Sunday, May 13, 2007 1:05 AM

The Politico has an interview with Duncan Hunter posted here. He focuses mainly on national security and protecting our borders. Very well done and worth your time.

“I’ve got to do something here to open this hour of today’s excursion into broadcast excellence. I need to apologize to both Sen. Obama and to Sen. McCain, ” said Limbaugh. “I had never heard of Curious George. Only now have staffers sent me little pictures of Curious George,” he continued.

“So I wish to apologize to both Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain. It was not my intent to bring dishonor and guttural utterances into this campaign. It happened. I laughed about it. It was a 12 year old kid’s reaction to Obama, it was told by his mother. I was laughing because I was being polite, but I had never heard of Curious George.”

Rush Limbaugh apologizing after laughing when a caller said that Obama had reminded her son of Curious George.

I most certainly do know who Curious George is, having read the story to each of my children numerous times. I must admit, the resemblance is certainly striking. It is most likely because Senator Barry’s ears are at a such high position on his cranial and somewhat prominent. If the man does indeed become president, his caricature will no doubt feature these ears, which brings me to an observation.

Do we know anybody else who is routinely likened to a lower order primate?

The collage of Bush and chimps has been around for at least a couple of years if not longer, and no one every wrote a news story about it.

Rush is just more civilized than left-wingers, but you knew that already.

Perhaps it’s one of the reasons why so many Media Age presidents have been governors.

It’s an executive position. You’ve actually had a job (though on a smaller scale) that is similar to that of the President.

Sure, Kerry was wishy-washy. In many ways, that’s what a senator is supposed to be. A senator is SUPPOSED to vote for a bill in
subcommittee, just to vote against it on the Senate floor. It’s all about deal making and relationship building, there.

An executive is a very different thing than a committee member, even a committee leader.

Huckabee, Romney, and Giuliani are the only ones with real executive experience.

McCain has his military experience, of course, but there’s a world of difference between being a military officer leading even an infantry unit and being a governor in charge of even the least populated state in the Union. Even the governor of Wyoming is in charge of 479,743 people. There are 4-star generals in charge of multi-national coalitions who don’t have that number of people under them.

The office of President today is far more powerful than President Washington envisioned. I wonder if our first President had such expectations heaped upon him?

Source: Wikipedia

Somewhat crazy guess for today…Castro is actually dead. If Radio Havana starts playing mournful, dirge-like salsas later today, watch out. I would guess this means he’s probably not too far from death, based on his known health. Lots of turnover in world leadership.. Blair, Musharraf, Castro, and now Bush.

Although human migration has existed throughout human history, immigration in the modern sense refers to movement of people from one nation-state to another. Immigration implies long-term permanent residence (and often eventual citizenship) by the immigrants: tourists and short-term visitors are not considered immigrants (see expatriates). However, seasonal labour migration (typically for periods of less than a year) is often treated as a form of immigration. The global volume of immigration is high in absolute terms, but low in relative terms. The UN estimated 190 million international migrants in 2005, about 3% of global population. The other 97% still live in the state in which they were born, or its successor state.

The modern idea of immigration is related to the development of nation-states and nationality law. Citizenship of a nation-state confers an inalienable right of residence in that state, but residence of immigrants is subject to conditions set by immigration law. The nation-state made immigration a political issue: by definition it is the homeland of a nation defined by shared ethnicity and/or culture, and in most cases immigrants have a different ethnicity and culture. This has led to social tensions, xenophobia, and conflicts about national identity, in many developed countries.

Causes

Theories of immigration traditionally distinguish between push factors and pull factors. [2] Push factors refer primarily to the motive for emigration from the country of origin. In the case of economic migration (usually labour migration), differentials in wage rates are prominent. Poor individuals from less developed countries can have far higher standards of living in developed countries than in their originating countries. Escape from poverty (personal or for relatives staying behind) is a traditional push factor, the availability of jobs is the related pull factor. Natural disasters can amplify poverty-driven migration flows. This kind of migration may be illegal immigration in the destination country (emigration is also illegal in some countries, such as North Korea).

Emigration and immigration are sometimes mandatory in a contract of employment: religious missionaries, and employees of transnational corporations, international non-governmental organisations and the diplomatic service can expect to work ‘overseas’. They are often referred to as ‘expatriates’, and their conditions of employment are typically equal to or better than those applying in the host country (for similar work).

