It's looking good for Boris, but we must wait and see. Lisa Armstrong, fashion editor for The Times, believes that the hair will swing it, one way or the other:

Ultimately we will either have fallen, hook, line and sinker, for that adorably cute and yet strangely virile magnolia swirl, which (memo to the spin-doctors) no amount of frantic restyling has quite subordinated. Or we won't have.

This may seem a trivialisation of what has been a gladiatorial struggle for one of the world's great cities.

But follicles and what groovy types used, about 40 years, to call “hairdos” are clearly legitimate matters for endlessly absorbing debate. Especially when the hair and the dos in question belong to political sorts, which is why there are 200 online discussions feverishly dissecting Hillary Clinton's new swoopy bits. [...]

And Boris's hair is even more important than that. In so many ways it is his destiny. Not since Michael Heseltine felt morally obliged to swing a mace around in the Commons (the details escape me but it must have been something to do with needing to live up to that tempestuous bouffant) have man and mane been so fatally intertwined. [...] 

So much of this blond stuff does Boris have (his scale is uncommonly productive for one so fair and of middling years; really it's very Samson) that allowing it to air-dry au naturel is, apparently, not an option. Disconcerting as it is to picture Boris with a hair dryer, needs must in such an obsessively busy schedule.

Tenacity in hair colour is useful. In a politician it is splendid (thank you, Hillary, for pointing this out, but then you've had plenty of your own bad hair days to teach you what tenacity really is). But with supreme blondness comes a price. While his school friends were chillaxing on their gap years and growing their hair, Boris had to contend with the awful truth that on him, anything much longer than a crew cut would make him look like Claudia Schiffer's uglier sister.

Imagine next the anguish on discovering that if he had a hope in hell of being taken seriously as a political journalist and, later on, as candidate for Henley, the mad tufts and chaotic non-partings (think Kansas after a particularly devastating tornado) would have to be constrained into a more conventional look. Then consider the double horror of realising that a conventional look, with neat side-parting and slicked-down ends, would make him look like Hitler's ultimate dreamboat.

Such physical quirks are sent to build our characters. And Boris, as befits his profoundly held beliefs in the imperfection of mankind, has used his fluffy, floppy, muzzy blondness to pursue a third way, one that allowed those wisps to roam like prosperous free marketeers all over his scalp and sometimes to take the plunge all the way over the precipice into his eyes, while at the same time using those manly but sensitive hands to gently yet firmly chivvy it back into place.

Watching Boris marshal his locks is like watching one man and his sheepdog herd sheep, one of the few genuinely pleasurable displays in modern politics - confusing, at times impenetrable, but always mesmerising. And my, don't the womenfolk, from the toddlers who recognise a kindred spirit to the white-haired party faithful, who also recognise a kindred spirit, adore him.

Of course beneath the shambolic layers and the Lady Di-isms (he's not beyond flirting through the fronds, but then with hair like that, what choice did he have but to grow up a people-pleaser and a bit of a joker?) there beats a ruthless logic and first-class brain.

Intellectually, Boris is a brunette. Then again, spiritually, he will always be the blond who has more fun.

And so the blond whorl became the perfect metaphor for the man who, as a child (or perhaps as an adult - the beauty of that hair is that no one can really tell the difference) said he'd like to be world king. In an era where political hair is all about control, Boris's has come to represent a one-man bulwark against conformity and political correctness. This entire contest wouldn't have been nearly such excellent spectator sport without it.

Writing on the sub-prime mortgage fiasco and the buy-to-let boom, Jeff Randall quotes Charles MacKay:

"Men go mad in herds, but only recover their senses one by one."

MacKay was writing on the South Sea Bubble, but I think his apophthegm could be extended to other forms of collective madness: the madness that decreed that all cultures are equal; the madness that declared Islam to be a religion of peace, and a religion like any other.

How quickly and easily people were swept along. And how slow and painful - two steps forward and one step back - is the journey back to sanity. Let's hope we get there before it's too late.

Boris Johnson winning the race for London's mayor would be a small but significant step in the right direction. Counting has only just begun, and will not be completed until later this evening. The polls have Boris and Ken neck and neck, but elsewhere, Labour has rightly sustained heavy losses.

Here's hoping that Boris wins, or rather that Ken loses.

