An interesting sidelight to Monday night’s Q&A appearance by Cardinal George Pell -- the Catholic cleric has made the front page of the Australian Jewish News with comments described as "troubling".

The common good must motivate our nation at every possible level.

Peter Costello, in his ''Sermon without substance'' opinion piece yesterday, does not fully address the key points of my Good Friday article.

By all means let us have vigorous and forthright debate, but let it be on the substantive and critical issues facing our nation.

I'm not given to conspiracy theories, incompetence being so much easier to imagine, but one thing gives credibility to Clive Palmer's otherwise nutty CIA phantasm about US influence in Australia.

It is Julian Assange, a story that hinges on the uncomfortable relationship between truth and power.

We expect truth-telling from our four-year-olds but not from our politicians. In the case of Assange, truth is actively and repeatedly punished.

This implies that, as you move up through society's power strata, there's a point where morality flips.

Foreign Minister Bob Carr is not ruling out expelling the Syrian ambassador as part of Australia's response to ongoing violence in the Middle East nation.

In the meantime, Australia will contribute $5 million to meet humanitarian needs in Syria and neighbouring countries.

European envoys say that Syria has failed to comply with UN special envoy Kofi Annan's peace plan and that international measures must be studied.

Senator Carr said he was "not ruling out" expelling Syria's ambassador as a symbolic gesture, but emphasised any responses would be measured.

“My name is Kenneth Chamberlain. This is my sworn testimony. White Plains police are going to come in here and kill me.”

And that’s just what they did.

Former prime minister John Howard will be able to add "doctor" to his list of achievements and honours, when he is awarded an honorary doctorate in Sydney this afternoon for his contribution to public life.

Mr Howard is due to be made a Doctor of Letters honoris causa in a business and economics faculty ceremony at Macquarie University.

In his citation this afternoon, Macquarie University Vice-Chancellor Professor Steven Schwartz is set to pay tribute to Mr Howard's lifetime of public service.

The clergyman remained unmoved on gay marriage and climate change, but he said evolution was ''probably'' right, and that atheists could ''certainly'' get into heaven. Professor Dawkins declared he was ''trying to be charitable'' by suggesting there was no way Cardinal Pell meant the body would literally be resurrected.

Milan Kundera's truism, "the struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting", described East Timor. The day before I set out to film clandestinely there in 1993, I went to Stanfords map shop in London's Covent Garden. "Timor?" said a hesitant sales assistant. We stood staring at shelves marked South East Asia. "Forgive me, where exactly is it?" 

From a political perspective, all that matters in the Craig Thomson saga is whether the MP is eligible to remain in Parliament.

If Labor had a 10-seat majority, the Coalition would not be showing much interest at all in the case.

David Walsh hasn't just changed how the rest of the country sees Tasmania with his sex and death museum, he's altered the very mindset of the Apple Isle itself.

George Brandis would no doubt like to be attorney-general, the first law officer of Australia, in the next Coalition government.

Senator Brandis is a barrister and a senior counsel, although the latter appointment was the subject of harsh criticism given it was awarded to him six years after he gave up active practice at the Queensland Bar.

But Senator Brandis's conduct in the Craig Thomson affair provides cause for concern about what sort of attorney-general he would be if the opportunity arose. Senator Brandis has pursed the ALP backbencher Thomson with a vigour that is disturbing on a number of levels.