By Rand Paul
Obama acts as though we no longer have a Constitution
In the course of our conversation, Richard Nixon singled out the then-relatively obscure ruler of a tiny city-state: Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew. Heaven only knows, Nixon reflected, what massive accomplishments Lee might have managed if he had led a major power.
For all those readers who can't get enough of the Mitford clan, with their pet names and jokes, shrieks of laughter and shafts of barbed wit, here's yet more fodder. Readers of Nancy Mitford's books know about her Francophile tastes and her heroines' bliss -- a favorite Mitford word -- in the discovery of an aristocratic French lover.
The French people sloughed off years of national shame in one glorious summer month in 1944 when, with only minimal assistance from Allied armies, they evicted German troops from Paris. Albert Camus, writing in the clandestine newspaper Combat, spoke of Paris returning to its historic role of purging tyranny with the "blood of free men."
Today, I am ashamed to be an American journalist.
Perhaps the best verdict passed on Charles de Gaulle was one he penned himself in 1934, long before he achieved international fame. "Every man of action has a strong dose of egotism, pride, hardness, and cunning," he wrote. But he quickly added, "all those things will be forgiven him, indeed, they will be regarded as high qualities, if he can make of them the means to achieve great ends." Charles de Gaulle could and did.
Neck and neck in the polls just one week before France's presidential election, the leading candidates rallied tens of thousands to separate events Sunday to outline two very different visions of the future.
Hundreds of Air France flights were canceled Tuesday — including 40 percent out of Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport — and the disruption is expected to get worse during a union strike over labor rights.
The major leaders in World War II have come down to us as either saints or scoundrels. An exception is the man who led France from exile during World War II, Charles de Gaulle, who is now the subject of a succinct biography by World War II historian Michael Haskew.
In the spring of 1947, I was on deck as one of that dying breed of trans-Atlantic liners was tugged into Le Havre. Despite decades of experience, there was incredible confusion as French stevedores hassled over tying up the ropes.
One of the more contentious relationships of World War II was that between French Gen. Charles de Gaulle on one side and President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on the other. Indeed, scorn for de Gaulle was so deep at one point that Roosevelt and Churchill considered a military occupation of France at war's end - pending free elections - rather than putting the country into the hands of de Gaulle.
President Obama seems frustrated because he has "tried everything" to revive the economy and still it's in a slump. But as the following cases suggest, he hasn't tried the kind of policies that work.
Guinea's president narrowly survived an assassination attempt this week when gunmen surrounded his home overnight and pounded his bedroom with rockets, throwing into doubt the stability of the country's first democratically elected government in a part of the world that long has been ruled by the gun.
However reluctantly, Europeans are increasingly bellying up to the eurozones ultimate crisis. The talking heads present a dilemma: The European Union will either pick apart its common currency or take radical steps toward a highly centralized command economy.
Fifty years ago this week, a young American president traveled to France on his first state visit. But his three-day trip was overshadowed by his beautiful wife, who charmed the French and endeared herself to the frosty French leader, Charles de Gaulle.
It would be fair to say of Daniel J. Mahoney that a political scientist with his acute sense of analytical balance should be better known than he is. But then you get to thinking - balance? That's not what we're about in the modern world, is it? We're about pushing ideas - democracy, say - as far as they can be pushed until, well, we won't know until we get there, will we?
From London he broadcast a message of defiance: "France," he told his fellow countrymen, "has lost a battle.
"Every man of action has a strong dose of egotism, pride, hardness, and cunning," he wrote.
