ELSEWHERE

Another great column from Andrew Bolt: "IF you want to wipe the smile off your child's face, make the poor thing read the books that last weekend won the Children's Book Council awards. It's true this year's winners at least aren't as horrific as the books of huge-selling John Marsden... Marsden, who had psychiatric care at 19, has written a score of novels that seem to confront his child readers with his personal demons, yet for some sick reason are critically praised instead of getting the treatment they deserve -- deep burial at the local tip."

Justice at last! "Defrocked priest John Geoghan, a central figure in the Catholic Church's sex abuse scandal, was killed on Saturday by a fellow-inmate in the prison where he was serving a sentence for child rape"

Arlene Peck thinks that the Palestinians have the IQ of eggplants and that it is impossible to negotiate with them. I think that everything that has happened over there in the last few years justifies that conclusion.

My top post yesterday noted that the Australian middle-class has moved Leftward over the years. In response, Gerry Jackson of Brookes News emailed me: “For what it's worth, it seems to me that what moved our middle class to the left was the spread of tertiary education, which in many cases is nothing less than leftwing indocrination. Listening to some graduates as they try to talk about economics, history or politics drives me to distraction and makes me realise just how far standards have fallen in some of our faculties.”

Great! American universities are cutting back on the number of classes they offer. Hopefully that will discourage some students from wasting their time with the so-called education that such universities offer. With the exception of economics, the Humanities and Social Sciences have become so unscholarly that scrapping ALL of their courses would be of net benefit to the world.

The Devil’s Christianity: "With the upcoming execution of Paul Hill -- who killed an abortion doctor and a clinic escort -- abortion providers and police are grimly aware that clinics could be the target of further violence and are on higher alert than usual. While facilities that provide abortions say they face threats all the time and already have a number of security measures in place, some abortion rights activists are worried about swirling threats from anti-abortion extremists. Police also are on alert. ... State and federal authorities continued an investigation Friday into four letters sent this week to three state officials and a judge warning about the impending execution and threatening the officials.

The Wicked one highlights the enormously wasteful and neglectful way the U.S. Government uses its taxpayer-funded assets.

My latest academic upload here (or here) looks at attitude to shoplifting among Australians. It finds that Australian skepticism about authority does NOT extend to being permissive about crime.

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