A nation might have the power to kill whomever they want but that is a very different thing from a right.

If a person is committing what can reasonably described as acts of war against a nation that they are not physically present in and the government of the nation that they _are_ present in declines to punish or extradite the individual, I think it's reasonable to regard that individual, and the government protecting them, as being in a state of war with the nation against which those acts of war were committed. That being the case, I would regard the individual as being subject to retaliation by the nation that they are at war with.

That, however, would be a very different scenario than an individual against whom all civilian legal avenues have not been exhausted.

So jack your rates up and do the best damn job you know how to do.

I hope you feel the same way when it's Tony Abbott's appointees harassing the Sydney Morning Herald instead of Julia Gillards appointees harassing the Daily Telegraph.

Her policies are dictated by Bob Brown and she has no character.

You might want to find out which UN treaty you're talking about and actually read it. Pay particular attention to the word "directly"

Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees

Australia doesn't get a lot of refugees coming from Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Malaysia, the Philippines or New Zealand.

What's more, it is, in fact, illegal and the convention calls it illegal on more than one occasion. Contracting states are, however, forbidden to penalize people who enter illegally provided they present themselves to the authorities promptly.

I suppose whether the Greens are soft left or, as I would call them, hard left, is a matter of where you're standing. However, Bob Brown's commitment to regulation of the media is hardly the sort of stuff I expect out of a center/left party. It's more a hard right/hard left kind of idea.

It's different inasmuch as Labor is in a hole WRT the slowly approaching election and are trying to win back blue collar voters that they have been sneering at for years by pushing an issue that is completely irrelevant to those same blue collar voters. I just can't figure out if Gillard actually thinks that flushing Labor's moral high ground on immigration is a good idea or if she's just trying to stick the knife into whoever takes over after she is dumped as leader. At least the second option would show some imagination; knifing someone in the back when you don't even know who it is is actually pretty impressive.

Great, the people who object to criminal activity are "nuts" and the criminal is a "poll worker". The Spin King has nothing on Democrats.

At which point instead of tossing incendiary devices into suspected meth labs and torching 12 year old children, they'll be tossing incendiary devices into suspected fulminate of mercury labs. Great news!

Only if you're trying to argue honestly. If you're not, absolute numbers are just dandy and frequently useful :)

And if they hadn't been heavily armed, what would have been left when (if) that help arrived?

Gosh, the more things change...

You are deemed innocent until proven guilty, your property is guilty until proven innocent.

What the poster is referring to is civil forfeiture. If the police search you and discover you have a large quantity of cash in your possession, they will seize it under civil forfeiture laws, making the assumption that they only reason you might be carrying that much cash is because you either intend to purchase drugs or have just sold drugs. Any subsequent legal proceedings will be conducted against the money (literally "US vs $100,000") without many constitutional guarantees because the money is not a person and thus does not enjoy the constitutions protection. There is no need, at any point in this process, to convict the person who had possession of the cash of any crime.