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http://pjmedia.com/blog/not-over-yet-francois-hollande-faces-national-assembly-elections/?singlepage=true

Not Over Yet: François Hollande Faces National Assembly Elections

What if the new socialist president of France does not win them next month?

François Hollande, the socialist candidate, won the French presidential election on May 6. He got 51.63% of the vote against 48.37% for the incumbent conservative president, Nicolas Sarkozy. Quite a good score, even if Sarkozy did much better than expected.

However, the presidency is only a first step. A lot will depend on the National Assembly elections, which are due to take place on June 10 and 17. If the socialists and their allies secure themselves an absolute majority, Hollande will enjoy quasi-monarchical powers for five years. If they do not, he will be a lame duck.

Americans are familiar with similar scenarios, except the United States Constitution provides a clear-cut separation of powers and thus preserves many of the presidential powers and prerogatives, even against a hostile or uncooperative Congress. Whereas the French Fifth Republic constitution, a creation of Charles de Gaulle in 1958, combines — in an uneasy and uncertain way — presidential and Westminsterian features, and thus turns any conflict between the powers into a ballistic zero-sum drama. In theory, France is not ruled by its president, as in the American presidential system, but rather by its prime minister who, as in the English Westminsterian system, is answerable to the National Assembly. As long as both officials are political partners, the president — endowed with such special powers as the right to call for an early election or a referendum — is a de facto but undisputed CEO. When they belong to different and competing parties, the prime minister takes over.

De Gaulle perfectly understood the logic — or the illogic — of his system: he made clear that the president, once deprived of electoral support, had no choice but to resign. He actually acted accordingly in 1969, when he abdicated following a failed referendum on comparatively minor issues. Things changed, however, when François Mitterrand, the Fifth Republic’s first socialist president, was faced with a conservative National Assembly in 1986: instead of resigning he agreed to become a lame duck — but a lame duck with teeth who made full use of his residual powers in order to undermine the cabinet, to hasten its fall, and to win a reelection in 1988.

A conservative and allegedly Gaullist president, Jacques Chirac, followed in 1997 when his party lost an early election he himself had called. For the five ensuing years, he “cohabited“ (to use the authorized French expression) with Lionel Jospin, the socialist prime minister. Both under Mitterrand and Chirac, cohabition led to such ridiculous situations as the president and the prime minister of France together attending international summits like G7 or the European Council.

Things went even further in 2002, when Jospin introduced — with Chirac’s assent — a constitutional revision that shortened the president’s term from seven to five years. Since the Assembly is also elected for five years, the obvious outcome was that the parliamentary election would closely follow the presidential one. It worked to Chirac’s advantage upon his reelection in 2002, and then to Sarkozy’s advantage in 2007.

Hollande is convinced that the same will be true about him next month. But will it? There is at least one precedent that he should consider. After being reelected in 1988, Mitterrand called an early election to get rid of the 1986 conservative National Assembly. What he got was a lame Assembly with a relative but not an absolute majority for the socialist party, and a weak centrist minority that could not act as a steady ally. Five years later, he lost the 1993 parliamentary election and was reduced to a lame duck position again. Since he was then dying of cancer, he could not again mastermind a socialist revenge; on the other hand, he was treated in an extremely respectful and dignified way by the day’s ruler, conservative Prime Minister Edouard Balladur.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/how-fbi-botched-zazi-arrest-but-blamed-nypd/ The arrest [1] of Najibullah Zazi on September 19, 2009, came more than a week after news broke about his involvement in a suicide bomber plot targeting New York City subways — one of the most advanced terror threats to the U.S. since the 9/11 attacks. But within days, finger pointing between law enforcement […]

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/05/08/kicking-the-palestinian-addict Who’s in the mood for another Arab dictatorship? The Palestinians have faded from view lately. There’s been an “Arab Spring,” an intensifying Iranian issue, elections in the U.S., economic travails. True, the Obama administration and the EU keep forking over funds to the Palestinian Authority. But the obsession with securing sovereign statehood for the […]

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

For the last twenty years Israel has been swept into an obsession with few parallels except to the Dutch Tulip economy. Except instead of tulips, its commodity of choice is an even more insubstantial thing, the faint promise of peace.
Peace fever is the disease consuming Israel as surely as the Black Death took Europe. If the Dutch traded fortunes for flowers, the Israelis have traded away most of their territory for worthless pieces of paper that last about as long as tulips do. Mostly, like Madoff’s investments, after they wither and die it turns out that they were never worth anything to begin with.

Take the Camp David Accords, greeted with insane romantic fervor in Jerusalem and European capitals, but resented and despised by Egyptians because they were a reminder of how their army had failed to destroy Israel. It was a worthless accord that gave Egypt a vast amount of territory in exchange for maintaining a status quo that it had no choice but to maintain after losing multiple wars. With the fall of Mubarak, it was revealed that the Accords were never more than moonbeams and fairy dust. A puff of Arab Spring and they are gone.