For some migrants, education is the primary pull factor (note that students on limited visas are often not defined as immigrants, though later applications for immigration are usually made easier for them). Retirement migration from rich countries to lower-cost countries with better climate, is a new type of international migration. An example is immigration of retired British citizens to Spain or Italy. Some, although relatively few, immigrants justify their drive to be in a different country for cultural or health related reasons and very seldom, again in relative quantitative terms compared to the actual number of international migrants world-wide, choose to migrate as a form of self-expression towards the establishment or to satisfy their need to directly perceive other cultural environments because economics is almost always the primary motivator for constant, long-term, or permanent migration, but especially for that type of inter-regional or inter-continental migration; that holds true even for people from developed countries.

Non-economic push factors include persecution (religious and otherwise), frequent abuse, bullying, oppression, ethnic cleansing and even genocide, and risks to civilians during war. Political motives traditionally motivate refugee flows – to escape dictatorship for instance.

Some migration is for personal reasons, based on a relationship (e.g. to be with family or a loved one). In a few cases, an individual may wish to emigrate to a new country in a form of transferred patriotism. Evasion of criminal justice (e.g. avoiding arrest) is a (mostly negative) personal motivation. This type of emigration and immigration is not normally legal, if a crime is internationally recognized, although criminals may diguise their identities or find other loopholes to evade detection.

Barriers to immigration come not only in legal form; natural barriers to immigration can also be very powerful. Immigrants when leaving their country also leave everything familiar: their family, friends, support network, and culture. They also need to liquidate their assets often at a large cost, and incur the expense of moving. When they arrive in a new country this is often with many uncertainties including finding work, where to live, new laws, new cultural norms, language or accent issues, possible racism and other exclusionary behaviour towards them and their family. These barriers act to limit international migration: scenarios where populations move en masse to other continents, creating huge population surges, and their associated strain on infrastructure and services, ignore these inherent limits on migration.

Victims

At least 8,175 people have died since 1988 along the European borders, according to the Fortress Europe observatory on the victims of illegal migration to Europe. Among them 2,755 were missing in the sea In the Mediterranean sea, and through the Atlantic Ocean towards Spain, 6,027 migrants died. In the Sicily channel 1,929 people died along the routes from Libya and Tunisia to Malta and Italy, including 1,118 missing; 33 other people drowned sailing from Algeria to Sardinia. Along the routes from Mauritania, Morocco and Algeria towards Spain, through the Gibraltar strait or off Canary islands, at least 2,929 people died, including 1,206 who were missing. Then 514 people died in the Aegean sea, between Turkey and Greece, including 252 missing and 474 people died in the Adriatic sea, between Albania, Montenegro and Italy, including 136 missing. But the sea is not only crossed aboard makeshift boats. Sailing hidden inside registered cargo vessels 148 men died asphyxiated or drowned.

Sahara is a dangerous obliged passage in order to arrive to the sea. People cross it on trucks as on off-road vehicle along the tracks between Sudan, Chad, Niger and Mali from one side and Libya and Algeria on the other one. Here at least 1,069 people have died since 1996. According to the survivors, nearly every travel counts its victims. So the number of the victims could be higher and higher. The data includes also the victims of the collective deportations practiced by Tripoli, Algeria and Rabat Governments, accustomed to abandon groups of hundreds migrants in open desert border areas.

In Libya serious migrants abuses are also recorded. There is not any official data, but in 2006 Human Rights Watch and Afvic accused Tripoli of arbitrary arrests, beatings and tortures in the migrants detention centers, three of which are financed by Italy.[3] In September 2000 in Zawiyah, in the north-west of the Country, at least 560 foreigners were killed during racist putsches[6].

Traveling stowaways in the trucks 247 people were found dead in Albania, France, Germany, Greece, Turkey, U.K., Ireland, Italy, the Nederlands, Spain and Hungary.

Along the Greek border with Turkey there are still mine-fields along the Evros river. Here at least 88 people died over the mines trying to enter Greece.

