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Looks like the Scotch and Cigs got him.

It was my first week in London. My employer instructed me to sign up for “free healthcare,” if there is such a thing. Thankfully, the paperwork was easy because I carried a European Union passport, but I had to visit my local “clinic,” if that’s the right word. (It looked more like a shabby chic Edwardian flat.) The doctor was nice enough but her broken English was hard to follow. The next year, I visited a friend in a grotty hospital, and was equally unimpressed. His room was crowded, noisy and outdated. Still, on the plus side, visiting the year...

(clip) Suddenly he discussed the sexiness of Margaret Thatcher. The way he described Thatcher and how the press treated the "Iron Lady," you'd think he was talking about Sarah Palin. Even the radio host thought so. However, Hitchens said Palin was contrary to his description of Thatcher. He said Palin has no charisma. I find that hard to believe. I don't get his anti-Palin sentiment. Personally, I find Thatcher and Palin to be quite similar. See and hear for yourself what Hitchens said:

Hero of the left to neocon turncoat, and still battling on: I'm not sure what a legend should look like exactly, but I'm pretty sure it's not this. The paunchy, middle-aged figure who opens the door at 10am has a crust of dried toothpaste around his mouth, an air of bleary dishevelment and the stooped shuffle of a man just out of bed and wishing he'd postponed the appointment to a less ungodly hour... Where is the celebrated rhetorician, famed for speaking in perfect paragraphs sculpted from flawless sentences? Gruff, vague and nursing a cup of tea, he clasps one...

At the age of 15 Peter Hitchens burned his Bible, leaving the Holy Book a “disagreeable, half-charred mess” and the teenager with a sense of anti-climax. It was his “year zero”, and he went on to develop, throughout his late teens and 20s, the typical “enlightened English person’s scorn for faith”, a feeling he characterises by Virginia Woolf’s words upon hearing that T S Eliot had become a Christian: “He may be called dead to us from this day forward.” Christianity was one of the “nursery myths” that the progressive post-war generation had put behind them as they built a...

Comedian Richard Dawkins and seasoned troublemaker Christopher Hitchens plan to put a headlock on Pope Benedict when he steps onto English soil. “Stop!” they plan to yell, “We arrest thee as a criminal against humanity!” It should be some good joke. Most of us know Dawkins’s stand-up routine. His “selfish gene” riff caused giggles in science clubs all over the Continent. But it was his award-winning “memes” gag that really sent them rolling in the aisles. And now he plans to perp-walk the Holy Father down a Heathrow jet bridge. Such inspired hilarity can only come from an academic. Dawkins...

April 11, 2010 Richard Dawkins: I Will Arrest Pope Benedict XVI Marc Horne Atheist campaigner Richard Dawkins RICHARD DAWKINS, the atheist campaigner, is planning a legal ambush to have the Pope arrested during his state visit to Britain “for crimes against humanity”. Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, the atheist author, have asked human rights lawyers to produce a case for charging Pope Benedict XVI over his alleged cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic church. The pair believe they can exploit the same legal principle used to arrest Augusto Pinochet, the late Chilean dictator, when he visited Britain in 1998. The...

Christopher Hitchens' venomous attack on Pope Benedict XVI1 is a revelation that deserves wider attention. Were it not for its appearance in the National Post, it would be difficult to believe that a reputable newspaper would publish such absurdity.Mr. Hitchens states that in May, 2001, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger sent a "confidential" letter to Catholic bishops to remind them that anyone who disclosed "rape and torture" of children by priests would be excommunicated. He claims that Cardinal Ratzinger imposed a ten year "statute of limitations" on actions against clerical sex offenders, and was thus guilty of "obstruction of justice."These assertions are...

The pope's entire career has the stench of evil about it. On March 10, the chief exorcist of the Vatican, the Rev. Gabriele Amorth (who has held this demanding post for 25 years), was quoted as saying that "the Devil is at work inside the Vatican," and that "when one speaks of 'the smoke of Satan' in the holy rooms, it is all true—including these latest stories of violence and pedophilia." This can perhaps be taken as confirmation that something horrible has indeed been going on in the holy precincts, though most inquiries show it to have a perfectly good...

I have read Christopher Hitchens’s book God Is Not Great twice, in preparation for a book I have co-written with Biola University philosopher Dr. John Mark Reynolds. Due to come out this spring, our book is titled Against All Gods: What’s Right and Wrong About the “New Atheism.” Because not all readers may know at once who the new atheists are, I will say that they are a group of very fervent opponents of “religion,” of whom the best known are zoologist and science popularizer Richard Dawkins, Tufts University philosopher Daniel Dennett, and Hitchens. What is new about these atheists...

