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Christine Milne has won the battle for the final Senate place in Tasmania, making her the Greens' third member in the new Senate

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: The Lesson of Her Story: Rome, or no Rome
This is where the story of Rome— and the manner of its telling—is particularly instructive. This is because, as frequently happens in life, if we look beyond the banner headlines of despair, we can find cause for hope.
Let’s take a glimpse at how Rome and her history can give us a reaffirmation of our unshaken belief in the ability of Everyman, acting as a free individual, to repair all the damage ever done by history’s tyrants and their tax gatherers.
The first thing to be pointed out is that, however dramatic the official version of those past events, what historians—and, more emphatically, archaeologists—are coming to realize is that, changes in political leadership aside, nothing very much at all can otherwise be found to distinguish the days before 410 a.d. with those afterwards.
Rome may have swapped leaders. Violence may have been done and property destroyed on a considerable scale. Individual tragedy was, we suspect, both undeniable and heart-rending, as it always is in such times.
Yet, the vast majority of men and women still lived their lives, tended their livestock, took their goods to market, and worshipped their gods, as they had always done—Rome, or no Rome.
• The thrifty and the enterprising still, on the whole, fared better than the prodigal and the unthinking [Maxine Aaronson: thought-provoking speculations There are two things you never want to watch them make: sausage and laws ]
• · Tim Dunlop posts challenging questions to spin doctors who would love to bury their mistakes al-Zarqawi and bin Laden have heaps in common ; [Cynthia Banham, Ellen Connolly and Tom Allard: Iraq war spurs local terrorists, says ASIO ; Derek Willis Thousands of civil claims made by Iraqis against the U.S. Army in Iraq]
• · · George Soros: In His Blogging Mode Radical Fallibility: there is an asymmetry between verification and falsification ; [Chris Sheil on verification and detectors They're not rubbish. More rubbish detectors [Generating Deeper Questions]]
• · · · Marc Holtzman figures the Premier, Bob Carr, has a great future - as a Republican president of the United States
• · · · · Jon Stewart gets serious: If you interview Kissinger, are you still a comedian?
• · · · · · Mordecai Roshwald Democracy and elite ; [Carmen Lawrence Democracy is failing if the majority are alienated from politics]
(Political, or commercial market, is too serious a matter to be left to politicians, or managers. Unaided they will not reform our political and social outlook ... John Menadue is not just bashing politicians. He is making the more serious point that improving the health of our democracy depends on a greater involvement from party members and the community at large.)