On Iowa

Jock Webb writes: Re. “What Iowa will tell us” (yesterday). We may not know what Iowa means for a while, but the crowing and ghastly speech by Ted Cruz, who unlike Obama really wasn’t born in the USA shows him as an absolute fruit loop in the worst Tea Party fashion. Should he be elected, one of his policies would see drastic effects on internet rights. A man who hates migrants (except wealthy ones) but whose father was an asylum seeker. Sound like anyone we know? A man also dedicated to maintaining the working poor as poor as possible. His mother would have benefited form the Canadian healthcare system at his birth, but he will overturn general health insurance.

On leaks and secrets

Jack Robertson writes: Re. “Tips and rumours: David Petraeus and the oaths that matter” (yesterday). Let’s never forgot our own abysmally ignored flagrant breach of Top Secret security. In the lead up to Iraq invasion someone in Alexander Downer’s office leaked a Top Secret ONA report by Andrew Wilkie to Andrew Bolt, who then selectively distorted its content to discredit Wilkie’s opposition to the war. Bolt quoted it directly, boasted about having been given access to it, admitted on the ABC to having seen it. All crimes in themselves.

The Federal Police, led by Mick Keelty, tyre-kicked a risible investigation into it. They won’t even release details of who in Downer’s office refused to be interviews. Meanwhile the press applauded Bolt’s gift-cum-propaganda act as a journalistic ‘good get’.