So who WERE the two Tory ministers who had gay flings with Christopher Hitchens at Oxford? By Geoffrey Levy 06th March 2010 Alpha minds in and around Westminster that normally grapple with issues such as the forthcoming election, the sinking pound and the war in Afghanistan, were turned this week towards a ticklish and wholly unexpected political mystery. Which two ministers of Margaret Thatcher's government had gay relations with the writer Christopher Hitchens while at Oxford? Since Hitchens's extraordinary claim emerged this week, the louche figure, now 60, who has been married twice, has fended off all requests for further...

Alpha minds in and around Westminster that normally grapple with issues such as the forthcoming election, the sinking pound and the war in Afghanistan, were turned this week towards a ticklish and wholly unexpected political mystery. Which two ministers of Margaret Thatcher's government had gay relations with the writer Christopher Hitchens while at Oxford? Since Hitchens's extraordinary claim emerged this week, the louche figure, now 60, who has been married twice, has fended off all requests for further information. After all - even for a clever polemicist who takes his work very seriously - such a tantalising, if frivolous kiss-and-tell...

In his days on the staid old London Times of the 1930s, Claud Cockburn won an in-house competition for the most boring headline by coming up with "Small Earthquake in Chile: Not Many Dead." ...snip... Seismology in this decade is already emerging as the most important new department of socioeconomics and politics. The simple recognition that nature is master and that the crust of our planet is highly volatile has been thrown into some relief by the staggering 250,000 butcher's bill exacted from the people of Haiti by a single terrestrial spasm, and by the relative survival capacity of Chileans...

Why are we so bad at detecting the guilty and so good at collective punishment of the innocent? It's getting to the point where the twin news stories more or less write themselves. No sooner is the fanatical and homicidal Muslim arrested than it turns out that he (it won't be long until it is also she) has been known to the authorities for a long time. But somehow the watch list, the tipoff, the many worried reports from colleagues and relatives, the placing of the name on a "central repository of information" don't prevent the suspect from boarding a...

How Long Before Small Boys Here Ask: A Church? What’s That, Grandad? PETER HITCHENS I had hoped to have a sort of Christmas truce this week, but the controversy just keeps on raging, drowning out the choirs and bells. And one of the problems is Christmas itself. How much longer will it exist in the form we know today? I fear it won’t be much longer. Many of its traditions are visibly dying. Teachers complain that children don’t know the carols any more, because their parents don’t know them either. Dying tradition? Members of the Royal Family attend the Christmas...

For the past 150 years archaeologists have been verifying the exact truthfulness of the Bible's detailed records of various events, customs, persons, cities, nations, and geographical locations. Dr. Nelson Glueck probably the greatest modern authority on Israeli archeology, has said, “No archeological discovery has ever controverted [overturned] a Biblical reference. Scores of archeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or in exact detail historical statements in the Bible. And, by the same token, proper evaluation of Biblical descriptions has often led to amazing discoveries.” In every instance where the Bible can be, or has been checked out...

Writing about Sarah Palin in Newsweek last month, I pointed out the crude way in which she tried to Teflon-ize herself when allegations of weird political extremism were made against her. Thus, she had once gone to a Pat Buchanan rally wearing a pro-Buchanan button, but only because she thought it was the polite thing to do. She and her husband had both attended meetings of the Alaskan Independence Party—he as a member—but its name, she later tried to claim, only meant "independent." (The AIP is a straightforward secessionist party.) She didn't disbelieve all the evidence for evolution, only some...

Just a few years ago, it seemed curious that an omniscient, omnipotent God wouldn’t smite tormentors like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. They all published best-selling books excoriating religion and practically inviting lightning bolts. Traditionally, religious wars were fought with swords and sieges; today, they often are fought with books. And in literary circles, these battles have usually been fought at the extremes. Fundamentalists fired volleys of Left Behind novels, in which Jesus returns to Earth to battle the Anti-Christ (whose day job was secretary general of the United Nations). Meanwhile, devout atheists built mocking Web sites like...

On October 30, atheist Christopher Hitchens appeared on Dennis Miller’s Internet radio show condemning Mother Teresa, yet again. Here is one of his choice statements: “The woman was a fanatic and a fundamentalist and a fraud, and millions of people are much worse off because of her life, and it’s a shame there is no hell for your bitch to go to.” Catholic League president Bill Donohue responded today: I once told Hitchens that one of the real reasons he hates Mother Teresa has to do with his socialist ideology: he believes the state should care for the poor, not...

Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights'The woman was a fanatic and a fundamentalist and a fraud, and millions of people are much worse off because of her life'. NEW YORK, NY (Catholic League) - On October 30, atheist Christopher Hitchens appeared on Dennis Miller’s Internet radio show condemning Mother Teresa, yet again. Here is one of his choice statements: “The woman was a fanatic and a fundamentalist and a fraud, and millions of people are much worse off because of her life, and it’s a shame there is no hell for your bitch to go to.” Catholic League...