ALBANY — Lawmakers voted late Friday to legalize same-sex marriage, making New York the largest state where gay and lesbian couples will be able to wed and giving the national gay-rights movement new momentum from the state where it was born.

A series of Twitter posts by shadow treasurer Joe Hockey have left many Canberra insiders mystified.

Yesterday, Mr Hockey posted a series of pictures on his Twitter account of a cardboard cut-out of Kevin Rudd outside various Canberra landmarks.

"The ghost of Kevin Rudd is making guest appearances all day today, the first anniversary of his political assassination ... where will he be next?" Mr Hockey tweeted in the morning.

Mr Hockey then posted a series of photographs of the former prime minister in various locations.

fatso

Millions of pounds raised by the sale of a little-known Picasso masterpiece are to fund medical research into obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

The portrait of the artist's lover, Marie-Therese Walter, fetched £13.5m when it went under the hammer on Tuesday at Christie's Impressionist and Modern Art auction in London.

The 1935 work, "Jeune fille endormie", was given to the University of Sydney last year by an anonymous US donor on the condition that it be sold to support scientific research at the university.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/jun/22/picasso-sold-auction

On the news tonight, Barnaby was seen defending his denialist stance of global warming by referring to little birds breathing and exhaling CO2, as if this process was comparable to our industrial CO2 and as unimportant... And he was not joking about it... He was SERIOUS. In what is obviously his midget mind, this represented the extend of his scientific understanding of the subject — and possibly that of all sciences.

And we elect these idiots...

As a sort of "grand finale" to a presentation at a conference earlier this month in Los Angeles, climate "sceptic" Lord Christopher Monckton displayed on the giant conference screen a large Nazi swastika next to a quote from Adolf Hitler.

A few seconds later came another quote, next to another large swastika – an emblem still offensive to most people seven decades after the end of WWII. The quote this time was from Australia's climate change advisor Professor Ross Garnaut, which suggested that "on a balance of probabilities, the mainstream science is right" on human-caused climate change.

doing the email rounds...

JOHN Howard should have stood down as Liberal leader before losing government and his seat at the 2007 poll, former Liberal Senate leader Nick Minchin has declared in his farewell speech to parliament.

Senator Minchin used his valedictory today to list his failures, not just relive successes.

He admitted his regret at not having "the courage of my conservative convictions concerning my serious reservations at the time about the US plans for the invasion of Iraq."

He also expressed his disappointment at his inability to privatise Snowy Hydro and Medibank Private during his time as finance minister.

Tony Abbott has used Question Time to accuse the Government of abandoning democracy over its handling of the carbon tax, as criticism mounts over his proposal for a plebiscite on the issue.

The Opposition Leader demanded to know why Prime Minister Julia Gillard had promised there would no carbon price until a consensus of the people had been reached.

"How can she claim such a consensus exists when she refuses to put it to the people, preferably at an election, but if not at a plebiscite?" he said.

But Ms Gillard labelled the plebiscite proposal a "stunt".

 From the ABC Drum: Simon Tatz is the director of communications for the Mental Health Council of Australia

Quote:

US President Barack Obama and Republican House Speaker John Boehner made a winning team on the golf course - with federal budget discussion likely to have taken place between the shots.

They teamed up to beat Vice-President Joe Biden and Ohio's Republican Governor John Kasich at a military base outside Washington DC.

The game was touted as an opportunity to socialise and discuss the budget.

Republicans want spending cuts with the deficit poised to hit $1.4tr (£865bn).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13813691

Realpolitik is less about policy than it is about messages, and sometimes messages are best delivered visually.

That's why politicians stage media stunts like visiting small businesses in the outlying industrial suburbs of Canberra, and, yes, Tony Abbott, I'm looking at you.

For months now the Opposition Leader has sought to lead the daily agenda, and get his face on the nightly news, by dragging gaggles of shivering (and sometimes even whimpering) journalists to fishmongers, glass pane purveyors, you name it, in order to emphasise the evil, world-as-we-know-it-slaughtering nature of the government's imminent carbon tax.

When David Flint asserts that the Queen is not a foreign national (Letters, June 16), is he claiming that she is Australian? If so, I would be interested to see her birth certificate. I'm not unreasonable - I'll accept the short form.

Michael Cahill Summer Hill