The journalist and author earned conservative kudos for supporting Iraq's liberation and decrying Bill Clinton's sleaze, but he remained an apologist for Trotsky until the end. Alas, he extended no such indulgence to Catholics

Gillard hasn’t been victimised because she is a woman; she has been protected because she is a progressive woman.

Having said Hitler “was not” an atheist during his Q & A debate with Cardinal Pell, Richard Dawkins was more explicit the following morning on ABC Radio National. “Hitler was a Roman Catholic” he told an acquiescing Fran Kelly.

On the evening news Gillard seemed barely interested in the people around her, fixing her gaze on the camera, studying it with a frozen smile.

The problem, as most Australians see it, is that Gillard isn’t sure which corner to turn until someone hands her the directions. The image of Gillard as a fumbling go-between is firmly set.

You would need to be a very blinkered observer, or at least a progressive journalist, to deny that a majority of Australians now believe the Gillard minority government has forfeited its legitimacy.

The present state of world climate action is easy to sum up. While everyone pays lip-service to the IPCC’s targets, developing countries won’t go anywhere near them unless developed countries go first, and developed countries won’t go unless developing countries join them.

Discontent is stirring in the Australian electorate. More are coming to resent this arbitrary power lying in the shadows of their political, legal and constitutional arrangements. More are demanding that it be confronted and exposed to sunlight. If only their politicians were up to it.

The functionaries have reached critical mass, and they're playing the Greens off against Labor for power and influence. This story won't make it into the progressive media, but it accounts for much of the mendacious shadow-play of the current parliament.