There is an easy intelligence about Andy O'Mahony's Dialogue (Saturdays 6.30pm, Radio One). The guests are provocative, Andy is clever, without having to show off his cleverness (unlike you-know-who). Respectful interchange between two thoughtful people is the hallmark of the programme, so different from most talk-radio, where there is usually a disrespectful interchange between thoughtless people.
Writing in the Sunday Business Post on 16 July, Pat Leahy claimed that, according to "senior government sources", relations between Fianna Fáil and Tony O'Reilly were "non-existent" after the government had failed to respond adequately to lobbying by Independent Newspapers executives. However, Leahy took pains to point out that "there is no evidence or suggestion that the editorial coverage or reporting in any of the group's newspapers was or is affected by corporate relations".
Usually a journalist likes having a story to him or herself. If it's of sufficient potential interest, it's a "scoop".
On 28 July a year ago, the leadership of the Irish Republican Army formally ordered an end to its armed campaign. All IRA units were ordered to dump arms. They were directed to assist the development of purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means. "Volunteers must not engage in any other activities whatsoever" the IRA leadership declared. The IRA also authorised its representative to engage with the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) to complete the process to verifiably put its arms beyond use as quickly as possible.
Oops, they did it again. That pesky microphone problem that plagued George W Bush and Tony Blair in St Petersburg struck again at their White House news conference on 28 July. The president told technicians to make sure his real thoughts would not be overheard this time, but somehow someone forgot to turn off the feed to my office. As a public service, I'd like to reprint the candid under-their-breath mutterings they exchanged in between their public utterances.
Steven Green served for a few months in the terrible "Triangle of Death", south of Baghdad. Foot patrols. House raids. Roadside bombs. An Apocalypse Now in a Humvee. There is no way that we can yet know the particular horror of that one evening, but a US Army report states that Green and four other members of his company got drunk, went out into the town of Mahmudiya, camouflaged in dark clothing, kicked down a door, burst into a home, went to the bedroom, killed a mother, a father, a young girl, and then raped another child at gunpoint.
The recently published interim census figures have generated a certain furore – or at least a bit of a kerfuffle among politicians – as regards their significance for the current constituency boundaries.
I heard a tabloid editor on the radio recently repeating the canard about newspapers being reluctant to apologise under the outgoing libel regime for fear of admitting liability. But to the best of my knowledge, it has not once happened in the history of Irish libel litigation that a newspaper which apologised in good faith had that apology used unfairly and damagingly in an ensuing trial.
Right from the beginning, RTÉ and others appreciated this was akin to a 'domestic incident' involving a mentally ill man. But it was depicted as a major 'siege' in a way that much have worsened the mental condition of John Carthy and caused him to behave more irrationally. By Vincent Browne
Among the implications of last week's ruling in the case of Mr A is that the Supreme Court no longer sees itself as primarily a court of law, but as a court of "common sense". We are frequently warned that "hard cases make bad law" and they don't come much harder. "It is scarcely possible to think of a less meritorious applicant," said Justice Hardiman, seeming to appeal not to principles of jurisprudence but to something less tangible.