President Barack Obama has received much credit for drawing down American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, but less attention has been paid to his administration's embrace of armed drones.

His expansion of covert drone strikes goes far beyond that of former President George W. Bush, and has blurred the line between warfare and assassination.

If scientific method is only one form of a general method employed in all human inquiry, how is it that the results of science are more reliable than what is provided by these other forms? I think the answer is that science deals with highly quantified variables and that it is the precision of its results that supplies this reliability. But make no mistake: Quantified precision is not to be confused with a superior method of thinking.

Abbottism was going down like a lead balloon, so Abbott was replaced by Turnbull who made all the right noises that could have put the LNP back in the running. But the cabinet was still full of Abbottists, and the policies were still Abbottist. So nobody was fooled. Nobody outside the Liberal party anyway.

The caustic editorial followed similar comments made by The Project co-host Waleed Aly who on Wednesday noted Mr Turnbull had also failed to appear on their show.

Armytage said all of commercials networks had been frozen-out by the Prime Minister's office and suggested Mr Turnbull had no interest in talking to Sunrise viewers.

"We should point out we have asked Prime Minister Turnbull to appear on this show throughout the later stages of this election campaign," she said.

When Tony Abbott suddenly declared the push for marriage equality to be "an important issue" last year – breaking with the political right's belittling of it as a boutique pre-occupation of inner-city "luvvies" – it was tempting to imagine the Coalition had undergone an epiphany.

It's a neat pre-election trick in which the Coalition is taking the political dividend of appearing modern and progressive, while studiously avoiding discussion of critical details of its plebiscite. 

You will have rugs, fabulous, fabulous rugs.

Here are some words from a letter in the Sydney Morning Herald of June 25th, 2016 …