Did you know that the word "donkey" used to rhyme with "monkey"? If not, you do now, and I hope you feel better for it.

"Donkey" is quite a new word. From Online Etymology:

1785, slang, perhaps from dun "dull grey-brown," the form perhaps infl. by monkey. Or possibly from a familiar form of Duncan (cf. dobbin). The older Eng. word was ass.

For some monkeying around with "asses" see here. For assing around with monkeys see here.

Most of America's major publishers are based in New York, but this is a victory for us all. Other states will undoubtedly follow suit if need be.

ACD: Albany, NY (May 1, 2008) -- New York State Governor David Paterson yesterday signed the "Libel Terrorism Protection Act" (S.6687/A.9652), which on March 31 passed the state's Assembly and Senate unanimously.

Also known as Rachel's Law, the bill sponsored by Assemblyman Rory Lancman (D-Queens) and Senate Deputy Majority Leader Dean G. Skelos (R-Rockville Centre) will protect American journalists and authors from foreign lawsuits that infringe on First Amendment rights. The bill also received unprecedented support from Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.

"New Yorkers must be able to speak out on issues of public concern without living in fear that they will be sued outside the United States, under legal standards inconsistent with our First Amendment rights," said Governor Paterson. "This legislation will help ensure of the freedoms enjoyed by New York authors."

Reflecting the New York legislation's importance, U.S. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) on April 16 introduced a similar bill, the Freedom of Speech Protection Act (H.R. 5814), in the House of Represenatives.

In Ehrenfeld v. Mahfouz, New York State's highest court held that it was unable to protect Dr. Ehrenfeld from a British lawsuit filed by Saudi billionaire Khalid Salim Bin Mahfouz. Britain's High Court ordered her to pay over $225,000 in damages and legal fees to Bin Mahfouz, apologize and destroy copies of her books.

Instead, November 2006, Dr. Ehrenfeld sought a U.S. federal court order to protect her constitutional rights. But a New York Court of Appeals ruling with national implications sent legal shockwaves throughout American newsrooms.

The New York court potentially undermined U.S. journalists' ability to expose terrorism's financial and logistical support networks, when it ruled that the court lacks jurisdiction to protect Americans - on U.S. soil - from foreign defamation judgments that contradict the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Rachel's Law declares overseas defamation judgments unenforceable in New York State unless the foreign defamation law provides, in substance and application, the same free speech protections guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. The law gives New York residents and publishers the opportunity to have their day in court...

and meets his virgins (memo to self: ask State Dept, can we still say "virgins" or does this create some self-esteem issue for the moderate virgins?).

Reuters reports:

A Kuwaiti man released from the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay in 2005 has carried out a suicide bombing in Iraq, his cousin told Al Arabiya television on Thursday.  A friend of Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi in Iraq informed his family that Abdullah carried out the attack in Mosul, his cousin Salem told the Dubai-based television channel. "We were shocked by the painful news we received this afternoon ... through a call from one of the friend's of martyr Abdullah in Iraq," said Salem al-Ajmi in a telephone interview aired by Arabiya.

About this "martyr" thing, should we really be using that word?  Oh, wait, it's Muslims in Iraq who use that word for Muslims who kill themselves while trying to kill Americans during personal betterment efforts.  I guess that's cool.

New Duranty: Left-wing protesters erected barricades in the streets of Hamburg and burned police cars as part of a demonstration against a march by neo-Nazis that the counter-demonstrators said was intended as a provocation on May Day. In the confusion of smoke and smashed windshields, the counter-demonstrators attacked the police, stormed a cafe and set fires, a police spokesman said. The police said they had arrested 56 people and detained 227 others. They estimated that 1,500 people had participated in the right-wing march and 6,600 in the left-wing response.

Meanwhile in America, the illegal immigrant May Day marches have fizzled - probably because the backlash among ordinary Americans who were shocked to see so many illegals in their towns.

In the Los Angeles May Day illegal-alien marches:

2006: 500,000

2007: 35,000

2008: 8,500

In Chicago:

2006: 400,000

2007: 150,000

2008: 15,000

(hat tip: Mark Krikorian)

A French doctor is urging his countrymen to give free rein to flatulence, sweating and other bodily functions to reduce the risk of cancer. From The Telegraph:

In his book, Le Grand Ménage (Spring cleaning), Frédéric Saldmann invites them to embrace the stereotypical British view of the French and to have a relaxed attitude to bodily functions.

