Captain Andrew Paljakka, an explosives expert with the army, took his own life after a tour of duty in Afghanistan. His death has prompted a military inquiry. 

He served in Afghanistan for just six weeks, but it was enough time to see things that would haunt Andrew Paljakka long after his tour of duty ended. 

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s political camp struck back on Saturday against rivals who were attacking her as overly secretive, circulating legal arguments from a Clinton ally asserting that the Clintons are not blocking the release of presidential papers about their discussions in the White House in the 1990s. 

Mr Bush, as God knows best, is no Augustine; but the British historian Charles Freeman points to the latter as the epitome of a more general process that was underway in the fourth century: namely, ‘the gradual subjection of reason to faith and authority.’  

The debate over climate change in Australia could be seen as evidence of the existence of parallel universes.  

It is as if Australia and 191 other countries, including China and India, never signed and ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992, as if the new Howard Government never signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. In this universe, Australia is a leader on climate change. 

Top federal police officers told the Howard government on the same day it cancelled Mohamed Haneef’s visa that their investigations showed there was nothing to suggest the Gold Coast doctor’s involvement in violence or terrorism in Australia.

On August 9th, 1945, two-thirds of Japan's Catholics were annihilated. Nagasaki's historic importance as the center of Japanese Christianity and openness to the West, one would think, would have spared it from being targeted by a Western Christian nation.

world war III; the spectre of lenin, hitler, communists, fascists….. 

What is bushit thinking? 

Today he spoke to the Heritage Foundation & attacked Democrats in Congress for being responsible for everything but hair lice. He is fighting evil - why don’t Democrats understand that? 

You see, today the American government tells us that it can spy on us whenever and however it likes.

It can read our e-mail and postal mail, track our financial records, pry into our medical histories, force libraries to turn over lists of the books we read, force internet service providers to turn over records of our surfing habits, and tap our phones and record our calls.  

from Crikey  

"Me Too" gibes still not hurting Rudd 

Minister for Vocational and Further Education Andrew Robb knows a thing or two about losing unlosable elections. He was at the helm of the John Hewson Liberal Party campaign when Paul Keating came from behind for Labor's "sweetest victory of all."

White 'not interested' as Jones firms for Wallabies 

Former Australia coach Alan Jones has formally applied for the vacant Wallabies post, but South Africa's World Cup-winning boss Jake White is a non-starter. 

from the Centre for American Progress 

Candidates 'should declare sexual preference' 

Not to stoke any of the inane conspiracy theories running wild on the Internet, but if Osama bin Laden wasn’t on the payroll of Lockheed Martin or some other large defense contractor, he deserves to have been.  

Critics Turn Out To Protest Media Consolidation