Blair Celebrates 52nd Birthday With Re-Election in which British voters rattled cages. Tony Blair won a historic third term as prime minister Thursday, but his Labor Party suffered a sharply reduced parliamentary majority in apparent punishment for going to war in Iraq, according to projections based on exit polls Blair Wins Third Term
Should bloggers have to divulge if they're taking money to spruik political candidates or parties? Antony links to The Washington Post investigation: On Bloggers and Money
Eye on Politics & Law Lords: No margin for error in choosing choice
Fundraising. Communications. Field. Media. Choice of blogs.
In 2004, the Internet took its rightful place at the table as an equal to these behemoths of professional politics, beginning the move from a purely supporting role to becoming the platform from which the ABCs of a political campaign are planned, managed, and executed. Every election from now until 2008 marks a stepping stone for the eCampaign's journey from neat gadget to universal enabler.
In Britain, we are six months and an ocean away from 2004's breakthroughs in online campaigning. The British are not quite where the Republican and Democratic Presidential campaigns were last fall in the U.S., but they're learning; Labour’s even brought on Zack Exley, formerly of the Kerry-Edwards campaign and MoveOn.org. Just as Reagan followed Thatcher into power, and Blair followed Clinton along the Third Way, the British are quickly adopting the online marketing technologies the U.S. campaigns were scrambling for in 2003 and 2004 – and they can't get their hands on them fast enough.
• British Election Campaigns Get the Web, Sort of [Many Australians feel that the political system has let them down, and that governments are not responding to their real concerns. We seem to have lost sight of a vision for a better society and to have entrusted our future to wherever the market takes us Manifesto ; In The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Bradley R. Gitz has an op-ed entitled Protecting judicial activism]
• · One of Australia's top barristers has given a legal opinion backing the State Government's claim that its refusal to scrap several business stamp duties does not breach the GST funding deal, contradicting the federal Treasurer, Peter Costello Barrister backs state in GST row ; Treasurer eager to fan the fires;
In a way, that would make the Monty Python team quite proud: the State Government is completely uncontaminated by planning ... Nearly $1 billion in unspent funds originally taken from developers to provide essential community services will soon be unlocked from dormant council accounts for spending on roads, parks and child-minding centres Councils reap cash windfall
• · · Peter Costello believes new tensions over the leadership have already distracted the Government, warning that they have not been finally dealt with, but they will be 'll deal with you later - Costello first gets his teeth into the budget ; A question of ambition
• · · · Federal agents arrested a Pentagon analyst on Wednesday, accusing him of illegally disclosing highly classified information about possible attacks on American forces in Iraq to two employees of a pro-Israel lobbying group. Pentagon Analyst Charged With Disclosing Military Secrets ; A 1943 U.S. psychological profile of Adolf Hitler says as a young soldier he was 'annoyingly subservient' and had nightmares resembling homosexual panic. The profile says the German dictator was a feminine boy. The mass killings Hitler conducted during World War II were partly the result of a desperate loathing of his own submissive weakness and the humiliation of being beaten by a sadistic father. The profile was commissioned by the Office of Strategic Services, a predecessor to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, and posted this month by Cornell University Law Library on its web site psychological profile of Adolf Hitler
• · · · · A Senate rider inserted in an emergency appropriations bill in the dead of the night, which would close a rare window into political foul play at the Internal Revenue Service, was quietly removed Tuesday in Senate-House negotiations. That offers full disclosure of a major scandal that has been percolating for a decade. Investigating the IRS ; Boris Johnson, Daily Telegraph Labour's Run Out of Hope, Money & Ideas
• · · · · · The Victorian prisoner who gave evidence at Schapelle Corby's trial in Bali was slashed with a razor blade during one of two attacks on him in a Victorian jail Corby witness 'stabbed for giving evidence' ; Britain's Labor Party wins general election: Tim Dunlop: the Analyser of the Brittish E(l)ections