulged in insider trading of television shares.

Next page | Murdoch tabloid pierces Archer's "probity and integrity"