He calls for a "May '68" of the body – an emancipation for belching, breaking wind and sweating profusely. "Eliminating" the two litres of gas produced a day by the average Frenchman "is a natural process", he writes, adding that retaining it can be harmful to the intestines. The French, he adds, should "dare to fart".

Dr Saldmann also recommends cutting down on chewing gum, never eating while walking and reducing the intake of fizzy drinks.

Similarly, he says his countrymen should feel free to belch at will and certainly after each meal. This, he says, is the best way to reduce the risk of getting a hiatal hernia, an ailment which affects almost a third of French people. Keeping air in the stomach leads to more heartburn, which increases the risk of cancer of the oesophagus. The rise of this disease in France, he says, is due to "the burp that we no longer do".

Dr Saldmann also recommends throwing out anti-perspirants. "To block sweat not only stops the elimination of toxins," he writes, "but also a certain number of messages that are potentially very attractive to the opposite sex."

Moreover, he insists that the smell of male sweat, citing Italian research on the subject, reduces stress in women.

Well, they do say that the best place to hide your money is under a Frenchman's soap.

by Theodore Dalrymple

Hugh, who has sometimes been described - wrongly - as long-winded, posted the following:

In 1788 there appeared in French "L'art de Peter " described as an "Essai Theori-Physique et Methodique...augmentee de la Societe des Francs-Peteurs, pour ceux qui desireront y etre inities." It has been much reprinted.

In English, in 1995, appeared  Benjamin Bart's "History of Farting," where doctors are quoted as giving the same advice as this French doctor now does.

In French, it is tellingly "The Art of Farting." In English, it is the sober "History of Farting." Please discuss national character on the basis of these two titles.

First, Benjamin Bart can't have been unaware that his name rhymes with fart. Perhaps some saucy Islingtonian had already quipped: "The Art of the Fart by Benjamin Bart". For this reason alone, he chose the more po-faced title. Thus, farting is an historical, rather than an hysterical issue.

Secondly, French farts are inferior to English farts. English farts go down in the anals of history. French farts just peter out.

Sometimes there is a god.

Today the defeat of RedKen Livingstone , friend of Qu'ran-quoting Qaradawi -- Mayor of London and sometime shampoo -- was finally announced, but even before the final returns were announced to  the world from old Londinium, the day had conspired to cheer us all up: representatives of the Israeli police had shown up, unannounced, to unceremoniously question Prime Minister  Olmert for an hour, about a little "corruption matter" that one hopes will lead to Olmert's departing, not like Ken Livingstone through the vote of an electorate (the Israeli system would allow him, even with his support hovering at 20%, to remain for a while, right through the suicidal surrender of still more of Israel's territory, still more yielding of what it is perfectly entitled, legally, historically, and morally, to hold onto), but through the police, who can rescue the people and the state of Israel not through the workings of politics, but merely by being good, and also  goody-goody, gumshoes.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism is making the documents available for the first time here and here.

(Some of you may want to take your blood pressure medication before clicking on the above links.) 

Result just in from the website London Elects. Boris Johnson is declared the Mayor of London. 
The only song I can think of about a Boris is the Who, Boris the Spider which is not really appropriate. So now I'm off to bed and sweet dreams.

No pun intended.

Breaking news from the BBC: it's official. The people have spoken. (The bastards, as Ken would say.) And the word is "crikey".

London's elected Mayor is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. Red Ken is Dead Ken.

Rejoice!

The more things change, the more they stay the same. From the Blotter:

As the construction industry sheds thousands of jobs and retail stores shutter across the country, one industry is still booming bigger than ever: Lobbying.

Washington's influence-peddlers are on track to rake in close to $4 billion this year, according to an analysis of new lobbyist filings by Congressional Quarterly.

That's about $1 billion more than they reported for 2007.  But experts say the boost may be due to tightened reporting requirements from last year’s ethics reform law.

It was widely believed that in years past lobbyists, per the old rules, reported merely the money they made for their interactions with lawmakers' offices.  They were not required to report fees they billed clients for monitoring legislation, handling public relations or other tasks...