Camp David was an illusion, but the Oslo Accords are a delusion. A tulip economy where Israel doles out fortunes in money, land and power in exchange for the promise of peace and an end to the violence… tomorrow, always tomorrow. The most devastating impact of the delusion isn’t on the cemeteries where children lie side by side with soldiers, on the broken homes and synagogues of Gaza, or on the tightening circle of terror around Jerusalem. As with all delusions, its most devastating impact is on the mind.

http://times247.com/
BOLTON: Dangerous fallout from China’s Chen affair
John R. Bolton
05/07/2012
BOLTON: Dangerous fallout from China’s Chen affair
Chen Guangcheng’s individual odyssey symbolizes large, indeed tectonic, political and social forces grinding away beneath the smooth appearance Beijing strains to convey. Read more…

Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz1uGu9qB00
EDITORIAL: Panetta’s next war
Washington Times
05/07/2012
EDITORIAL: Panetta’s next war
America has a fresh national-security threat, an enemy is every bit as elusive as al Qaeda: global warming. That’s according to Pentagon chief Leon Panetta, who has declared war on climate change. This is a fight America can’t afford. Read more…

Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz1uGuIeN00
Soros to lead $100m effort to aid Democrats
New York Times
Monday, May 7, 2012
News
After months on the sidelines, major liberal donors including the financier George Soros are preparing to inject up to $100 million into independent groups to aid Democrats’ chances this fall. Read more…

Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz1uGuTXCE4

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/7/farewell-to-european-superstate/print/ Failed EU experiment is headed for a crackup In the space of two weeks, three European governments have fallen, sending shock waves across the Continent and calling into question the experiment that has consumed its elect for decades: the construction of a centralized, socialist superstate known as “Europe.” It may just be that the […]

The Road to Freedom Posted By Jamie Glazov

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/05/08/the-road-to-freedom/

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research and a celebrated conservative author, economist, and media personality. He was formerly the Louis A. Bantle Professor of Business and Government Policy at Syracuse University. He is author of the new book, The Road to Freedom: How to Win the Fight for Free Enterprise.

FP: Arthur Brooks, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Let’s begin with you telling us what inspired you to write this book.

Brooks: For years, the free enterprise movement has done an incredible job making the material case for free enterprise and explaining how economic freedom makes people better off. By the end of the Cold War, we had pretty much won that argument. Most mainstream liberals now publicly eschew “socialism,” and concede that the market economy is the best way to produce material prosperity in the aggregate.

But where the left has where—and where free enterprise advocates have failed to respond—is on the moral side of the ledger. Sure, the left says, free enterprise makes us better off, but at a huge cost to our society and our values.

This argument is incorrect, but it’s effective because we almost never show up to debate it. I wrote this book to explain why I believe free enterprise is not just an economic alternative, but a moral imperative.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/299251/elizabeth-warren-minority-crusader-artur-davis THE LADY’S “GONE NATIVE AMERICAN” IN A PATHETIC AND SHAMEFUL CAMPAIGN…..NEXT, LIKE HILLARY CLINTON, SHE’LL FIND A JEWISH GREAT AUNT….RSK Who knew that Massachusetts would provide an opportunity to add a touch of color to the almost-all-white U.S. Senate? Who knew that when Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren tailored her professional biography to cultivate ties […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/299273/occupy-and-moral-infrastructure-thomas-sowell

Disregard for the law leaves society with mob rule.The “Occupy” movement, which the Obama administration and much of the media have embraced, has implications that reach far beyond the passing sensation it has created.

The unwillingness of authorities to put a stop to their organized disruptions of other people’s lives, their trespassing, their vandalism, and their violence is a de facto suspension, if not repeal, of the Fourteenth Amendment’s requirement that the government provide “equal protection of the laws” to all its citizens.

How did the Occupy movement acquire such immunity from the laws that the rest of us are expected to obey? Simply by shouting politically correct slogans and calling themselves representatives of the 99 percent against the 1 percent.

But just when did the 99 percent elect them as their representatives? If in fact 99 percent of the people in the country were like these Occupy mobs, we would not have a country. We would have anarchy.

Democracy does not mean mob rule. It means majority rule. If the Occupy movement, or any other mob, actually represents a majority, then they already have the votes to accomplish legally whatever they are trying to accomplish by illegal means.

Remembering Pim Fortuyn

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/05/08/remembering-pim-fortuyn-2/print/

On May 6, 2002, a Dutch sociologist and writer turned politician named Pim Fortuyn was gunned down in a parking lot in Hilversum in the Netherlands. He had just come from an interview (Hilversum, outside of Amsterdam, is the headquarters of the Dutch electronic media), one of many he had given in previous weeks in advance of the general election, which was scheduled for May 15. Despite the relentless smear campaign directed against him by the Dutch political and media establishment, Fortuyn’s party, Lijst Pim Fortuyn, was doing extremely well in the polls, and it looked as though, barring a major upset, he would actually become the next prime minister of the Netherlands.

The prospect was remarkable, for more reasons than one. For one thing, if Fortuyn won, he would be the first openly gay head of state or government of any country in the world, ever. But under the circumstances, his sexual orientation was barely more than a footnote. What really mattered, and what gave hope to so many voters in his country and to observers around the world, was that Fortuyn was a social scientist who had gone into politics for one reason and one reason only: because he saw that the precipitous rise of Islam in the West, and especially in his own nation, was a catastrophic development, and he was determined to do everything he could to preserve the liberty and equality that he cherished before it was too late.