egafd.com

And to reduce the Parliamentary Term to four years " a la Presidency " so we could only get him/her for eight years instead of ten.

Thought you might be interested in the media's reaction here in NZ.
Absolute amazement. Even those commentators who, on balance, thought it was a good thing to get rid of Saddam can't understand how Hutton could be so totally one-sided.

Mart

So that's the whole world, then.
The press here has posited that Tone was a little shocked that Hutton went quite so far in his exoneration-job, and would have preferred there to have been a small (but very small) grey area, just to add a veneer of versimilitude. Not that that would have been believed either, by an ever-more-sceptical public.
And now his mate Dubya has dropped him right in the poo by happily agreeing to an (albeit reined-in) public enquiry- the very thought of which must send shudders down T's spine (assuming he has one- all I can see is a brass neck), at the thought of having to stage-manage yet another 'independent' inquiry...........
But isn't it just typical of this administration's obsession with 'managing' the agenda, at the expense of effective policy?

Has there been any reflection on what Hutton's verdict implies for Blinky's proposal to do away with juries in some cicumstances.
Sorry, that reads in a very convoluted way. Simply, what price justice if left to judges like Hutton.

Mart

But keep in mind there is only one thing that these politicians fear
and one thing that can hurt them

Not getting RE-ELECTED

So George Bush would have seemed to have backed down but in reality he hasn't....he got want he wanted...no findings before the November Election

Even if the findings are bad who is going to remember by the next election

Your right about Bush dropping Blair in it...hopefully Howard will follow suit
and fall on his sword

cheers
B....OZ

....Blinky is unrepentant about his proposals reducing the burden of proof for terrorist cases, and effectively judging someone guilty before they've perpetrated any crime. Anyway, my understanding is that membership of ANY terrorist organisation is already a crime, so why doesn't he follow due process and charge using that? Or is he frightened that our fuckwit myrmidons couldn't substantiate even that lesser accusation?
So, 2500 years of jurisprudence down the pan in one fell swoop.............

It was Denning. A letter in the Guardian (re Hutton) quoted him at length. In a nutshell he said that to consider the accused to be innocent was to assume perjury on the part of the police and that, of course, could not be contemplated.

Mart

Because I only read the letter yesterday in the current edition of the weekly Guardian.

Mart