If a Jewish state were run by the secret police, Israelis could disappear without a trace. No contact with lawyers. Court-ordered muzzles on broadcast and print news media.

If a Jewish state were run by the secret police, there were be gag orders forbidding journalists to write even of the existence of the gag orders.

Thank God such a thing couldn't happen here.

Since the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig exploded on April 20, the Obama administration has granted oil and gas companies at least 27 exemptions from doing in-depth environmental studies of oil exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico.

The waivers were granted despite President Barack Obama's vow that his administration would launch a "relentless response effort" to stop the leak and prevent more damage to the gulf.

One of them was dated Friday - the day after Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he was temporarily halting offshore drilling.

from Crikey .....

Here come the towelheads - Abbott hits his stride

Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

from Crikey .....

Essential: Rudd is damaged goods, and badly damaging Labor in turn

Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

Kevin Rudd has led Labor to the brink of a first-term defeat that was unthinkable just weeks ago, with Essential Media's new poll showing Labor's once-formidable lead giving way to a 50:50 2PP.

In 2008, Mexican authorities rejected a shipment of U.S. beef because the meat exceeded Mexico's regulatory tolerance for copper. The rejected meat was returned to the United States, where it was sold and consumed, because the U.S. has no regulatory threshold for copper in meat.

The whistleblower who exposed lying Penrith MP Karyn Paluzzano says it will be ''almost impossible'' to find a new job after his bruising experience with the NSW Labor Party.

Tim Horan, whose evidence to the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), prompted Ms Paluzzano to quit Parliament for rorting parliamentary expenses, told The Sun-Herald that Premier Kristina Keneally's staff had sought to discredit him every step of the way after he came forward.

From all the uproar, you would think that the government's new super tax on the resource companies was the greatest moral challenge of our generation. To coin a phrase.

The miners want us to believe they face a disaster of biblical proportions. There would be floods, fire and famine, earthquakes and plague, the veil of the temple rent in twain, widows and orphans begging in the streets, the horsemen of the Apocalypse thundering by.

from Crikey .....

Corey Bernardi's sinister plot to ban the burqa

Greg Barns writes:

In the Court of Appeal yesterday morning, six former Guantánamo prisoners - Bisher al-Rawi, Jamil El-Banna, Richard Belmar, Omar Deghayes, Binyam Mohamed and Martin Mubanga - won a resounding victory against the government, when three senior judges, including Lord Neuberger, the Master of the Rolls, overturned a ruling that, for the first time in British history, allowed the government to use secret evidence in a civil claim for damages.

Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres has become the latest casualty of the hyper-vigilant image police at Apple HQ.

DeGeneres apologised on air this week for a spoof iPhone commercial that she ran on her daily talk show poking fun at her inability to send text messages from an iPhone.

She said the spoof did not impress Apple when it aired this week and that she had since been contacted by the company.

Wall Street bankers are strutting around like little banty roosters these days, crowing about the phenomenal profits their banks are raking in.

Citigroup has just announced that its profits for just the first three months of this year totaled an incredible $4.4 billion, Goldman Sachs' haul was $3.5 billion, JPMorgan Chase grabbed $3.3 billion and Bank of America took $3.2 billion. Top bankers are cock-a-doodle-doing over these numbers, claiming that such results prove what geniuses they are, how essential they are to America's financial health and, of course, how deserving they are of their multimillion-dollar bonuses.

Citing the possibility of a terrorist organization getting hold of a nuclear weapon as the greatest threat to U.S. security, Barack Obama persuaded 46 other countries at the recent Nuclear Security Summit to agree to secure the world's loose nuclear material. Those leaders who came to Washington might have made done more to avert a nuclear attack, however, if they had asked the U.S. President to account for America's own loose nukes.

Sydney has experienced its fifth warmest April on record with a month of balmy nights and little rain.

But don't put away the warm clothes just yet with predictions that winter is on the way; it's just running a little late.

The average April minimum temperature was 1 degree above the average of 16 degrees. Combined with high humidity and little wind, temperatures rose.