Channel 4 was justified in setting up the Labour MP, Barbara Follett, for its Brass Eye paedophile special because the show revealed how public figures were willing to speak "with apparent authority about matters they do not understand", a TV watchdog said today.
That so many public figures were willing to stand up for a group of self-described socialists shows just how obvious it was to anyone familiar with the case that the raids and subpoenas didn't represent a good-faith effort to arrest terrorists, but rather a last-ditch attempt to salvage something from an investigation that had gone on for more than two years without digging up a damn bit of dirt.
With rare exceptions, few public figures are willing to follow Thomas L. Friedman down the road to higher gasoline taxes.
Helen Grant, the minister for sport whose DCMS department has been sent the PFA's latest figures, is willing to lend that support.
Less than a decade earlier, the Milgram obedience study had shown that ordinary people, if encouraged by an authority figure, were willing to shock their fellow-citizens with what they believed to be painful and potentially lethal levels of electricity.
That such a widely-respected conservative figure is willing to stick his neck out at a time when most of the GOP, officially, still decries Dream as an unconscionable free pass for lawbreakers suggests a new line of pragmatic thinking that's setting in among some on the right as they try to adjust to the overwhelming demographic realities facing America in the emerging 21st century.
But, frankly, it's nice to see any sports figure being willing to say something controversial on a non-sports topic and not be concerned about hurting their endorsement chances.
"Part of the consideration is how willing people are to serve, so I would figure if they were willing, they would make the request.
"I figured if they were willing to share their diplomatic status with us, I'd be more than happy to share my cigarettes with them," Mr. Carroll said.
While the concept had drawn the interest of many of the world's most prominent economists, including former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and Nobel laureates Joe Stiglitz, James Tobin, and Paul Krugman, few political figures in the United States were willing to go near an FTT.
And then at some point I think there would be some discussion around what it would take to go there, and then we'd at that point have to figure out whether we were willing to do that.