And then: 51 people drowned crossing rivers delimiting the frontier between Croatia and Bosnia; Turkey and Greece; Slovakia and Austria; Slovenia and Italy; 41 people froze to death in the icy mountains at the border in Turkey, Greece and Slovakia; 20 people died under the trains in The Channel tunnel trying to reach England; 33 people were shot dead by Spanish and Moroccan police or injured along the border fence of Ceuta and Melilla Spanish enclaves in Morocco; 11 people burnt after a deportation centre in Holland caught fire; 11 people were killed by Turkish, French and Jugoslave policemen and 8 men were found dead hidden in the undercarriage of the planes

[edit] Differing perspectives

Immigration is often highly politicized, and in some countries, a major political issue. Opposition to immigration is generally far more prominent than support for it, but that is to some extent countered by economic interests.

[edit] Supporting arguments

[edit] General arguments

The main arguments cited in support of immigration are economic arguments, usually related to labour supply, and cultural arguments appealing to the value of cultural diversity. Some groups also support immigration as a device to boost small population numbers, like in New Zealand, or, like in Europe, to reverse demographic aging trends. The main anti-immigration themes are xenophobia, economic issues (costs of immigration, and competition in the labour market), environmental issues (impact of population growth), and the impact on the national identity and nature of the nation-state itself.

Support for fully open borders is limited to a minority. Some free-market libertarians believe that a free global labour market with no restrictions on immigration would, in the long run, boost global prosperity. There are also groups which oppose border controls on idealistic and humanitarian grounds – believing that people from poor countries should be allowed to enter rich countries, to benefit from their higher standards of living.

[edit] Economic arguments

More limited support for increased labour migration comes from economists and some business interests in the developed world. Although multinational corporations require free movement of senior staff, they are not necessarily the main users of immigrant labour (though in high-demand, high-pay occupations like engineering, where it takes a long time to educate new professionals, immigrants may make up much of the labour force in countries as varied as Dubai or New Zealand)[4]

Medium and small businesses (restaurants, farms) may be the most dependent on low-wage foreign labour. In specific sectors, there is a business lobby for immigration, usually in the form of green card systems, intended to facilitate specific and limited labour flows. Countries like New Zealand, which has experimented with both qualifications- and job-offer-based entry systems, have reported that under the latter system (where much weight is put on the immigrant already having a job offer), the immigrants actually show a much lower uptake of government benefits than the normal population. Under a mostly qualification-based system, many highly trained doctors and engineers had instead been reduced to driving taxis.[4]

[edit] Opposing arguments

[edit] Economic arguments

Economic needs-driven immigration is opposed by labour-market protectionists, often arguing from economic nationalism. The core of their arguments is that a nation’s jobs are the ‘property’ of that nation, and that allowing foreigners to take them is equivalent to a loss of that property. They may also criticise immigration of this type as a form of corporate welfare, where business is indirectly subsidised by government expenditure to promote the immigration and the assimilation of the immigrants.[5] A more common criticism is that the immigrant employees are almost always paid less than a non-immigrant worker in the same job, and that the immigration depresses wages, especially as immigrants are usually not unionised. Other groups feel that the focus should be not on immigration control, but on equal rights for the immigrants, to avoid their exploitation.

Arguments against the cost of immigration – for instance the provision of schools for the additional population – are prominent in the United States and Canada, see Economic impact of immigration to Canada.

[edit] Nationalistic arguments

Non-economic opposition to immigration is closely associated with nationalism, in Europe a ‘nationalist party’ is almost a synonym for ‘anti-immigration party’. Although traditionally, economic arguments dominated the United States immigration debate, it has become more polarized in recent years, as evidenced by nationalist demands to deploy the military to the US borders. The emergence of private border militias in the United States has attracted much media attention. Nevertheless, the southern border of the European Union in the Spanish exclaves of Ceuta and Melilla has at least as many military patrols as the US-Mexico border.

The primary argument of the nationalist opponents in Europe is that immigrants simply do not belong in a nation-state which is by definition intended for another ethnic group. Britain, in this view, is for the British, Germany is for the Germans, and so on. Immigration is seen as altering the composition of the national population, and consequently the national identity. From the nationalist perspective, high-volume immigration simply ‘alters their country’ more than is desired or even necessary. Some of the support for this nationalist opposition comes from xenophobes who instinctively fear the presence of foreigners, but it is also consistent with the nationalist ideology. Germany was indeed intended as a state for Germans: the state’s policy of mass immigration was not foreseen by the 19th-century nationalist movements. Immigration has forced Germany and other western European states to re-examine their national identity: part of the population is not prepared to redefine it to include immigrants. It is this type of opposition to immigration which generated support for anti-immigration parties such as Vlaams Belang in Belgium, the British National Party in Britain, the Lega Nord in Italy, the Front National in France, and the Lijst Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands.

