SAY what you like about the US, but its approach to internal dissent is in a different league to that of countries like Saudi Arabia and Cuba.

GIVE a Frenchman the chance to mock America and he will take it. It has ever been so - but especially in these days when American restaurants have been pouring French wine down their sinks and renaming ‘French fries’ as freedom fries.

IT never rains but it pours. First we have a same-sex couple seeking parity of esteem with married couples and similar tax breaks. Now advocates for cohabiting heterosexual couples are demanding more rights, too.

ALTHOUGH he has just been denied the justice portfolio in the European Commission, Rocco Buttiglione shows no rancour.

THE Rev James Dobson is endorsing a candidate for the White House for the first time. He says he had a dream.

“IS it now a crime to be a conservative in Europe?” asked RTÉ’s Áine Lawlor last week. We must wait a week or more before we know the answer to that.

WHAT a horrible week last week was. Two events to haunt decent human beings everywhere, and make them despair.

SOME months back I was on Vincent Browne’s radio programme discussing a new report, A Time to Listen - Confronting Child Sexual Abuse by Catholic Clergy, commissioned by Irish bishops.

GOAL’s John O’Shea has a question for Bertie Ahern. Why did he come out and make a plea for the release of British hostage Kenneth Bigley?

THERE are many points of contrast between Dana and Britney Spears, but not the least of them is this: Dana knows how to keep herself in the public eye without doing anything indecent.