Jon Swaine

Sirhan (above) was put through a process involving hypnosis and chemicals, claimed Mr Pepper (Photo: Reuters)

Back in January, when the new US congress was sworn in, the “end of the Kennedy era” headlines reappeared – and for once they were justified. Patrick Kennedy, a representative for Rhode Island, had decided to stand down after 16 years, meaning that for the first time since 1946, there would be no Kennedy in the capitol. Ted, the last of the famous brothers – and Patrick’s father – had died about 18 months earlier after suffering a brain tumour.

Yet this week has already shown that there need not be a Kennedy making laws for the family to continue making headlines. Yesterday provided a tantalising glimpse at Ted’s FBI… Read More

A sign left by mourners outside the University Medical Center (Photo: AFP)

While the sound and fury about all the sound and fury that may or may not have helped persuade a man to shoot six people dead and wound 14 others continues across the US, here in Tucson there is sadness and quiet dignity.

Yesterday morning, at the city’s University Medical Centre, where Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is being treated, some of the families of the other victims spoke about their lost relatives and what the ones who survived are going through.

Angela Robinson and Penny Wilson, the step-daughters of 76-year-old Dorwan Stoddard, described how the retired construction worker died protecting their mother, Mavy, who was shot three times in the legs. They called him a hero, and they are… Read More

Can the Mayor of New York recover from Bloomberg's Snowstorm? (Photo: Getty)

A blizzard dumps tonnes of snow on New York, crippling large sections of the city. Outer borough residents go for days without seeing a snow plough, and complain furiously as people begin to die. The mayor, a popular, party-switching chap tipped as a future US presidential candidate, suddenly finds his administration – which was slow to react – is in crisis. The year? 1969.

Forty-one winters later and, to use Mark Twain’s expression, history is rhyming. As he attempts to finally get a grip on the “snowpocalypse” continuing to blight the city, Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor of New York, may have one name running through his mind: John Lindsay.

Mr Lindsay was in… Read More

People walk a path between snow drifts on Third Avenue on the east side of Manhattan. (Photo: AFP)

I returned to New York last night expecting not to be shocked by the snow. I had, after all, seen the pictures of the buried bicycles and the time-lapse videos of 30 inches of the stuff falling on New Jersey during the night after Boxing Day. But it was stunning to emerge from the subway to a silent, deserted street full of abandoned, enveloped vehicles.

While Manhattan’s major centres have now been cleared, residents of some of the quieter parts, especially in the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, are still wading through huge drifts, and they are furious. Many street… Read More

Gordon Brown in a previous incarnation on the Daily Show (Photo: Splash)

While his colleagues back at Westminster try to keep a lid on the revolution, Gordon “full-time MP” Brown is here in New York to promote his new book, Beyond The Crash. Tonight he did one of the trickiest gigs on American television: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. It could have gone better, really.

Stewart is a comedian, a good one, and his guests frequently report being told by his producers: “Don’t try to be funny. That’s Jon’s job.” If Mr Brown was told this, he didn’t listen. He bounded on stage eager to tell a tame pre-rehearsed gag about Stewart taking his ‘Rally to Restore Sanity’ across Europe. It got some chuckles, but not… Read More

Marco Rubio celebrates his victory with his family (Photo: EPA)

Coming right after a whoop-inducing announcement that control of the House of Representatives had probably been won, the first key statement in Marco Rubio’s acceptance speech caught joyful Republicans here in Coral Gables off guard.

“We make a grave mistake if we believe that tonight, these results are somehow an embrace of the Republican party,” Mr Rubio said. “What they are is a second chance. A second chance for Republicans to be what they said they were going to be.”

With that, the Senator-elect for Florida showed why tonight he is being spoken about in different, altogether more serious, terms than many others who have ridden into Washington tonight on the 2010 conservative wave.

Big as the Tea Party noise has been, the Republican… Read More

Charlie Crist was once tipped as a future president (Photo: Bloomberg News)

Well, that could have gone better. You will remember that last week, it emerged Bill Clinton had sought to persuade Kendrick Meek, the Democratic candidate for Senate here in Florida, to withdraw from the election.

The 42nd president thought Mr Meek, who is likely to finish third, should instead back Charlie Crist, the centrist Republican Governor of Florida, who is running as an independent against Marco Rubio, the tea-partying Republican nominee.

The talks fell apart after Mr Meek got cold feet. But in a last-ditch attempt to salvage something from the saga, Mr Crist was very keen to tell TV talk-shows that top Democrats had shown they knew they couldn’t win, so their voters should flock to him anyway. Some thought Mr Crist could enjoy… Read More

With less than a week before polling day, and as the white noise of the campaign crescendoes, it’s becoming more difficult for mid-term candidates to make a difference on the outcome of the vote.

They can plough yet more millions into more televised ads attacking their opponents. But as my colleague Nick Allen reported on Wednesday, Meg Whitman, the billionaire Republican candidate for Governor of California, is proving there comes a point where voters punish such overload.

One candidate a little further down the ballot in the same state has come up with an interesting solution, however. Where to go when all the TV clips, placards and campaign literature begin to look and sound the same? An assault on a third sense is where.

Van Tran, the Republican candidate in California’s 47 Congressional district, has been sending out foul-smelling leaflets attacking the Democratic incumbent, Representative Loretta Sanchez. Somewhat inevitably, the stinky mail-out… Read More

Anyone remember hope? It was all the rage two years ago, when the junior Senator for Illinois – who was reviewing restaurants on local television while his predecessor was settling into the White House – swept to power on the basis that he embodied it.

Lisa Murkowski, Joe Miller and Scott McAdams during a Senatorial debate (Photo: Getty)

Names can be tricky beasts. Floating somewhere in the online ether are a thousand responses from press officers that were emailed to John Swain. Tedious as follow-up phone calls may be, however, I can only imagine the frustrations of Lisa Murkowski, a US Senator for Alaska, who is running for re-election next Tuesday.

Ms Murkowski is one of that unhappy band of Republicans to have lost their party primary contest to a Tea Party-backed insurgent candidate. In the year of anti-incumbency, she has some problems. She has held her seat since 2002, when she was given it by her predecessor of 22 years – who also happened to be her father, the then-newly elected governor of Alaska.

She was beaten… Read More