HODDLE St murderer Julian Knight says he will continue his fight to have a computer in his cell all the way to the Supreme Court.
Aboriginal child abuse 'getting worse'
Indigenous child abuse and neglect has more than doubled since 2000 according to a new report, with..... - Thank you for your work, Rudd and Gillard - ed.
Escaped python strangles toddler in cot
A 2-year-old girl has been strangled by Burmese python after the pet snake escaped and found its way into her bedroom.
200,000 across Australia lose power
More than 200,000 people lost power across Australia today, because of a major problem at a power......
Credit card scam triggers AFP warning
Credit card holders are being urged to keep an eye on their statements, after police smashed a multi-million dollar identity fraud syndicate.
Retraining sacked workers dominates COAG
Commonwealth and State leaders have agreed to measures to tackle Indigenous disadvantage and help retrenched workers following talks in Darwin.
Naked Air NZ demos aim to improve safety
Thousands of Air New Zealand passengers will from this week get their flight safety instructions from staff wearing nothing but body paint.
Neverland will be Jackson's Graceland
MICHAEL Jackson's body will make a final journey to Neverland, which could become a memorial.
Mum, tot death plunge 'carefully planned'
A MOTHER who strapped her toddler to her chest and leapt off a bridge had planned the suicide for weeks, an inquest hears.
Rudd Government plan to stamp out cane toads
VOLUNTEERS are to be enlisted to help kill off the cane toad. But the carnage will not end the toads. Environment Minister Peter Garrett will today announce a $400 million budget for mitigation programs, including funding 2550 "community volunteer days of cane toad control".- Sounds like a Rudd plan. - ed.
Indian court rules gay sex legal
A top Indian court has issued a landmark ruling decriminalising gay sex between consenting adults, overturning colonial-era legislation that outlawed homosexuality.
Soccer declared globally corrupt
THE multi-billion dollar soccer sector has become a vehicle for money laundering and other forms of corruption, a study says.
=== Journalists Corner ===
According to AEG: This is a picture of Michael Jackson in what would be his final performance, a June 23, 2009 rehearsal for his "This Is It" tour.
===
Remembering a Pop Legend!
He was her childhood idol, influencing her own successful music career! Celine Dion reflects on Michael Jackson.
It's a powerful 'On the Record'!
===
Trouble for the Plan?
As Dems push their healthcare plan, Congress cuts out for recess. So, what awaits the bill after the break? Get answers on 'Your World'!
===
Healthcare, Energy, Economy
All the action, all the politics and all the latest stories. If it's happening in Washington, it's happening here! Only on 'Special Report'!
===
A 'Factor' Investigation!
Geraldo with a shocking update on the child rapist getting released after only months in jail!
===Comments ===
Gay lords should bite the bullet on Bruno
Piers Akerman
IF IT’S OK for a couple of hundred men to prance along Oxford St with feather dusters strapped to their backsides during the Mardi Gras, who could be offended by comic Sacha Baron Cohen dressing up like a homosexual fashion designer and camping it up? - As a beginning teacher, nearly two decades ago, some year 7 kids asked me if I was going to the Campbelltown Mardi Gras known as Fisher’s Ghost festival. I said I wouldn’t be going. They said they would be performing. I said if their parents let them that was ok. They thought that was very funny, and they said .. it isn’t like the Sydney mardi gras. I said I hoped it wasn’t too, not that there was anything wrong with that. Life as a public school teacher is not easy, sometimes. - ed.
===
THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE HELPING
Tim Blair
A British academic, part of a team of idiots who stopped a train delivering coal to the Drax power station, explains his motives:
“UN statistics show that the amount of carbon produced by Drax was responsible for 180 deaths a year. Every minute we were on that train, we were stopping carbon emissions.”
No, they weren’t:
In fact, Drax functioned uninterrupted during the 16-hour stand-off before police cut climbing bolts and locks attaching protesters to the train and bridge.
===
RADAR RUDD
Tim Blair
The Prime Minister is working in deepest secrecy:
Much of what the government is doing to combat people smuggling is below the public’s radar, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says …
“We work through these things all the time,” he told Fairfax Radio Network on Wednesday.
“A lot of what occurs is ... below the radar ... never in the public debate.”
Which might explain why so many smuggled people keep coming here. Or dying during the attempt.
===
OUT OF MY WAY, CRIPPLES
Tim Blair
At this eco-minded grocery store, the parking space for a hybrid car is closer to the entrance than are spaces for disabled people:
UPDATE. Where do you park the private jet?
