Ireland

More ministers resign as May faces the axe.

One of the last laws in Europe banning abortion, Ireland’s eighth amendment, was decisively rejected by voters on May 25. The plebiscite’s result allows the amendment to be struck from the country’s constitution. Once that happens later this year, Irish women will no longer have to smuggle in…

Into the light—or back to the shadows?

Unsettled questions of Ireland’s past and hope for its literary future.

On May 25, the people of Ireland are set to vote on repealing the eighth amendment of their constitution, which recognizes that children in the womb have a right to life. As you can imagine, this has sent a country long riven by passionate disputes over religion into a frenzied debate. Naturally,…

The end of free speech? Katherine Mangu-Ward at Reason has an excellent cover story about how "the left eats its own and the right shows its true colors." Here's my favorite part:

The statue wars continue: Last week protesters at the University of Virginia draped a tarp over a bronze of Thomas Jefferson, declaring the monument “an emblem of white supremacy” and demanding that the students of Jefferson’s university be subjected to racial reeducation.

No history cries out for revision more insistently than Irish history. And no event in Irish history demonstrates this better than the Easter Rebellion—the centennial of which is now in full throttle—because no event better epitomizes the vexed question of what constitutes Irish identity and Irish…

According to the Irish Independent, the number of Americans requesting Irish passports has increased by 14 percent since their Scottish cousin Donald Trump joined the presidential race last summer. Correlation doesn't mean causation, of course, but more than a few people have remarked upon the…

Sing Street is laden with melodramatic elements: a marriage disintegrating against the background of a national economic crisis, a vicious priest who beats up a boy, a wayward teenage girl with an institutionalized mother and a sexually abusive father, even a reckless emigration on a leaky…

While for most people, thoughts of Ireland are limited to wearing green and drinking too much beer on St. Patrick's Day, for those of us who think about tax policy, the country and its successes are worth pondering more than once a year.

Donald Trump has joined forces with Hillary Clinton and other presidential candidates to condemn the recent announcement that Pfizer, known for its erectile dysfunction drugs, is inverting in a merger with Allergan PLC to become an Irish company.

On May 22, Ireland became the first country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage through popular referendum, with 62 percent of the electorate supporting the constitutional change. The reported reactions, as you might expect, were overwhelmingly positive. Prime Minister Enda Kenny proclaimed,…

Barack Obama did not like when Israeli prime minister Benjmain Netanyahu used a joint congressional meeting to criticize his Iran plan. But yesterday the president let the Irish prime minister, Enda Kenny, use his podium to attack Congress on immigration at a St. Patrick's Day reception at the…

Later today Hillary Clinton will be inducted in the Irish America Hall of Fame. The former first lady "is being honored for her work on behalf of the Irish peace process," according to Irish America magazine, the sponsor of the award. 

Speaking at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin, Ireland, at a performance by of "Riverdance" by Irish youth, First Lady Michelle Obama thanked the crowd and said, "It is good to be home."

Speaking this morning in Belfast, President Obama took the opportunity to mix in a little golf talk as he addressed Northern Irish youth.

Dublin

Billion by billion by billion, showdown by argument by ultimatum, Greece’s latest bailout is being put together by those who run the eurozone. The country’s finances are so bad, and its prospects so poor, that even the new $159 billion rescue package announced on Thursday will (assuming it comes…

On St. Patrick’s Day, everyone’s a little bit Irish. And like many Americans, I actually have some Irish blood. 

In the grand old days before the Irish real estate boom collapsed, the ruling Fianna Fáil party used to campaign the fun way. Infamously, the party held blowout fundraisers every year in a tent at the Galway races. Bankers and property magnates would show up, caked in bling, surrounded by…

Michael Lewis's Vanity Fair article on the housing and finance crash in Ireland is twice as long as it needs to be, but it's still worth a read. Lewis interviews the lone professor who predicted the crash, which has left Ireland as not much more than a third world country:

Ross Douthat provides a synopsis of Ireland's rise and fall today, and he ends with this chilling conclusion: