Reproduced below is my latest blog for Conservative Home.

John Brennan, the deputy national security adviser and top counterterrorism aide to President Obama, has come under increasing fire recently over the government's handling of Umar Abdulmutallab. Republican critics have complained that the Detroit bomber was read his Miranda rights too quickly, meaning vital intelligence could not be extracted from him, and called for him to be treated as an enemy combatant and therefore subejct to military tribunal.

Reproduced below is my latest blog for Conservative Home.

The University of Durham last year entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Iranian government's Ministry of Science, Research and Technology. The cosy arrangement saw the two promise to publish joint books, hold joint conferences, undertake joint research and exchange students and members of staff. In return, the Iranian government paid Durham £10,000. Worth the price of aligning yourself with probably the most obnoxious government in the world?

Below is my latest blog for Conservative Home:

In September 2007, Mohammed Atif Siddique was jailed for eight years for various terror offences. The most serious of these charges - possession of an article for a purpose connected to terrorism - was quashed last week. The appeals judge, Lord Osborne, called the original verdict a 'miscarriage of justice', which is inevitably the headline that most of the press ran on. The impression given was that the British state was once again unfairly demonising its Muslim population.

The New York Times has reported that al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who has been promoted in the UK since 2003, has now admitted that he met with Detroit bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab last fall.