One of the responses of nation-states to mass immigration is to promote the cultural assimilation of immigrants into the national community, and their integration into the political, social, and economic structures. In the United States, cultural assimilation is traditionally seen as a process taking place among minorities themselves, the ‘melting pot’. In Europe, where nation-states have a tradition of national unification by cultural and linguistic policies, variants of these policies have been proposed to accelerate the assimilation of immigrants. The introduction of citizenship tests for immigrants is the most visible form of state-promoted assimilation. The test usually include some form of language exam, and some countries have reintroduced forms of language prohibition.

[edit] Environmentalist arguments

Environmentalist opposition to immigration is prominent in the United States, which has the largest absolute numbers of immigrants. Responses to immigration are a controversial topic among environmental activists, especially within the Sierra Club. Some oppose the immigration-driven population growth in the United States as unsustainable, and advocate immigration reduction. Other environmentalists see overpopulation and environmental degradation as global problems, that should be addressed by other methods. Most European countries do not have the high population growth of the United States, and some experience population decline. In such circumstances, the effect of immigration is to reduce decline, or delay its onset, rather than substantially increase the population. The Republic of Ireland is one of the only EU countries comparable to the United States in this respect, since large-scale immigration contributed to substantial population growth.[6] Spain has also witnessed a recent boost in population due to high immigration.[7]

[edit] As political issue

The political debate about immigration is now a feature of most developed countries. Some, such as Japan, traditionally had very little immigration, and it was not a major political issue. Some countries such as Italy, and especially the Republic of Ireland and Spain, have shifted within a generation, from traditional labour emigration, to mass immigration, and this has become a political issue. Some European countries, such as the United Kingdom and Germany, have seen major immigration since the 1960’s, and immigration has already been a political issue, for decades. Political debates about immigration typically focus on statistics, immigration law and policy, and the implementation of existing restrictions. In some European countries the debate in the 1990’s was focussed on asylum seekers, but restrictive policies within the European Union have sharply reduced asylum seekers. In western Europe, the debate now focuses on immigration from the new member states of the EU, especially from Poland.

The politics of immigration have become increasingly associated with others issues, such as national security, terrorism, and in western Europe especially, with the presence of Islam as a new major religion. Some right-wing parties see an unassimilated, economically deprived, and generally hostile immigrant population as a threat to national stability. They fear new events such as the 2005 civil unrest in France. They point to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy as an example of the value conflicts arising from immigration of Muslims in Western Europe. Because of all these associations, immigration has become an emotional political issue in many European countries.

[edit] Ethics

Although freedom of movement is often recognized as a civil right, the freedom only applies to movement within national borders: it may be guaranteed by the constitution or by human rights legislation. Additionally, this freedom is often limited to citizens and excludes others. No state currently allows full freedom of movement across its borders, and international human rights treaties do not confer a general right to enter another state. According to Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, citizens may not be forbidden to leave their country. There is no similar provision regarding entry of non-citizens. Those who reject this distinction on ethical grounds, argue that the freedom of movement both within and between countries is a basic human right, and that the restrictive immigration policies, typical of nation-states, violate this human right of freedom of movement. Note that a right to freedom of entry would not, in itself, guarantee immigrants a job, housing, health care, or citizenship.

Where immigration is permitted, it is typically selective. Ethnic selection, such as the White Australia policy, has generally disappeared, but priority is usually given to the educated, skilled, and wealthy. Less privileged individuals, including the mass of poor people in low-income countries, cannot avail of these immigration opportunities. This inequality has also been criticised as conflicting with the principle of equal opportunities, which apply (at least in theory) within democratic nation-states. The fact that the door is closed for the unskilled, while at the same time many developed countries have a huge demand for unskilled labour, is a major factor in illegal immigration. The contradictory nature of this policy – which specifically disadvantages the unskilled immigrants while exploiting their labour – has also been criticised on ethical grounds.

