Australian Prime Minister John Howard is out, suffering a humiliating re-election defeat after four terms in office.

I only wish his refusal to support Schapelle Corby as she rots in an Indonesian prison for 20 years following her conviction for importing 4 kilos of pot in a boogie board played a part.

During the trial, Corby wrote to Prime Minister of Australia John Howard, saying in part:

“ As a father and as a leader, I plead for your help. I did not do this. I beg for justice. I don't know how much longer I can do this. Please bring me home. ”

Howard was quoted as saying in response:

“ I feel for her. I understand why there's a lot of public sympathy for her; I would simply say that I hope justice is done and it's a fair and true verdict...I would ask the rhetorical question: My fellow Australians, if a foreigner were to come to Australia and a foreign government were to start telling us how we should handle (it), we would react very angrily to that."

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The hot affair between LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and television news reporter Mirthala Salinas is kaput. I'm sure they thought it was true love at the time, but what a price they paid.

Villaraigosa's political standing was affected, and his wife has filed for divorce. Salinas was suspended, then left her job at Telemundo.

Can Villaraigosa recover politically? Or will he always be the Mayor who left his wife for a tv reporter who covered city affairs?

Via Crooks and Liars: USA Today reports:

At least 20,000 U.S. troops who were not classified as wounded during combat in Iraq and Afghanistan have been found with signs of brain injuries, according to military and veterans records compiled by USA TODAY.

....Soldiers and Marines whose wounds were discovered after they left Iraq are not added to the official casualty list, says Army Col. Robert Labutta, a neurologist and brain injury consultant for the Pentagon. More than 150,000 troops may have suffered head injuries in combat, says Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., founder of the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force.

As Logan at C&L notes:

Hiding the true human cost of their wars has proven difficult for the Bush administration. They don’t want the world to know about the real numbers of injured — or the staggering number of homeless vets or those who have killed themselves during or after their service in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Republican candidate and former Mass. Governor Mitt Romney is under attack because a former prosecutor he appointed to the bench set bail for an inmate who had just finished serving a manslaughter sentence. Prosecutors, in an effort to keep the inmate in jail after finishing his sentence, charged him with crimes arising from two incidents occurring more than a year earlier. One incident involved him spitting on a guard and in the other, he hit a guard with a cast that was on his arm.

The inmate, Daniel Tavares, Jr., moved to Washington State after his release where he resided with his wife whom he met through a prison pen pal program. The wife brought a gun into the home, even though as a felon, Tavares isn't allowed to possess a gun. Tavares is now charged with and has confessed to shooting and killing a newleywed couple in WA over a $50 debt.

A "Willie Horton" campaign moment (1988 ad here)is brewing against Romney. In response, he has called for the Judge to resign and pushes the death penalty button.

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Matt Yglesias deliver some great snark with a point, taking on the voice of an Iranian Richard Perle:

[I]t's not clear that a policy of appeasement would be wise. True, we've seen rational leadership even from vicious dictators like Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong, but the contemporary United States is led by religious fanatics, which introduces a new element into the equation. What's more, the USA is the only country on earth to have ever actually deployed nuclear weapons. Indeed, current political elites are so war-crazed and bloodthirsty that they not only engineered the 2003 attack on Iraq -- a country that tried to appease the Americans by eliminating its nuclear program and allowing IAEA inspectors to certify that it had done so -- but they continue to deny regretting it to this day. And that includes not only radicals like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, but so-called "moderates" like Hillary Clinton as well.

Well played by Matt.

For better or worse, Hillary Clinton's political image is largely dominated by her tenure as First Lady. It seems fairly clear that Hillary was a key, if not the key, advisor to President Clinton on many many issues. And while Tim Russert's questions on documents from the period is not really an attempt to shed light on this, it is rather more of the same gotcha nonsense, it does inadvertently get to a lot of questions about Hillary.

In today's WaPo, Michael Kinsley writes:

[First ladies] must have a better understanding of how the presidency works than all but half a dozen people in the world. One of those half a dozen is Hillary Clinton, who saw it all -- well, she apparently missed one key moment -- and shared in all the big decisions. Every first lady is promoted as her husband's key adviser, closest confidant, blah, blah, blah, but in the case of the Clintons, it seems to be true.

That seems true to me. But here's the thing - my recollection of the Clinton years had Hillary supposedly playing the liberal in the lion's den of Centrists role in the Clinton Administration. I'll never forget the reaction of Peter and Marian Wright Edelman to welfare reform. Peter resigned his post and Marian Wright Edelman made sure everyone understood how she felt personally betrayed by HILLARY, not Bill. Hillary was to be the liberal conscience of the Clinton Administration. How time changes images. Now Hillary's supposed liberal past is long forgotten. For those who favor DLCism, this is a sign of Hillary's good sense. For those who disfavor it, it proves hillary is a corporatist sellout DLCer. This is a central question about Hillary Clinton. Who could best answer this question? I believe Bill Clinton would be that person. I think it would help us all, and probably mostly Hillary Clinton, if he and Hillary were to discuss her role and views on the Clinton Administration and the issues faced at the time. Release of documents to add to this telling would be even better. I think it is time to tell the story - not of the personal lives of the clintons - but the public policy lives of the the Clintons. Tell us what Hillary did, said, advised and thought. To me it is the most interesting and relevant question of the entire campaign.

One of the chapters in Rudy's book is titled "Surround Yourself With Great People." As the Washington Post points out today, many of his appointments as Mayor of New York turned out to be dismal choices, based on blind loyalty to his friends rather than competence.

