‘..Nevertheless, because fully to know where anyone is going requires grasping whence he comes, let us open ourselves to wonder how, minus miracles, a 10-year-old boy without obvious talent who had lived in Indonesia since age six ends up with an eight-year scholarship to Hawaii’s most exclusive school; a scholarship to Occidental College; a transfer into Columbia University; acceptance into Harvard Law School, and editorship of its law review; and how he goes from job to prestigious job without apparently mastering any of the previous ones…’   Source
(Thanks to Mawm for the tip)

For a while at least, in a NSW country town. (After Gecko had a little fun on the way, photographing an irritable snake) The pic is our probable next destination, in the Gibson and Simpson deserts which stretch from Alice Springs to the West Australian coast.

Map

‘Someone was incredibly busy in June 2008 working on an illegal front invisible to the public; searching and altering Supreme Court Cases published at Justia.com which cite the only case in American history – Minor v. Happersett (1875) – to directly construe Article 2 Section 1’s natural-born citizen clause in determining a citizenship issue as part of its holding and precedent.  In this unanimous decision, the Supreme Court defined a “native or natural-born citizen” as a person born in the US to parents who were citizens; a definition which excludes from eligibility both Barack Obama and John McCain…’   source         H/T The Woodpile Report
UPDATE:
And take a look at this!

Via Andrew Bolt:
‘Mark Steyn on an honour killing in Canada which the media can barely bring itself to mention:
This is a world in which a father and mother sit around the kitchen table with their son plotting how to kill their three daughters. At a certain level, such people are not fully human.
But they are fully Canadian, at least in the legal sense. They came to Quebec from Afghanistan in 2007. And, for all the sympathetic media murmurings about the difficulties of transitioning from a highly traditional culture to a First World society, the Shafias did find certain uses for modernity: In planning the killing of his sisters, Hamed used a Google search – “where to commit a murder”…’

‘Nats’ under-sixes health pledge
Children under the age of six are to get free after-hours healthcare.’

There is no such thing as “government’s money” and there is no such thing as “free healthcare”. Besides, families with children are already getting welfare via the “Working For Families” program. What that means is that people without families are working to support other people’s families. (And childcare and education and a plethora of other “family” programs.) So those who make the decision not to have a family are nonetheless forced to support those who breed regardless of whether they can afford to raise children.

Who’s bin makin’ bacon

‘UNIVERSITY of Sydney scholars set to exchange ideas with visiting Israeli experts on neuroscience, tissue regeneration and other cutting-edge research areas are being warned the event will offend potential Muslim undergraduates.
Associate Professor Jake Lynch, director of the university’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, (ie the University’s resident taxpayer-funded leftard peacenik. kg) has urged his colleagues to withdraw from the research gathering, and the university administration to cancel it.’      source

Oswald Bastable tells this great joke:
The Pope and Julia Gillard are on the same stage at the Sydney Opera House in front of a huge crowd.
The Pope leans towards Ms Gillard and said, “Do you know that with one little wave of my hand I can make every person in this crowd go wild with joy?  This joy will not be a momentary display, but will go deep into their hearts and they’ll forever speak of this day and rejoice!”
Gillard replied, “I seriously doubt that with one little wave of your hand?  Show me!”
Continue reading →

when I read the headline….
Nah, just kidding. I just knew it had to be one of our esteemed ‘Cultural Enrichers’.
‘A TAXI driver who raped a female passenger while she was asleep on the back seat of his cab has been sentenced to eight years in jail.
A Brisbane District Court jury took one hour this afternoon to convict Gurpreet Singh, 24, of rape and sexual assault…’

‘Libel reform vows to slay anonymous trolls
Single complaint could take down a post
A single complaint about an anonymous article or posting online could be enough to legally force a website to take it down – if new Parliamentary proposals on defamation get passed into law.
Measures against online anonymity are a key part of proposals published today in a committee report that will be debated when Parliament votes on changing the UK’s defamation laws…’
This has stuff-all to do with shutting down anonymous trolls and everything to do with making it too dangerous and expensive to exercise free speech.
And the language is misleading…a post or anonymous article isn’t trolling, any more than the vast majority of anonymous comments are.