Laudably, Mr Baucus has pursued a moderate course, rejecting a proposal for a government-run insurance scheme.

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Lately, it's been Vietnam, a laudably reliable bastion of anti-religious sentiment or so I thought.

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While diseases such as HIV, malaria and tuberculosis have laudably gained the attention of the global health community, NCDs have been routinely ignored.

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Professor Nutt has, laudably, staked the credibility of science in public policy on getting politicians to put away their moral sentiments and face up to statistics.

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Last week, he sat glowering in the House of Commons while Dawn Primarolo, a junior treasury minister of limited ability, tried to explain why one of Mr Brown's flagship policies, laudably designed to help the working poor, had instead driven large numbers of them into distress and penury.

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In addition, the NSC's Clarke (who, it must be acknowledged, during his time as its counterterrorism chief - in his words - "failed" to discern and address adequately the menace of WMDs in the form of hijacked planes) was laudably beavering away at another grave danger: the possibility of cyber-strikes aimed at the computers that enable America's critical infrastructure.

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