Another place of worship just a stone's throw away from Ground Zero

…But you’d have to be a very good thrower. And yes, this is just an excuse to wheel out some of my photies from New York.

This is the 18th century James Watson House, dwarfed by neighbouring sky scrapers at the end of the Lower Manhattan financial area, and part of a Roman Catholic Shrine.

As I went through my photos again, I discovered I had, after all, taken a half-decent photo of the Statue of Liberty, via zoom from Battery Park. I thought I’d messed them all up.

Also in Battery park I admired this superb monument to the international troops who died in the Korean War:

Or is it better with trees behind it? I can’t decide…

Leading Republican feeds "Obama is a Muslim" myth

I really think that the Republicans are going down an enormous blind alley with their campaign against the Lower Manhattan mosque and, now, their feeding of the rumour/myth that Obama is a Muslim.

How’s this for brain dead? Republican National Commitee member Kim Lehman tweeted:

BTW he personally told the muslims that he IS a muslim. Read his lips.

When asked for further comment she alluded to a speech that Obama made in Cairo:

…going back to his speech… he would have said I’m a Christian and I’m from the Christian religion and we can work together. It didn’t appear to me he said Christianity was part of his religion.

There is one slight snag with this. If you read Obama’s Cairo speech he actually says:

I’m a Christian

Following the hung parliament down under, is the "Westminster model" now effectively dead?

On the LSE blog, Patrick Dunleavy has an fascinating post entitled “Every key ‘Westminster model’ country now has a hung Parliament, following Australia’s ‘dead heat’ election”

Dunleavy defines the “Westminster model” as follows:

For the first time in history, the Australian outcome means that every key ‘Westminster model’ country in the world now has a hung Parliament. These are the former British empire countries that according to decades of political science orthodoxy are supposed to produce strong, single party government. Following Duverger’s Law their allegedly ‘majoritarian’ electoral systems (first past the post and AV) will typically produce reinforced majorities for one of the top two parties.

Dunleavy points to some lessons from this, with the UK’s forthcoming AV referendum in mind:

…although ‘Westminster model’ countries continue to share a powerful institutional heritage, it seems doubtful that the electoral aspects of the model can ever be the same again. For the UK’s forthcoming referendum on adopting the Alternative Vote, this recognition that the world as a whole is changing towards more complex and multi-party politics may sway some more voters and politicians towards backing reform.

Then again, since the Australian system, like ‘first past the post’ elections, has now failed to produce a clear electoral outcome, those who hanker after artificial majorities may take it as further reason for opposing change.