And so it's time again for our gala ceremony to announce the Australian Whinger of the Year. I got more than 400 emails from readers last week, most agreeing with my short list of Tony Abbott, the retailer Gerry Harvey, those meddlesome priests George Pell and Fred Nile, and the moaning, mining magnates Twiggy Forrest and Gina Rinehart.

The Herald's sister newspaper, The Age, last night fought off a bid by police to seize computer hard drives, following a search of journalists' files at its Melbourne premises.

Gary Gray brandished a parliamentary gold pass at his press conference yesterday and declared it would soon be a ''museum piece''.

Paraphrasing Shakespeare, something is rotten in the state of Capitol Hill. A majority of Congress is just about to put the finishing touches on an amendment to the military budget authorization legislation that will finish off some critical American rights under our Constitution.

You may have missed it, but the Labor Party made history last week by passing a policy to support, for the first time, the offshore processing of asylum seekers.

But for card-carrying Labor supporters in particular, and fair-minded Australians in general, it was a bitter pill to swallow.

The federal Labor MP Craig Thomson took a $24,000 taxpayer-funded overseas study trip to Europe and the US; and then plagiarised much of his report to the Australian government and Parliament - presenting speeches by overseas officials and outdated Wikipedia articles as his own work.

In trying to assert herself, the besieged PM has added to her problems.

The EPA's findings about fracking's contamination of ground water have sent a shockwave through a gas industry in denial.

A television advertisement shown during a children's show after school and depicting students sharing Oreo cookies was not aimed at children, the Advertising Standards Board ruled, because it was appealing to adults' sense of nostalgia.

Writing from the very region that produces more clichés per square foot than any other "story" – the Middle East – I should perhaps pause before I say I have never read so much garbage, so much utter drivel, as I have about the world financial crisis.

On Dec. 8, 1941, Franklin Roosevelt took the rostrum before a joint session of Congress to ask for a declaration of war on Japan.

A day earlier, at dawn, carrier-based Japanese aircraft had launched a sneak attack devastating the U.S. battle fleet at Pearl Harbor.

Europe’s worst financial crisis in generations is forging a new European Union, pushing Britain to the sidelines and creating a more integrated, fiscally disciplined core of nations under the auspices of a resurgent Germany.

from Crikey …..

Menadue: media missing the boat on asylum-seeker coverage