No, Parliament can not just change or abolish any law they want. For example: one of the big questions about Britain entering the EU fully is about if the government has the constitutional right to do so. UK courts have shot down Acts of Parliament as being unconstitutional before as well.
The boundaries are vague and not well-defined (hence why constitutional law is such a big area in the UK), but they are very real.
That's basically it. I don't know about the rest of the Commonwealth, but Australia inherited the laws of succession from the UK when we federalised in 1901. This is an act of Parliament that could be changed.
The Australian constitution proclaims us as a monarchy (originally to King George VII and his successors; now Queen Elizabeth and hers). The method of succession is up to the Federal Government, which is why we can legally become a republic in the first place. Expect more debate about this when Queen Liz does step down and we actually have to vote (in Parliament, anyway) on her successor.
Personally, I'd rather a republic (with long terms of office for the head-of-state - like 10-20 years), but if we have to have a monarch, I want an Australian monarch, who lives in Canberra.
But if some watery tart lobbed a scimitar at you, you'd be able to call yourself Emperor (at least until they put you away).
In the USA they had a revolution 200 years or so back because they didn't like unelected hereditary leaders from outside telling them what to do.
And a couple of hundred years before that, England had a revolution as well. Having put in a ruthless military dictator and El-Presidente-For-Life, they waited for him to die, put the monarchy back in, and dug Cromwell up from his grave so that they could execute him posthumously! (Well, points for effort, guys, but as the assignment was handed in late...)
You mean, that Iraq war which was started to find weapons of mass destruction that never existed, and were known by the US government not to exist?
Got to point out that the French supported the invasion of Afghanistan, which was a legitimate response to 9/11. Invading Iraq was merely Bush and Cheney's way of beating their chest.
I personally think that the French only tried to claim the moral middle ground; it just looked high from where the US was looking.
As for 600,000 people: I call bullshit. The US lost 416,800 total in WWII, of which 183,588 were in the European theatre. By contrast the Soviet Union - who were responsible for the fall of the Third Reich - lost over 10 million, nearly all in Europe. The US/British invasion was timed to take advantage of weakened defences due to the fighting in the Eastern front, and had the goal, not of freeing Europe, but of stopping Russia. Without the US, the French would be speaking, well, French (the USSR never forced their satellite nations to adopt Russian), but would have been aligned with the USSR. Wait, that's how they spent the 70s anyway!
Want to bring World War I into the picture as well? Then add another 116,708 - more than half of which died from the flu due to poor sanitation in US training camps (both in the US and in Europe). Total number of US deaths that could be attributed to "saving France": 300,296 - about half the figure you named. I'm sorry about your grandfather and all; my own grandfather flew with the Australian volunteers in the RAF. But get your figures straight. By contrast, the Commonwealth nations (Great Britain and related countries) lost over 1.7 million between WWI and WWI, most in the European conflict.
Excluding the US civil war, the US military has claimed 447,137 combat deaths since the start of the War of Independence - well short of your 600,000 total.
Um, no - you're the one talking out of your ass. Britain has a constitution - it's just not codified into a single document. Instead, it's spread out of a number of other statues, starting with the Magna Carta and working down through history.
Constitutional law in the UK gets complicated, but it's very real.
The reason that John Kerr took the blame is that he acted completely by himself (which he had the authority to do). He wasn't acting as the Queen's representative - in fact, he took a number of steps to prevent Whitlam from "ante-ing up" and bring the Queen in directly, and violated a policy of non-intervention that the Queen had directed him to follow.
Note that Kerr couldn't dismiss Parliament on his own accord; that power is reserved for the Queen. All Kerr could do was dismiss the Prime Minister and appoint another - one who would request the dismissal. He appointed Fraser, Fraser arranges for the supply legislation (the Budget, essentially) to go through, informs everyone he's PM, then disappears. The House of Representatives declared no-confidence in him (which would have made it impossible for Fraser to request the dissolution of Parliament), but then Kerr refused to be told about the no confidence motion until he had signed off the budget and then accepted Fraser's request (made _after_ the no-confidence motion).
Kerr deliberately involved himself in the politics of the day, not least due to a personal animosity towards Whitlam (who, frankly, wasn't the nicest of politicians around). If Kerr had wanted to avoid the situation, he could have arranged an alternative without having to put Fraser in as a dummy PM. The Queen, furthermore, had already made her position clear to Kerr - to pursue a policy of non-intervention. Failing that, he could have made it clear it wasn't about job security (Kerr pointed out repeatedly that he didn't warn Whitlam, because Whitlam could have asked the Queen to sack him) by tendering his own resignation, to take affect once the special elections were over and a new government sworn in.
The '75 dismissal needed to happen. Whitlam deserved to lose the subsequent election, particularly because of how bad his campaign was. I would argue that the Liberal and National Coalition didn't deserve morally to win - their obstructionist tactics of the previous three years had caused the crisis in the first place - but Whitlam took what should have been an ironclad victory and pissed it away by allowing himself, and the rest of the ALP, to wallow in rage and vengeance.
Interestingly enough, the Coalition still plays by this handbook - for the first half of this year (when they controlled the Senate), they played the same nasty obstructionist tactics. Tactics that were never practised by the ALP when the Coalition was in power (to be fair, the Democrats had the balance of power during that period, so the ALP didn't have a chance).
I voted for the republic too, because I personally feel that we should have an Australian head of state. However, if the Queen decided to pass the throne of King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Defender of the Faith to William and the King of Australia to Harry (and he then moved down here to live), I would have no problems with that. Harry's children would be Australian, and as for Harry himself - well, it's not like there aren't a lot of other poms around the place.
New Zealand can have Beatrice.
(The Monarchy of Australia is a separate office to the Monarchy of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as is the Monarchy of New Zealand and the Monarchy of Canada - not to mention the 13 other monarchies in the Commonwealth).
Service to the Arts has always been a valid category for honours to be awarded. Note that it's not enough to write a lot of books yourself (or songs, or paint a bunch of pictures, etc); it's also necessary to actively inspire and help others.
It also reflects a solid career in doing so, not merely a flash-in-the-pan fad star.
More than one universe. L-Space theory shows that there are 10 to the power of N possible books, where N is the number of possible universes. This is why there is never enough shelf space.
It's even possible that they could have used this gear to go, at the time of the incident, and fetch the toolkit - however, it's plainly obvious that the risk wouldn't be worth it.
BLISS is ignorance.