===
EASIER TO EXPORT CADILLACS
Tim Blair
Hey, Al Gore! You can’t sell American chickens in China!
===
TREASONOUS ROOTING
Tim Blair
First we were guilty of treason against the planet. And now, according to Democrat warmenoid Henry Waxman:
“They [Republicans] want to play politics and see if they can keep any achievements from being accomplished that may be beneficial to the Democrats. They’re rooting against the country and I think in this case, even rooting against the world because the world needs to get its act together to stop global warming.”
Of course we oppose the world. Henry Waxman lives on it.
UPDATE. A commenter at Crittenden’s:
The actual 4.6 billion-year old planet, survivor of multitudes of asteroid hits, Milankovitch cycle changes, magnetic pole reversals, solar and cosmic radiation, myriad volcanic caldera collapses, mantle plume eruptions, etc., etc. doesn’t give a rat’s ass about a few degrees Celsius or what idiots like Krugman think.
Treason!
===
KARL MALDEN, MOLLIE SUGDEN
Tim Blair
The great Karl Malden has died at 97.
UPDATE. Are You Being Served? star Mollie Sugden has died at 86.
===
2,478,040,448 FOR PROGRESS
Tim Blair
China has already indicated its opposition to carbon cuts. India joins in:
India said it will reject any new treaty to limit global warming that makes the country reduce greenhouse-gas emissions because that will undermine its energy consumption, transportation and food security.
“India will not accept any emission-reduction target – period,” [Environment Minister Jairam] Ramesh said. “This is a non-negotiable stand.”
Look on the bright side, envirodinks. Think of all the emissions saved by not going to Copenhagen.
===
DIVERSITY CRUSHED
Tim Blair
At last:
The world’s biggest mobile phone makers announced a deal Monday agreeing to a universal standard phone charger that will work on millions of handsets made by different manufacturers.
===
NOW HE’S IN THE BIG HOUSE
Tim Blair
Party boy Gregory McCalium before he broke into the home of 72-year-old British man Frank Corti:
Party boy Gregory McCalium after he broke into the home of 72-year-old British man – and former boxer – Frank Corti:
===
IT’S STILL 2008
Tim Blair
A 9,800-word profile of Sarah Palin reveals more about the author than about the subject, which presumably wasn’t the aim. Also, US newspaper columnists have apparently never heard of Joe Biden:
She may not have won the Vice Presidency, but Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin did receive a consolation prize from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists (NSNC): the Sitting Duck Award.
Palin, running mate of GOP nominee John McCain, was selected for the award at the NSNC’s Annual Conference, held last weekend in Ventura, Calif. She was nominated for “showing it’s hard to put your best foot forward when it’s in your mouth,” according to the NSNC Web site.
US newspaper employees delivering a sitting duck award to someone other than themselves. Cute.
UPDATE. An ongoing cultural shift:
Since Obama came into office, Fox has continued not only winning, but doing so at unprecedented levels. As the Hollywood Reporter noted last week, the network is having its"best year yet,” with the competition in the ratings shifting from not only the news networks but all of basic cable.
===
Take a chance on us
Andrew Bolt
That’s really sending a signal:
THE Federal Government is involved in multimillion-dollar negotiations to use Christmas Island’s luxurious casino resort in its battle to house the rapidly growing number of asylum seekers and staff required to care for them.
In fact, the people smugglers could use pictures of the casino on their brochures:
===
Planet gets Lucas aid
Andrew Bolt
Only a modern green would see nothing weird in preaching global warming gospel from a seat in a private jet. Take actress Isabel Lucas, star of Michael Bay’s Transformers - Revenge of the Fallen:
The director did learn something from Lucas, though, when he flew her between states in the US on his private jet. “After a flight I asked him if I could offset it. He was like, ‘What’s offsetting?’ He flies everywhere so I explained to him what it meant, and gave him a website to go to where he could learn about offsetting. That would be a move in the right direction.”
And even on the set of this huge, elecrticity-gobbling project, designed to get millions of people driving to electrically-power multiplexes, Lucas did her little best:
I tried suggesting to Michael that perhaps we could create some hybrid cars in the film, like a Toyota Prius that turns into a Transformer. But he’s not really that way inclined.
Warms your heart. And the planet.