We all know about Bernie and Rudy, but there are plenty of other examples, which taken together, show "a pattern of rewarding loyalty over competence in personnel decisions:

There's Howard Safir, whom Rudy appointed Police Commissioner after the very competent Bill Bratton:

[Safir] came under intense criticism after the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man, for failing to provide adequate oversight of the police unit involved in the shootings and for his detached response. He also came under scrutiny for, among other things, taking a corporate jet to the Academy Awards shortly after the shootings, for assigning eight detectives to his daughter's wedding, and for sending officers to investigate a woman who rear-ended his wife's car.

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The number of children fleeing poverty in other countries and entering the U.S. without parents is on the rise. When caught, they are arrested and detained. Sometimes they are sent back, sometimes they are released into the custody of relatives, foster homes or friends.

Children must not be treated as criminals.

Children entering illegally without parents "are usually fleeing something," often don't have relatives here and, in many cases, have endured trauma such as rape and being held for ransom, said Tricia Swartz, director of the National Center for Refugee and Immigrant Children in Washington, D.C.

Across-the-board deportations "would be literally sacrificing children's lives," she said. "Some of them are facing potential execution by gangs."

As for numbers,

Today, about 15.3 percent of migrants seeking asylum protection in the United States are under 18, up from 14.8 percent in 2004, federal records show.

The Department of Justice processes these kids in federal immigration courts. An example of the absurdity:

In Denver's court, a box of toys sits in the lobby. A recent memo encouraged judges to use booster chairs and child-friendly questioning at hearings.

Another example of why "one size fits all" justice is no justice at all.

A 9-year-old boy looking for help after his mother crashed her van off a cliff in southern Arizona on Thanksgiving Day was rescued by an illegal immigrant who stayed with him until help arrived the next day.

His mother was pinned inside the car.

Her son, who was unhurt but disoriented, crawled out to get help and was found about two hours later by Jesus Manuel Cordova, 26.... Unable to pull the mother out, Cordova comforted the boy while they waited for help. The woman died a short time later.

"He stayed with him, told him that everything was going to be all right," Estrada said. As temperatures dropped, he gave him a jacket, built a bonfire and stayed with him until about 8 a.m. Friday, when a group of hunters passed by and called authorities, Estrada said. The boy was flown to University Medical Center in Tucson as a precaution but appeared unhurt.

Mr. Cordova's reward?

Cordova, meanwhile, was taken into custody by Border Patrol agents who were the first to respond to the call for help. He had been trying to walk into the U.S. when he came across the boy.

As Santa Cruz County, AZ Sheriff Sheriff Tony Estrada says:

Cordova likely saved the boy and his actions should remind people not to quickly characterize all illegal immigrants as criminals.

Obviously, no one at Talk Left will ever support Mike Huckabee's candidacy for President but, via TPM, credit where due, Huckabee's response to the crazy GOP's hatred of, supposedly just, illegal, immigrants:

"If a child is gasping for air, asthmatic, and he's on the hospital steps, what do the other candidates suggest we do, let him sit there and gasp until he doesn't have any air left and he dies? If a child comes to our school -- and our law, by the way, in most of our states, mine certainly says you've got to educate a child if he's of child age -- what do you, break your own law and say, `No, you can't come in the schoolhouse door'? "No, you don't do that. What you do is you elect a president who will fix the problem where it needs to be fixed: At the border. But if your government at the federal government is so incompetent that it fails to secure the border, you don't then grind your heel into the face of a 6-year-old child over it. That's not what this country does. We're a better country than that."

Unfortunately for Huckabee and for the Nation, the Republican Party is NOT a better party than that.

At Swampland, Karen Tumulty demonstrates the problem with the Obama campaign:

The leading contenders are having an argument over Social Security. That program, of course, is something that Democrats usually fight about with Republicans, not each other. Why now? As Obama strategist David Axelrod sees it, the real issue isn't Social Security: "We're not really picking a fight about Social Security. We're picking a fight about candor. [Obama] has been forthright about this, and Senator Clinton hasn't."

Obama's idea of candor is pandering to the Beltway Elite on Social Security? This is outrageous. As Paul Krugman wrote:

Which brings us back to Barack Obama. Why would he, in effect, play along with this new round of scare-mongering and devalue one of the great progressive victories of the Bush years?

I don't believe Mr. Obama is a closet privatizer. He is, however, someone who keeps insisting that he can transcend the partisanship of our times -- and in this case, that turned him into a sucker.

Obama wanted a way to distinguish himself from Hillary Clinton -- and for Mr. Obama, who has said that the reason "we can't tackle the big problems that demand solutions" is that "politics has become so bitter and partisan," joining in the attack on Mrs. Clinton's Social Security position must have seemed like a golden opportunity to sound forceful yet bipartisan.

This is what we do NOT need from our Democratic standard bearers. Axelrod will ruin Obama's campaign if he keeps this up. The Clinton campaign must be licking its chops on this.

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Another troop hater:

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top commander in Iraq shortly after the fall of Baghdad, said this week he supports Democratic legislation that calls for most troops to come home within a year.

Of course, Sanchez is a controversial figure who allowed the atrocities at Abu Ghraib under his watch. And his past judgments were very faulty. My point is not that we should trust his judgment. I do not. I have made my own. My point is it is hard to label Sanchez or anyone, who favors withdrawal from Iraq as "anti-troops. That is the political sigificance here. Hopefully, it will stiffen some Dem backbones.