THEY might not quite constitute a “new Republic”, but Fine Gael’s proposals for constitutional reform, to be launched by Enda Kenny today, deserve to be debated seriously.

IT’S the word of the century so far. Just when the search engine launched back in 1998 became a verb — “to google” — no one quite knows, but many of us google something, anything, dozens of times a day.

I WAS in Dubai at the weekend. Nice enough place if you like that kind of thing: glitzy, a bit soulless, but after the weather we’ve been having at home, who’s complaining?

THE space shuttle Endeavour touched down in Florida early on Monday morning after a successful two-week mission to the international space station.

BRITAIN, it seems, is drowning in a vale of tears. One after another, in the run-up to their general election, British politicians are lining up to emote in public. Never before have so many cried so easily, so openly and so often.

WITH perhaps 50,000 Muslims now living in Ireland, it’s imperative we find a modus vivendi. No one pretends it’s going to be easy but there is no alternative to trying.

IT’S 125 years old this year and if some reports are to be believed, the Orange Card is still the one the British Tories feel should be played. It was Sir Randolph Churchill, Winston’s father, who coined the phrase in the aftermath of the 1885 election and it continues to have a chilly resonance for nationalists.

WHO will ever forget January 20, 2009? In America and around the world, it was truly a great day. It shouldn’t have mattered but for someone of colour to assume leadership of what we used to call the “free world” counted for quite a lot.

THE news from Haiti is always terrible. No Haitian news doesn’t mean good Haitian news, merely that the long, slow Haitian catastrophe is continuing as usual.

ARE those Northerners sick, you might well ask? Their vital political institutions might be on the brink of collapse and what are they doing? Laughing their heads off, that’s what.