After a year of travelling, I had planned a last, short trip. I was going to take the train from Montreal to New Orleans. The travels I had been undertaking earlier this year had brought me to places that were meant to form the background of my second novel.

Dear idiot in chief...

One of Kevin Rudd's strongest supporters has questioned the former prime minister's judgment, reportedly describing his election policies as cruel and idiotic.

from the shovel …..

Australian authorities are gathering more than 300,000 contact lists a day from personal email and instant messaging accounts, on behalf of the US National Security Agency, a new report has claimed.

I have quite a few friends who are politicians. A decent chunk of them earn much less than they could in the private sector. Some of them left much more lucrative jobs to go into politics. Others that I know undoubtedly obtained a pay rise by going into representative politics, and I wonder whether they would ever have earned as much in any other pursuit.

from john passant ….

Imagine any other election where one group’s vote is worth 350 times that of other constituents. To call that democratic would engender howls of laughter. And yet that is what happened today when the 86 Federal Labor Party parliamentarians voted 55 to 31 in favour of Bill Shorten as Labor leader.

FROM CHRIS FLOYD.... As we all know, the use of chemical weapons is the most heinous crime that can be committed by a brutal, aggressive government: a brazen act of state terror, an offense against all humanity. Those who perpetrate such actions put themselves beyond the pale; indeed, they rank themselves with Hitler himself, as a succession of America’s highest officials has pointed out in recent weeks.

from the stringer …..