Immigration polices which selectively grant freedom of movement to targeted individuals are intended to produce a net economic gain for the host country. They can also mean net loss for a poor donor country through the loss of the educated minority – the brain drain. This can exacerbate the global inequality in standards of living that provided the motivation for the individual to migrate in the first place. An example of the ‘competition for skilled labour’ is active recruitment of health workers by First World countries, from the Third World.

Nicolas Sarkozy
President-elect of the French Republic
Taking� office 16 May 2007
Succeeding	Jacques Chirac
Minister of the Interior
In� office 31 May 2005� –� 26 March 2007
President	Jacques Chirac
Preceded� by	Dominique de Villepin
Succeeded� by	François Baroin
In� office 7 May 2002� –� 31 March 2004
President	Jacques Chirac
Preceded� by	Daniel Vaillant
Succeeded� by	Dominique de Villepin
Born	28 January 1955 (1955-01-28) (age� 52) Paris, France
Nationality	French
Political� party	UMP
Spouse	(1) Marie-Dominique Culioli (married 1982, divorced 1996) (2) Cécilia Ciganer-Albeniz (married 1996)
Children	Pierre, Jean and Louis
Alma mater	University of Paris X: Nanterre Sciences Po
Religion	Roman Catholic
Website	sarkozy.fr

France

This article is part of the series: Politics and government of France

Constitution Fifth Republic Government of France President Jacques Chirac until May 16 2007 Nicolas Sarkozy from May 16 2007 List Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin List French Parliament National Assembly Senate Congress Constitutional Council Court of Cassation Political parties Gaullism Elections Presidential: 2002 – 2007 National Assembly: 2002 – 2007 Human rights Subdivisions Regions Departments EU Politics Foreign relations Minister of Foreign Affairs Political scandals French Portal

Other countries� ·� Politics� Portal view� •� talk� •� edit

Nicolas Sarkozy (IPA: [nikɔla saʁkɔzi] — pronunciation� (help·info)), born Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa on 28 January 1955 in Paris, France, is a French politician. He is leader of the UMP, and was elected President of the French Republic on 6 May 2007 after defeating Socialist Party contender Ségolène Royal during the 2007 election, and will take office on the morning of 16 May.

Sarkozy is known for his conservative stance on law and order issues and his admiration for a new economic model for France, suggesting that the country should have a more liberalised economy, inspired by the American and British examples. Until 26 March 2007, he served as the Minister of the Interior of France. His nickname Sarko is used by both supporters and opponents.

Personal life

Family background

Nicolas Sarkozy is the son of a Hungarian immigrant father, Pál Sárközy de Nagy-Bócsa^[1] (Hungarian: nagybócsai Sárközy Pál; some sources spell it Nagy-Bócsay Sárközy Pál; Hungarian pronunciation� (help·info)), and a French mother Andrée Mallah.

Pál Sárközy was born in 1928 in Budapest into a family belonging to the lower nobility of Hungary. The family possessed lands and a small castle in the village of Alattyán (near Szolnok), 92 km (57 miles) east of Budapest. Pál Sárközy’s father and grandfather held elective offices in the town of Szolnok. Although the Sárközy de Nagy-Bócsa (nagybócsai Sárközy) family was Protestant, Pál Sárközy’s mother, Katalin Tóth de Csáford (Hungarian: csáfordi Tóth Katalin), grandmother of Nicolas Sarkozy, was from a Catholic aristocratic family.

As the Red Army entered Hungary in 1944, the Sárközy family fled to Germany^[2]. They returned in 1945 but all their possessions had been seized. Pál Sárközy’s father died soon afterwards and his mother, fearing that he would be drafted into the Hungarian People’s Army or sent to Siberia, urged him to leave the country and promised she would eventually follow him and meet him in Paris. Pál Sárközy managed to flee to Austria and then Germany while his mother reported to authorities that he had drowned in Lake Balaton. Eventually, he arrived in Baden Baden, near the French border, where the headquarters of the French Army in Germany were located, and there he met a recruiter for the French Foreign Legion. He signed up for five years, and was sent for training to Sidi Bel Abbes, in French Algeria, where the French Foreign Legion’s headquarters were located. He was due to be sent to Indochina at the end of training, but the doctor who checked him before departure, who happened to also be Hungarian, sympathised with him and gave him a medical discharge to save him from possible death at the hands of the Vietminh. He returned to civilian life in Marseille in 1948 and, although he asked for French citizenship only in the 1970s (his legal status was that of a stateless person until then), he nonetheless gallicised his Hungarian name into “Paul Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa”. Paul Sarkozy moved to Paris where he used his artistic skills to enter the advertising industry. He met Andrée Mallah, Nicolas Sarkozy’s mother, in 1949.

