I was one of those who was pretty convinced that John Howard would retire around March next year, after ten years in office. So his announcement today that he’ll fight the next election proves me wrong:
Prime Minister John Howard has said he is confident he can beat Opposition Leader Kim Beazley.
Revealing for the first […]

Is this the most unenticing subscription offer ever? Crikey, the online political gossip-and-comment outfit, is offering new subscribers, well, I’ll let them tell it:
Yesterday in Crikey’s subscriber edition, we ran the story of the 2UE newsreader who vomited while reading the news. Today, in the subscriber edition, we’re running the audio of that grisly […]

Very sorry to see James Russell close up shop. Hot Buttered Death was one of my earliest introductions to the Australian blogosphere and James’ grumpy, snarly and well-informed take on matters cultural has remained a regular read ever since. Gonna miss you, James!
Incidentally, Mr Russell, if you ever want to throw up a […]

Interesting purple post about the role of the Lib Dems in Britain:
One interesting observation from a couple of political scientists who’ve published a comprehensive monograph on the party - Neither Left nor Right: The Liberal Democrats and the Electorate - is that Downsian economic theories of democracy which see voting and party positioning as akin […]

Just when you thought it was safe to have your Chicken Kiev picnics again….
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Bad news: deaths from cervical cancer are on the increase.
Good news: there’s a new vaccine that stops the virus that causes the cancer.
Unfortunate news: the virus in question, human papilloma virus (HPV), is sexually transmitted.
Obvious news: you simply have to vaccinate girls before they become sexually active.
Unbelievable news: “religious groups are gearing up to oppose […]

Dr Glen Rangwala, an independent analyst at the University of Cambridge, UK, has put together an indispensible file which sets the pre-war claims by the Bush administration about Saddam’s WMD program against what we actually knew about that program:
This reference file is an inventory and critical analysis of the claims made about the weapons and […]

Miranda Devine: genius
It is clear from the extraordinary success of Channel Nine’s Monday-night program Supernanny that Australian parents are suffering a crisis of confidence in their child-rearing skills.
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Belle Waring had this postscript up on a post about another maltreated prisoner at Guantanamo Bay and it is worth noting:
I know I’ve related this before on my own blog, but my grandfather was an OSS spy in WWII. In one of the letters he sent home to my grandmother he describes how he met […]

Eric Martin has tagged me in the latest round of blog chain-letter writing. The theme of this one is to name five persons, living or dead, with whom you would like to blog. You can read Eric’s answers over at his site.
I’m going to give mine some thought during the day and will […]