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Margaret Thatcher: The patriot who vanquished failure Last Updated: 12:02am BST 11/04/2008 After decades of decline, Margaret Thatcher's leadership brought courage and conviction to a nation that had grown used to second best, says Charles Moore On the day in 1982 that the British task force set sail to recover the Falkland Islands from the Argentine invaders, Margaret Thatcher was asked on television: "If you fail, would you feel obliged to resign?" "Failure?" she answered, "Do you remember what Queen Victoria once said? 'Failure - the possibilities do not exist'." The remark goes to the heart of Mrs Thatcher's essential...

You must return from whence you came, and there, in the lowest part of the prison, be stripped naked, laid down, your back on the ground, and as much weight laid upon you as you are able to bear, and so to continue for three days without meat or drink, and on the third day to be pressed to death, your hands and feet tied to posts, and a sharp stone under your back.These words of condemnation were spoken by a British magistrate of her majesty Queen Elizabeth. On Tuesday, March 15, 1586, in the Court of York, Judge George...

The old assumptions about transatlantic relations are being junked – by two men with big hopes of leading Britain and France. Nicolas Sarkozy, who wants to win the French presidency, recently criticised his country’s “arrogance” in its dealings with Washington, earning a rebuke from Jacques Chirac, the present incumbent. And across the channel David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative opposition who currently leads in UK opinion polls, criticised Britain’s “slavish” stance towards the Bush administration – and upset US officials. Yet the two men’s speeches, delivered a day apart last month, were hardly at odds. Indeed, certain passages were...

Margaret Carlson: Do You know Where Your Flag Is? Margaret Carlson Fri Jul 1,11:45 AM ET Do you know where your flag is? It's being waved in the House of Representatives in lieu of doing any work on, say, gas prices, stem cell research, global warming (fossil fuel emissions still voluntary). Health care reform? Why bother with a doctor when you can have Bill First diagnose your illness from the floor of the Senate. Members so fearful of being called unpatriotic get closer and closer to passing the amendment to protect the flag from desecration. It takes guts to protect...

MARGARET Thatcher has savagely undermined Tony Blair's case for war against Iraq. In her first reported comment on the conflict, the Tory leader who took Britain to victory in the 1982 Falkland Conflict, has told friends that the war against Iraq was a "mistake". Baroness Thatcher has warned that British troops could be tied up in a mission without end for years. "Britain should never have been involved and it will be very difficult to get our troops out in anything like the near future," she told Tory peers at a private meeting last week. She also believes a judicial...

<p>MARGARET Carlson, the first female columnist in the history of Time magazine and a fixture on CNN's "Capitol Gang," is about to sever her ties to the magazine, Media Ink has learned.</p> <p>Carlson, a well-connected Beltway insider, had been a regularly appearing weekly columnist until the Sept. 11 attacks, but she's been all but invisible in the magazine's lineup since then.</p>