So even though he probably won't be getting that pardon from George W. Bush, investment fraud-er and international con man Conrad Black is okay with being in prison. He hasn't had "unpleasantness" with anyone, and has spent his time in the slammer teaching other inmates how to launder money read (that's the first step!).

But despite being locked up in an American courthouse and watching the country's quick decline into financial ruin, Black has no schadenfreude towards the nation that currently punishes him.

And it surely has earned the respect of the world in elevating a very capable leader as the first non-white to head any Western nation. I would be distinctly consolable if the United States really was in decline, and I have more legitimate grievances against that country than do the Guardian or the BBC, but it is still a country of incomparable vitality, even as its moral, judicial soul atrophies and reeks.

Those of us who are appalled by some foibles of the United States do not do ourselves a favour by announcing an American sunset two centuries prematurely.

Another 200 years? For real? This country? That's actually…pretty reassuring. I was going to give us another decade, tops. Black/Ron Paul '12!