Free Republic

....The main contributing factor is probably the disintegration of the family. The divorce rate has grown from 12 percent in 1970 to almost 40 percent in 2005; 20 percent of all French couples are unwed; one third of all mothers are living alone; 40 percent of all children are born to unmarried parents. Indeed, the “recombined family” has become the French sociological and ethical norm, the result of successive unions and separations in which children wander from home to home under arrangements of “shared parental authority” and must learn to get along with a host of similarly forlorn children produced...

Riot police fired tear gas at stone-throwing protesters gathered in central Paris today to demonstrate against the presidential election victory of right-winger Nicolas Sarkozy, an AFP journalist said. The clashes took place on the Place de la Bastille where about 5,000 supporters of the defeated Socialist candidate Segolene Royal had gone to await the election results. Up to 300 rioters, some of whom were masked, made running attacks on riot police who took up positions at the entrance to boulevards leading onto the square. Earlier a small crowd of protesters, brandishing black and red anarchist flags, set fire to an...