In an essay in the economist, Tony Blair reflects on the lessons he has learned as prime minister.  He insists on placing the war in Iraq in the same category as those in Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, and Kosovo.  They were, he tells us, underpinned by a policy of intervention that is values-based.  But Iraq was never about values, it was about security and weapons of mass destruction.  Sadly for Mr Blair, he cannot re-write history to tidy up his legacy.

I was sorry to hear that Joe Higgins had lost his seat. Even if one disagrees with his political views, one cannot deny that he was a committed parliamentarian and devoted to the plight of the disadvantaged.

Apparently the US is building an enormous embassy inside the green zone in Baghdad.  Covering 104 acres and costing $600 million, the complex will be the biggest and most expensive US embassy on the planet.  In a way, it is a perfect metaphor for the runaway hubris of the current US administration. Normally an embassy is about diplomacy.

Two FF TDs, Mary Coughlan and Pat "The Cope" Gallagher, are set to comfortably retain their seats in Donegal South West.  It is truly astonishing that support for Fianna Fáil remains solid in a rural constituency which stands out for all the wrong reasons. 

Even if it obscures the debate on policy, the question of Bertie Ahern's finances is critical for our democracy.  The reason is fairly simple :
the cost of corruption is enormous.  We know that nods and winks and bags of cash infected the core of our political culture and we know how chunks of our cities are disfigured as a result.  We know how terrible decisions were taken that favoured old friends over the public good.  

It's a scar on our democracy that can only be healed by a vigorous commitment to transparency and accountability.

I always considered myself a lover of jazz - not all jazz, but certainly the standards. I would include some less mainstream genres among my favourites - scat, electro-jazz, a touch of fusion.  But I'm not a jazz cat, an aficionado. Which must be why a recent concert by a big name left me utterly baffled.  Without giving too much away, let's say the artist's name rhymes with Pain Torture.  I had listened to, and enjoyed, some of this saxman's earlier work.  He was billed as one of the greatest living jazz-men.

In the current issue of Foreign Affairs, Tony Blair asserts that he and US president George Bush chose values over security in their response to 9/11. In so doing, he is re-writing history to fit the fallout from Iraq: security has not been improved, but further threatened. According to Blair's latest version, Iraq wasn't about security, it was about Western values.