Andrée Mallah, then a law student, was the daughter of Benedict Mallah, a wealthy urologist and STD specialist with a well-established reputation in the mainly bourgeois 17th arrondissement of Paris. Benedict Mallah, originally called Aaron Mallah and nicknamed Benico, was born in 1890 in the Sephardic Jewish community of Thessaloniki (Salonica), Greece, which at the time had a Jewish majority. According to Jewish genealogical societies, the Mallah family of Salonica anciently came from Spain which they had left in 1492 when the Catholic Monarchs had expelled the Jews. Resettled in Provence, southern France, the family had moved to Salonica a century later. Benico Mallah, the son of a jeweler, left Salonica, then part of the Ottoman Empire, with his mother in 1904 at the age of 14 to attend the prestigious Lycée Lakanal boarding school of Sceaux, in the southern suburbs of Paris. He studied medicine after his baccalaureate and decided to stay in France and become a French citizen. A doctor in the French Army during World War I, he met a recent war widow, Adèle Bouvier (1891–1956), from a bourgeois family of Lyon, whom he married in 1917. Adèle Bouvier, Nicolas Sarkozy’s grandmother, was a Catholic like the majority of French people. Mallah, for whom religion had reportedly never been a central issue, converted to Catholicism upon marrying Adèle Bouvier, which had been requested by Adèle’s parents, and changed his name to Benedict. Although Benedict Mallah converted to Catholicism, he and his family nonetheless had to flee Paris and take refuge in a small farm in Corrèze during World War II to avoid being arrested and delivered to the Germans.

Paul Sarkozy and Andrée Mallah settled in the 17th arrondissement in Paris and had three sons: Guillaume, born in 1951, who is an entrepreneur in the textile industry, Nicolas, born in 1955 and François, born in 1957 (an MBA and manager of a healthcare consultancy company [2]). In 1959 Paul Sarkozy left his wife and his three children. He later remarried twice and had two more children with his second wife.

Early life

During Sarkozy’s childhood, his father refused to give his former wife’s family any financial help, even though he had founded his own advertising agency and had become wealthy. The family lived in a small mansion owned by Sarkozy’s grandfather, Benedict Mallah, in the 17th Arrondissement. The family later moved to Neuilly-sur-Seine, one of the wealthiest communes of the ÃŽle-de-France région immediately west of the 17th Arrondissement just outside of Paris. According to Sarkozy, his staunchly Gaullist grandfather was more of an influence on him than his father, whom he rarely saw. His grandfather, a Sephardi Jew by birth, was a convert to Catholicism, and Sarkozy was, accordingly, raised in the Catholic faith of his household. Nicolas Sarkozy, like his brothers, is a baptised and professing Catholic. Sarkozy also said recently that one of his role models was former pope John Paul II.

Sarkozy’s father Paul did not teach him or his brothers Hungarian. There is no evidence suggesting that there was an attempt to educate the Sarkozy siblings about their paternal ethnic background.

Sarkozy has said that having been abandoned by his father shaped much of who he is today. As a young boy and teenager, he felt inferior in relation to his wealthy classmates.^[3] He suffered from insecurities (his physical shortness of 1.65 m, 5 feet 5 inches, or his family’s lack of money, at least relatively to their 17th Arrondissement or Neuilly neighbours), and is said to have harboured a considerable amount of resentment against his absent father. “What made me who I am now is the sum of all the humiliations suffered during childhood”, he said later.^[4]

Studies

Sarkozy was enrolled in the Lycée Chaptal, a state-funded (public) middle and high school in the 8th arrondissement, where he failed his sixième (equivalent to sixth grade in the US and Year 7 in England and Wales). His family then sent him to the Cours Saint-Louis de Monceau, a private Catholic middle and high school in the 17th arrondissement, where he was reportedly a mediocre pupil, but where he nonetheless obtained his baccalauréat in 1973. Later he obtained a bachelor’s degree in law from the Université Paris X Nanterre. He attended the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (more commonly known as Sciences Po), but did not graduate because he failed his exam in English ^[5]. He enrolled himself at Nanterre University in law, already run down some years after May ‘68. After passing the bar exam, he became a lawyer specializing in French business law and family law, skills which he would later put to use in divorcing his first wife and helping his mother take legal action against his father in order to raise alimony ^[6].

