Free Republic

Disgraced ex-IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn, once tipped to win France's presidential vote, has made a dramatic incursion into the campaign with a claim Nicolas Sarkozy orchestrated his downfall. The accusation came as the battle between Mr Sarkozy and Francois Hollande grew ever more bitter, with the incumbent accusing the front-running Socialist of subjecting him to a “Stalinist trial” over his bid to woo the far right. Mr Strauss-Kahn, in his first major newspaper interview since his disgrace a year ago, told Britain's The Guardian newspaper that his spectacular fall was orchestrated by opponents to prevent him standing as Socialist candidate....

Farewell to the Tea Party. It was fun while it lasted. It certainly got a lot of undue media attention. But it died a premature, yet welcome, death. Ironically, what killed the Tea Party was not opposition from either the Republican or Democratic Party. The Tea Party committed suicide, rendered irrelevant by a succession of current events. The central premise of Tea Party loyalists, after all, was that they were anti-government. You know the drill: All government is bad. Taxes are bad. Government bureaucrats are bad. Then, unfortunately for them, just as they were gaining traction, tea baggers ran into...

<p>All through December you were treated to marching children demanding more funding for their schools. And, you’ve seen “educators” who explained that the number of school days must be cut, sports must be eliminated, school busses must be exchanged for half-ton pickups towing open trailers, indoor toilets will be replaced by outhouses in the now unusable football field, furnaces will be shut down, school lunches will be turnip soup and a thousand children will have to share each textbook.</p>