If Clooney seems drawn to this genre, it's not just because he has fine taste and a healthy sense of humor.

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"The government is probably going to have to move to a situation where it's not just the police who can issue you a fine, " he said.

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Not to put too fine a point on it, he acted as a cat's-paw for his boss, Punch Sulzberger, when the publisher got rid of his own more liberal cousin, John Oakes, as editor of the editorial page.

ECONOMIST: New York opinion-makers

"Online music stores have typically offered MP3s at 128kbps, ie very compressed files, which is fine for pop music but it's not exactly high-fidelity, " he said.

BBC: Passionato logo