Right Pulse

Interesting snippet from The Corner. Seems Howard’s visit to the USA is making waves. Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh speculated today that Howard’s visit was the reason Obama’s request to live in Blair House until he becomes President, was rejected by Laura Bush.

…the Washington Post demonstrates that even a legion of editors and fact-checkers can’t guarantee that they will find errors. In his article outing John Howard as the man keeping Barack Obama out of the Blair House (and thereby ruining my commute), Al Kamen says:

Howard and his entourage will be bunking at Blair House on Jan. 12, the night before he, former British prime minister Tony Blair and Colombian President Álvaro Uribe are to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Bush, said Sally McDonough, a spokeswoman for first lady Laura Bush. The three current and former heads of state are longtime political allies of the president’s, and Blair and Howard were key partners in the Iraq war.

But neither Howard nor Blair were Heads of State.  They were both heads of government, with the office of Head of State in both Britain and Australia occupied by Her Majesty the Queen.

Well actually, the Australian Head of State is not Her Majesty the Queen either. It is the Governor-General, while the Queen is the Sovereign. Some might say a slight distinction, but a distinction nonetheless. From No Republic:

But now, we have found a decision of the High Court, the ultimate authority on the Constitution, which is on all fours with the monarchist position that the Governor-General is Head of State.
 
The decision was unanimous. It has been referred to since and in no way has the High Court resiled from it. It was by a formidable bench, made up of our Founding Fathers, all of whom had played a major role in the political life of our country.

According to the Court, the State Governor is a “constitutional head of state” and the Governor- General is the “constitutional head of the Commonwealth”.

The Court even uses the same language constitutional monarchists use in explaining the place of The Queen or The King.

 She or he is “the Sovereign.”

The High Court decision is from 1907 and is linked here. The ruling has subsequently been referred to on four separate occasions by the High Court (page 8). This is a controversy because Australian Republicans want us all to believe that an Australian is not our Head of State and therefore we are some how less independent than other countries, who for example, blindly follow U.N. edicts from New York City regardless of the democratic will of their own people.

I’ve come to realise more and more that Australian Republicans are so determined to achieve their political aims, that they are willing to ignore the Constitution and distort the intents of our Founding Fathers for their own gain. In the worst traditions of the intellectual left, Australian Republicans seek to supplant the Royal Family as a new ‘elite’, yet not subjected to the same confines of precedence and convention as the Royal Family is. It is a dangerous prospect.