The Abbottite heresy grows not just wickeder but crazier by the day.

Over 12 years into the so-called "Global War on Terror," the United States appears to be striking terror into the hearts of the rest of the world.

Almost everyone on the left is paying close attention to Tim Wilson’s appointment to the Human Rights Commission. Even I have written about this outrage, this outrage I tell you.

It is a sideshow compared to what is happening in the Australian Tax Office.

Here's a toast to Robert Burns, who taught to mark the time

by writing a song to sing each year for the sake of Auld Lang Syne,

for the past is filled with bad and good, the good should be remembered,

and in the shade of Christmas, when we're well and true Decembered,

From Gunter Ratingaher (picture of tree regeneration, by Gunter  Ratingaher).

The headline - "Bride and Boom!" - was spectacular, if you think killing people in distant lands is a blast and a half.

from john passant ….

The US Senate voted Thursday night to authorize nearly $633 billion in military spending. President Obama is expected to sign the legislation, which provides $552.1 billion for the regular military budget and $80.7 billion for the war in Afghanistan and other overseas contingency operations (OCO).

The intellectual dishonesty of Israel’s supporters is appalling. But in some odd way, it is also understandable. How else could they respond to the massively growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign?

Six months ago, I stepped out from the shadows of the United States Government's National Security Agency to stand in front of a journalist's camera.

I shared with the world evidence proving some governments are building a world-wide surveillance system to secretly track how we live, who we talk to, and what we say.

The British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline will no longer pay doctors to promote its products and will stop tying compensation of sales representatives to the number of prescriptions doctors write, its chief executive said Monday, effectively ending two common industry practices that critics have long assailed as troublesome conflicts of interest.

Unlike the rest of the world’s nations, Iceland has taken strong steps to reduce some of the in-your-face corruption that led to the global financial crisis. Four former heads of Iceland’s Kaupthing Bank have been sentenced to prison for between three to five years – the heaviest sentence for financial fraud in Iceland’s history.

Why are Australians so unhappy with their lot? Why do we vote for politicians who want to trash our common heritage? Karl Mathiesen spoke to former Greens leader Bob Brown about the 2013 election

Tony Abbott's cheap sloganeering and political bungles have discredited the parliament. That will make it hard for his or any other government to solve real fiscal problems, writes Ben Eltham

The first hundred days of a government is a rather arbitrary yardstick, dating originally to Franklin Roosevelt’s turbulent first months as US president during the Great Depression.