===
Sun accused
Andrew Bolt
Correlation recently reported between solar/GCR variability and temperature in Siberia from glacial ice core, 30 yr lag (ie. ocean currents may be part of response)
Man may be innocent, after all. Jasper Kirkby of CERN explains new research into whether solar activity has caused cosmic rays to indirectly warm the earth:
This talk presents an overview of the palaeoclimatic evidence for solar/cosmic ray forcing of the climate, and reviews the possible physical mechanisms. These will be investigated in the CLOUD experiment which begins to take data at the CERN PS later this year.
UPDATE
A new paper in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics also fingers the sun:
In concluding, we find increasingly strong evidence of a clear solar signature in a number of climatic indicators in Europe, strengthening the earlier conclusions of a study that included stations from the United States (Le Mouël et al., 2008 ). With the recent downturn of both solar activity and global temperatures, the debated correlations we suggested in Le Mouël et al. (2005), which appeared to stop in the 1980s, actually might extend to the present. The role of the Sun in global and regional climate change should be re-assessed and reasonable physical mechanisms are in sight.
===
Where are those protesters now?
Andrew Bolt
Greg Sheridan:
Apart from ethnic Iranians, there has hardly been a single demonstration in any Western capital in support of the Iranian democrats.
Yet isn’t there a class, in Australia and in the rest of the West, of people deeply concerned about human rights? The class that Robert Manne and Judith Brett call the moral middle class? Weren’t there thousands of demonstrators against the World Trade Organisation and G20 meetings in Australia because the global economy allegedly repressed the rights of poor people?
What about the groups explicitly dedicated to human rights? ...
The truth is the language and practice of human rights advocacy in the West has become completely corrupted by the postmodern ideologies of the contemporary Left. In this parallel universe all crimes are a subset of imperialism and the only true villains are the US, Israel and, for us, Australia…
Where are you on Iran, Louise Adler, happy to accuse Israel of war crimes without the slightest evidence, but apparently unstirred by the murder of hundreds of innocent civilians in Iran?
What have you got to say, Antony Loewenstein, stupidly and inaccurately labelling Israel an apartheid state and approvingly quoted in the Iranian official media, but listless on your blog in the face of the Iranian repression?
What about The Age’s cartoonist Michael Leunig, who once drew a cartoon so morally obtuse, stupid and offensive that it was happily accepted by an Iranian newspaper in a competition for cartoons that would offend Jews (the cartoon was submitted without Leunig’s knowledge), but who is apparently unmoved to draw an image in sympathy with young Iranian democrats?
===
Vanity Fair invents another Palin
Andrew Bolt
Vanity Fair slimes Sarah Palin in a way that shows how little facts count in the media when you are licensed to sneer.
Tim Blair has more - and notes the continuing rise of Fox News. Coincidence?
UPDATE
Would the lascivious dandy who edits this magazine ever see in Palin anything but a threat to his dinner party’s seating arrangements?
===
Must be more of that sexism
Andrew Bolt
When the figures were reversed they were proof of sexism, and programs and laws were needed to redress the “imbalance”. So what do the figures prove now, and should the same kind of affirmative action laws - this time for men - be introduced?
Christina Hoff Sommers on how men became the second sex at American universities:
In 2006 the National Academy of Sciences released Beyond Bias And Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering, which found “pervasive unexamined gender bias” against women in academic science. Donna Shalala, a former Clinton administration cabinet secretary, chaired the committee that wrote the report. When she spoke at a congressional hearing in October 2007, she warned that strong measures would be needed to improve the “hostile climate” women face in university science. This “crisis,” as she called it, “clearly calls for a transformation of academic institutions . . . Our nation’s future depends on it.”
While some scholars contend that ‘unconscious bias’ and persistent stereotypes are primary reasons for the paucity of women in the high echelons of math and science, others, perhaps a majority, suggest that men and women, on average, have different career interests and propensities.
The study was controversial from the beginning. John Tierney of the New York Times interviewed several researchers who dismissed it as politically driven propaganda—the “triumph of politics over science."…
This past Tuesday the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) released a non-political, objective study of women in academic science (which)… contradicts key findings of Beyond Bias and Barriers. According to its executive summary:
Our survey findings do indicate that, at many critical transition points in their academic careers (e.g., hiring for tenure-track and tenure positions and promotions) women appear to have fared as well as or better than men…
So now what? Can we at least drop the women-as-victims rhetoric? And perhaps we could also drop that whole soggy theorising over differences that are so easily explained by simple preferences, rather than injustice.
