news bits

Latham set to coach parents and citizens - www.smh.com.au / The Australian: Parents face cane with ALP [January 27, 2004] / Latham defends parenting proposals. 27/01/2004. ABC News Online. YES, it's a good idea. Where I grew up, some of the worst troublemakers were underage. So all the cops could do was pick them up and take them home - but the parents had completely given up, so the kids were straight back out. If parents won't or can't get their children under control; they need help doing it and in some cases they need to be forced to act. Howard is attempting to argue that the government can't take over the role filled by family - conveniently ignoring the situations where the family isn't filling that role either. The key to this idea is providing support - if that doesn't happen, then it won't work.
Nearly all WMD claims wrong: Kay - www.smh.com.au: The Central Intelligence Agency's outgoing chief weapons inspector, David Kay, has concluded that the US was almost certainly wrong in its pre-war belief that Iraq had any significant stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. I can just see the US standing around scratching its head... "shit man, we sold you WMDs... where the fuck did you put them?".

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