Personal wealth

Sarkozy declared to the Constitutional Council a net worth of two million euros, most of the assets being in the form of life insurance policies. ^[7].

Political career

General traits

Nicolas Sarkozy speaking at the congress of his party

He is generally recognized by the right and left as a highly skilled politician and striking orator. Supporters of Sarkozy within France emphasize his charisma, political innovation and willingness to “make a dramatic break” amidst mounting disaffection against “politics as usual”; some see him as wanting to depart from traditional French social and economic principles in favor of American-style economic reform. Overall, he is generally considered to be somewhat more pro-U.S. than most French politicians.

Since November 2004, he has been president of the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP), France’s major right political party, and he was Minister of the Interior in the government of Dominique de Villepin, with the honorific title of Minister of State, making him effectively the number three man in the French State after President Jacques Chirac and the prime minister. His ministerial responsibilities included law enforcement and working to co-ordinate relationships between the national and local governments, as well as Minister of Cults (in this guise he created the CFCM, French Council of Muslim Faith). Previously, he was a deputy to the French National Assembly. He was forced to resign this position in order to accept his ministerial appointment. He previously also held several ministerial posts, including Finance Minister.

Career

Sarkozy’s political career began at the age of 22, when he became a city councillor in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a wealthy and exclusive western suburb of Paris (in the Hauts-de-Seine département). A member of the Neo-Gaullist party RPR, he went on to be elected mayor of that town, after the death of the incumbent mayor Achille Peretti. Sarkozy had been close to Peretti, as his mother was Peretti’s secretary. The senior RPR politician in the time, Charles Pasqua, wanted to become mayor, and asked Sarkozy to organise his campaign. Instead Sarkozy profited from a short illness of Pasqua to propel himself into the office of mayor.^[8] He was the youngest ever mayor of any town in France with a population of over 50,000. He served from 1983 to 2002. In 1988, he became a deputy in the National Assembly.

In 1993, Sarkozy was in the national news for personally negotiating with the “Human Bomb”, a man who had taken small children hostage in a kindergarten in Neuilly. The “Human Bomb” was killed after two days of talks by policemen of the RAID, who entered the school stealthily while the attacker was resting.

From 1993 to 1995, he was Minister for the Budget and spokesman for the executive in the cabinet of Prime Minister Édouard Balladur. Throughout most of his early career, Sarkozy had been seen as a protégé of Jacques Chirac. However, in 1995 he spurned Chirac and backed Balladur for President of France. After Chirac won the election, Sarkozy lost his position as Minister for the Budget and found himself outside the circles of power. It is widely believed that ever since 1995 Chirac has considered Sarkozy’s siding with Balladur as a form of treason, and that the two men now loathe one another.

However, he came back after the right-wing defeat at the 1997 parliamentary election, as number 2 of the RPR. When the party leader Philippe Séguin resigned, in 1999, he took the lead of the Neo-Gaullist party. But it obtained its worst result at the 1999 European Parliament election, winning 12.7% of the votes, less than the dissident Rally for France of Charles Pasqua. Sarkozy lost the RPR leadership.

In 2002, however, after his re-election as President of the French Republic (see French presidential election, 2002), Chirac appointed Sarkozy as French Minister of the Interior in the cabinet of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, despite the widely acknowledged friction between the two. Following Jacques Chirac’s 14th of July keynote speech on road safety Sarkozy as interior minister pushed through new legislation leading to the mass purchase of speed cameras and a campaign to increase the awareness of dangers on the roads.

Following the cabinet reshuffle of 31 March 2004, Sarkozy was moved to the position of Finance Minister. Tensions continued to build between Sarkozy and Chirac and within the UMP party, as Sarkozy’s intentions of becoming head of the party after the resignation of Alain Juppé became clear. It became increasingly apparent that Sarkozy would go on to seek the presidency in 2007; in an often-repeated comment made on television channel France 2, when asked by a journalist whether he thought about the presidential election when he shaved in the morning, Sarkozy commented, “not just when I shave”.^[9]

In November 2004 after party elections, Sarkozy became leader of the UMP with 85% of the vote. In accordance with an agreement with Chirac, he resigned his position as minister. Sarkozy’s ascent was marked by the division of UMP between sarkozystes, such as Sarkozy’s “first lieutenant”, Brice Hortefeux, and Chirac loyalists, such as Jean-Louis Debré.