===
Goldblum mourns Goldblum
Andrew Bolt
www.colbertnation.com
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Jeff Goldblum Will Be Missed | ||||
| ||||
Jeff Goldblum is lucky, being able to deliver his own eulogy. Still, it must have felt freaky.
===
A memorial for every housefire, too?
Andrew Bolt
Please, can we keep our catastrophes in proportion? Black Saturday indeed devastated many communities, which deserve and got our help, But is Musk Vale really one of them?
From the Hepburn Advocate:
THE shire will receive almost $80,000 to create a bushfire memorial. The State Government last week announced the shire was one of 19 councils to share in $2.5 million funding for memorials to mark February’s bushfires.
Premier John Brumby said the monuments could be physical monuments, gardens, open spaces for reflection, landscaping, sculptures or a commemorative event.
“Funding can be used to create community memorials to remember the bushfires, to support communities to acknowledge the scale, impact and loss, as well as to acknowledge their pride and resilience during recovery,” he said…
The Musk Vale bushfires, which started on February 23, destroyed one home...
===
Not all genocide and child-theft
Andrew Bolt
Queensland Museum bucks the overwhelming trend, with an exhibition that dares mention that perhaps some Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders might actually be glad the Europeans came:
Torres Strait Islanders celebrate 1st July as The Coming of the Light, a yearly holiday in the Torres Strait.
One Saturday evening, 1st July 1871, the Reverend Samuel MacFarlane of the London Missionary Society anchored at Erub (Darnley Island). The Society had been active in the Southwest Pacific since the 1840’s converting people to Christianity.
Dabad, a Warrior Clan Elder on Erub, “defied his Tribal Law” and openly welcomed the London Missionary Society clergymen and South Sea Islander evangelists and teachers… The Islanders acceptance of the missionaries and Christianity meant the end of inter island conflict. Christian principles were partly compatible with traditional religion and the missionaries gave some protection and assistance to Islanders in their contact with foreigners in the maritime industry.
===
Is It Legal? Supreme Court OKs Protests at Soldiers' Funerals and Mom of 550-Pound Boy Faces Charges
This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," June 30, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
MONICA CROWLEY, GUEST HOST: We continue now with "Is It Legal?" The mother of a 14-year-old South Carolina boy who weighs 550 pounds faces felony neglect charges, and 10 more people will reportedly be charged in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. But first, the U.S. Supreme Court says these anti-gay protesters from the Westboro Baptist Church can continue to picket at the funerals of American soldiers.
Megyn, let me begin with you. I think that what these people do is particularly despicable. I mean, if you've got a beef with the United States military and their policies on gays, then go picket outside the Pentagon. But for God's sake, do not be picketing outside the funeral of an American serviceman or woman. I find it so disgusting, and yet, the U.S. Supreme Court says they can do it. Why?
MEGYN KELLY, "AMERICA'S NEWSROOM" CO-HOST: Yes. Who, other than the people who are part of this so-called church, would disagree with that? I can't imagine there's one viewer watching this show who likes what these people have to say. And they don't care whether the service people were gay or straight. In fact, as far as I know, they all have been straight. And yet, they go to their funerals to try to protest the military's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy. They're nut cases. It's all one big family.
In any event, I don't think the judges on the Supreme Court or the lower courts like these people anyway. What they do like is the First Amendment, and what happened here was Missouri tried to pass a law as other states have done saying you can't protest within a certain radius of funerals. And the — but the law wasn't that well-defined. It didn't say what the radius was. So this crazy church hired the ACLU, or didn't have to hire but the ACLU, of course, stepped in and volunteered to sue to challenge the law. They got an injunction preventing the enforcement of the law. The Supreme Court was just asked whether that injunction should be left in place. They refused to take the case, which means as a practical matter the law cannot be enforced while this litigation plays out in Missouri. So they still have a chance of enforcing it.
CROWLEY: OK. So do you agree that the reason the Supreme Court turned it down was because the case just wasn't ripe yet?
LIS WIEHL, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Exactly. The Supreme Court said, look, we're not ruling on the constitutionality. They didn't say we love these guys either. I agree. Everybody could agree on that. But they said, "It's not right for us yet. You at the lower court level have to decide on the constitutionality." Because yes, there is a First Amendment, of course. But you can also put reasonable time, manner and limit restrictions. You can say, as the law tried to say, OK, you can protest, but not for an hour before and an hour after. Let's see…
CROWLEY: And isn't it true that in America we do have protected areas like Arlington National Cemetery for example...
WIEHL: Of course. Of course.
