November 10, 2008 – 7:20 pm
There has been a lot of publicity and justifiable disappointment about the decision by the voters of California to narrowly support – 52 per cent to 48 per cent – a proposal to change the California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry in that state.
But the result which really astonished me [...]
November 10, 2008 – 10:30 am
Back in August, I noted Ms Rashida Tlaib, a Muslim woman of Palistinian descent, had just won the primary contest to be the Democratic nominee for a Detroit based state seat. In the elections held this week, she won that seat, polling 90 per cent to the Republican candidate’s 10 per cent, and in the [...]
November 7, 2008 – 3:29 pm
The provision in the US Constitution prohibiting a person from being President unless they are “natural born” sits strangely for a country who’s economic and political might owes so much to immigration. Presumably it made sense when the US Constitution was adopted in 1787, but it is simply unjust now.*
This provision obviously means no migrant [...]
November 4, 2008 – 5:55 pm
Given some of the other toxic lines of attack that have been used during the US election, perhaps it is a blessing of sorts that the immigration debate has barely featured in the campaign. If immigration had become the hot-button issue it looked like being twelve months ago, the campaign could have been even uglier [...]
November 3, 2008 – 10:36 pm
I haven’t been a big fan of the current Queensland government’s environmental record, but their decision to ignore the easy scaremongering and invest in recycling water is probably one of the best decisions they’ve made. But it’s not just the water being recycled. The arguments against water recycling have been thrown up and debunked so [...]
November 3, 2008 – 10:22 am
The Australia Institute has released a timely report (pdf) on the possibilities for including agriculture in an emissions trading scheme as part of efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions. As the debate continues over the Treasury modelling of the costs of an ETS, we need to make sure we don’t lose sight of the where agriculture [...]
November 1, 2008 – 10:08 am
I have been quietly cheering on Barack Obama for many months now. The polls may be looking very good, but a combination of the uncertainties of voluntary voting, ramshackle and sometimes blatantly corrupt electoral laws and practices, plus recent history, plain old fashioned superstition and the dangers of taking any election for granted means I refuse [...]
