Archives, eh
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# Links for 2007-07-17
- Google Cache ✴)())
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# He ain't ded
Book Seven will be out on Saturday. If you had to ask which series…well, I pity you.
I was going to write a post about how I think expectations of Harry Potter’s death are wildly off the mark and missing the entire theme of the series and Rowling herself. But then I remembered I already made such a post
Still stand by it, especially after seeing the Order of the Phoenix movie on Saturday just gone; the best bits from those movies is when the director foreshadows events in the later books. Pretty sure there was no mention of angsty, stricken looks cast Harry’s way by Ginny Weasley in book five, and yet there they were on the screen. Anyway, the movie also seemed to confirm my thinking on the reasons Harry Potter will not die.
Now. All I have to do is make sure I have a dozen roofing nails handy on Friday night; I’ll need to secure tWMs door so she doesn’t wake me at a time even Lucifer would deem cruel and unusual in order to cajole me to take her to buy the book.
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# Prove it
Reasonably sure my remarks about David Hicks are enough to inform the non-casual reader as to what I might think about the move by Kevin Andres to revoke a visa for the sake of locking up a terror suspect who had made bail.
In case it isn’t, it basically goes like this. The letter of the law may very well give the Minister the power to revoke a visa based on character issues, but without some standard of proof being applied what the Minister has done – in this case and potentially in the future – smells suspiciously like executive rule.
Not tyranny or totalitarianism as suggested by some of the more excitable blogs I read i, just a member of the Executive deciding – based on advise from the Federal Police and the civil service – using a power for which there is no functional oversight – I suppose the PM could overrule him – and for which he can provide no proof to back his usage.
Is it too much to ask that that the Minister be able to respond coherently when asked to “prove it”?
Recklessly provided material assistance to terrorists? Prove it.
Associated in some meaningful manner with terrorists? Prove it.
Not of good character? Prove it.
A flight risk? Prove it.
Actually, that last one is a trick – the Federal Police already failed to prove that one.
i I think it is fair to say that if Kevin Andrews is the face of totalitarianism then it will be a lot blander than we all expected. And am I the only one to be unsure whether or not he is a Muppet?