CROWLEY: ...and schools, so if a protest is going to happen and have an adverse impact, right, the law says that they can be blocked.
WIEHL: Exactly.
(CROSSTALK)
KELLY: But Monica, the problem here, Missouri would have been fine, I think, if they had written the law the way Ohio did, where they said 300 yards away from the funeral and don't do it for an hour before or an hour after the funeral service. Unfortunately, they did a broad-brush law that said just stay the heck away, essentially. And that's why they got the challenge. I think even if their law winds up failing, they're going to pass a law that looks more like Ohio's, and the soldiers' families will be protected in Missouri ultimately.
CROWLEY: Megyn, do you know if any other states have laws like this in place?
KELLY: Yes, about 40, all because of these crazies at the Westboro Baptist Church, who come out to make a ridiculous point. No one ever thought we needed a law like this. Nobody was bothering grieving family members of service personnel until these people decided to make their message known at the funeral. So, now, thankfully, most states are protecting funeral goers. And I think Missouri will get the law right eventually one way or the other.
WIEHL: They need to rewrite the law.
CROWLEY: And the Missouri attorney general actually says he's going to appeal on this.
WIEHL: Absolutely.
CROWLEY: Well, these people do this to their eternal shame.
All right. Let's move on to Bernie Madoff. A report today...
WIEHL: Right.
CROWLEY: ...saying that up to 10 more indictments could be coming. Who are we looking at here? Maybe the wife, Ruth?
WIEHL: Absolutely. The wife, Ruth, the two sons. The wife wasn't just the wife who sat at home. She was the bookkeeper for this organization. And the only other person that's been charged right now is Madoff's accountant. So what I would be doing if I were the prosecutor is — I'm sure they already have — is, you know, getting everything from that accountant, getting the names of everybody else that knew things and then what incentive does Madoff have now after a 150-year sentence? Not much except one: to try to save his family.
CROWLEY: Well, and Megyn, we saw yesterday a statement from the wife, Ruth. It was clearly lawyered up. She is clearly lawyered up. I think this was a CIA — CYA statement from Ruth Madoff.
KELLY: Right.
CROWLEY: He also had two sons.
KELLY: Now she feels bad.
CROWLEY: Well, I guess. I guess. But we also had two sons. We've got a brother who worked with Bernie Madoff.
KELLY: The brother. The brother. Hello, the brother was the compliance officer for the company.
WIEHL: Right.
KELLY: He's the guy responsible for saying "We're meeting all the SEC regulations. We're not doing anything wrong." I would say the brother would be the No. 1 place you look to see who's going to be charged next. But I don't know. So far they haven't named anybody specifically, and so far we haven't heard anything about these two sons, who Bernie Madoff has maintained knew nothing about it. They only ran the legitimate end of the business.
CROWLEY: And just one quick thing though. Don't forget, a la Martha Stewart, if you lie to the feds during an investigation, a federal investigation, that's a crime right there. The cover-up is — well, maybe not in this case but it's usually worse than the actual crime. This was a very sophisticated fraud. One man did not do this by himself.
KELLY: Exactly. Exactly.
WIEHL: Absolutely right.
CROWLEY: All right. Let's move on to the South Carolina case. Megyn, we have this very sad story about this boy, 14 years old, weighing 550 pounds. The mother has now been charged with a count of child neglect and I guess endangerment. If this child weighed, say, 60 pounds, that would be a clear case of neglect, right? The child's life is in danger. But can't you make the other argument that he's so morbidly obese that his — that his life is also in danger?
KELLY: You absolutely can, and I'm glad they did. Listen, I am not for the nanny state. And I get upset when I see prosecutors coming in and trying to tell parents how to parent their children. This is not one of those cases. This is not a problematic case. This is egregious. This mother basically says, well, she didn't have a lot of money, and she didn't have that much time to, you know, sort of watch him, make sure he was eating the right thing. Well, she certainly had enough time to buy him the food and to provide food that was obviously unhealthy, because no 14-year-old boy should be 555 pounds. She's pushing this kid toward a heart attack, not to mention a litany of other health problems. The state tried to step in. They tried to warn her, and say, "Ma'am, you're basically killing your son," and she blew it off.
CROWLEY: That's right. That's right. Quickly, Lis.
WIEHL: First of all, this woman needs help. I agree with that. Maybe she needs psychological counseling putting her in prison where he says the boy is now going to get depressed is going to make him eat more.
CROWLEY: All right, ladies, thank you so much for joining me today.
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