* While the US grapples to accept it was a torturing nation under the Bush Administration, Michael Johnson says (then retracts) what too many in this country think:

Queensland Liberal MP Michael Johnson said there was a place for torture. “I think that there is a very limited place for torture and, certainly where that torture takes place, it must be done in an appropriate way, and in an appropriate context,” the former barrister told Sky News last night. He added that it all depended on how torture was defined.
That prompted an immediate response from fellow panelist Labor MP Mark Dreyfus, another former lawyer.
“I think we need to resolutely say that there is no place for torture,” he said. Mr Johnson later issued a “clarifying statement” condemning torture. “Torture is unacceptable in any place at any time,” the statement said.

Johnson holds one of the liberals best seats since 2001, yet went no where under Howard, Nelson and likely now Turnbull. If smart the party will use this chance to dump him and demonstrate their morality in rejecting outright torture as a practice by modern societies. Conservatives worry regularly about the moral decay of our civillisation, but teenage promiscuity or drug use doesn’t remotely compare to the use and abuse of torture as the pre-eminent moral question of our time.

* From the Funny, Sad, Pathetic column: Yale is printing a book on the 2005 Danish cartoons that set of the riots, but refusing to publish the actual cartoons. Around 200 people died from this inability to accept free speech (almost exclusively Muslims). Hitchen’s skewers them as only he could.

* In news to warm the hearts of all Canberrans, the ACT is more important to the Australian Economy than China is. But it’s changing. H/T @Pollytics.

* With the US economy beginning to rebound can we say the bailout worked? Or more interestingly is the Administrations plan, with all its inherent debt a better outcome than the sharp market deflation that mass bank failure would have set off? Are we better off, (in terms of liberty and wealth) than had we let the markets run where they want ? Whilst others counter that we have over-reacted.

* The Daily Telegraph should stay away from photoshop, or hire someone competent. Ugh.

* And finally, since in my last post I critercised The Australian for ignoring Nelsons retirement, and then did so myself, its worth noting that whilst Nelson is a good bloke, it is not befitting the honour and importance of Parliament to leave mid term for a rumored defence sector job. Nor to do so at a cost of half a million to the tax payers. He has perhaps only a year to go until the election if that, so ought to stick around. Much could still be done locally, and with nothing to lose or fear from his party leader could use his platform as former Education and Defence Minister to tell the country some hard truths that had been squibbed during the Howard years and are doing so today (like the ham-fisted way we run international student education, our need to develop high tech sectors as the manafacturing sector closes, or rethinking how we go about assisting the pacific region, including long term planning, rather than over-relying on the Military and police to race in and save the situation ala the Solomon Islands, or sit idly by as democracy buckles in Fiji. The great danger of our modern political environment is that it scorns old wisdom, always seeking the new. Political leaders are seen as either on their way up, or on their way out. We should encourage those who have served the leadership to try and stick around. But as it stands only 1 out of 10 past major party leaders since 1990 in the form of Simon Crean has stuck around after losing the leadership, now capably serving as the Trade Minister.