links for 2010-02-20

How is it even possible that a Minister who slandered a political opponent and then swore a false statement in an affidavit before the High Court that he had not done so, could still remain in office? Because, in post-Ahern Irish politics, anything goes. No wonder the public have grown increasingly sick and tired of politics and politicians. It is apparent to me that, with the playing out of the O’Dea affair, we have arrived at a point that the 20th-century American writer Jean Toomer described most aptly. He said that acceptance of prevailing standards often means that we have no standards of our own. The prevailing standards the Government is operating off in Irish politics are those of Bertie Ahern. The result is that the current Fianna Fáil party has no standards. They do have one guiding principle remaining: blind loyalty to party colleague, come what may.