Sarkozy was made Chevalier de la Legion d’honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honour) by President Chirac in February 2005. He was re-elected on 13 March 2005 to the National Assembly (as required by the constitution,^[10] he had had to resign as a deputy when he had become minister in 2002).

On 31 May 2005 the main French news radio station France Info reported a rumour that Sarkozy was to be reappointed Minister of the Interior in the government of Dominique de Villepin without resigning from the UMP leadership. This was confirmed on 2 June 2005, when the members of the government were officially announced.

Raffarin government

First term as Minister of the Interior

Nicolas Sarkozy, here with then prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, meeting with bicycle-mounted officers of the French National Police.

Towards the end of his first term as Minister of the Interior, in 2004, Sarkozy was the most popular and also the most unpopular conservative politician in France, according to polls conducted at the beginning of 2004. His “tough on crime” policies, which included increasing the police presence on the streets and introducing monthly crime performance ratings, were popular with many and unpopular for many others. However, he was criticized for putting forward legislation which can be questioned as an infringement on civil rights, and adversely affected disadvantaged sections of the population.^{[citation needed]}

Sarkozy has sought to ease the sometimes tense relationships between the general French population and the Muslim community. Unlike the Catholic Church in France with their official leaders or Protestants with their umbrella organisations, the French Muslim community had a lack of structure with no group that could legitimately deal with the French government on their behalf. Sarkozy felt that the foundation of such an organisation was desirable. He supported the foundation in May 2003 of the private non-profit Conseil français du culte musulman (“French Council of Muslim Worship”), an organisation meant to be representative of French Muslims.^[11] In addition, Sarkozy has suggested amending the 1905 law on the separation of Church and State, mostly in order to be able to finance mosques and other Muslim institutions with public funds^[12] so that they are less reliant on money from outside of France.

Minister of Finance

During his short appointment as Minister of Finance, Sarkozy was responsible for introducing a number of policies. The degree to which this reflected libéralisme (a hands-off approach to running the economy) or more traditional French state dirigisme (intervention) is controversial. He resigned the day following his election as president of the UMP.

• In September 2004, Sarkozy oversaw the reduction of the government ownership stake in France Télécom from 50.4% to 41%.^[13]
• Sarkozy backed a partial nationalisation of the engineering company Alstom decided by his predecessor when the company was exposed to bankruptcy in 2003.^[14]
• Sarkozy reached an agreement with the major retail chains in France to concertedly lower prices on household goods by an average of 2%; the success of this measure is disputed, with studies suggesting that the decrease was closer to 1%.^[15]
• Taxes: Sarkozy avoided taking a position on the ISF (solidarity tax on wealth). This is considered an ideological symbol by many on the Left and Right. Some in the business world and on the Liberal Right, such as Alain Madelin, wanted it abolished. For Sarkozy, that would have risked being categorised by the Left as a gift to the richest classes of society at a time of economic difficulties.^[16] So Sarkozy preferred reducing the ISF with the bouclier fiscal.

Villepin government

Second term as Minister of the Interior

Sarkozy as Minister of the Interior with American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, after their bilateral meeting in Washington D.C.

During his second term at the Ministry of the Interior, Sarkozy was initially more discreet about his ministerial activities: instead of focusing on his own topic of law and order, many of his declarations addressed wider issues, since he was expressing his opinions as head of the UMP party.

Main article: Response to the 2005 civil unrest in France

However, the civil unrest in autumn 2005 put law enforcement in the spotlight again. Sarkozy was accused of having provoked the unrest by calling young delinquents from housing projects “rifraff” (“racaille”) in Argenteuil near Paris. After the accidental death of two youths, which sparked the riots, Sarkozy first blamed it on “hoodlums” and gangsters. These remarks were sharply criticised by many on the left wing and by a member of his own government, Delegate Minister for Equal Opportunities Azouz Begag.^[17]

After the rioting, he made a number of announcements on future policy: selection of immigrants, greater tracking of immigrants, and a reform on the 1945 ordinance government justice measures for young delinquents.

Action as UMP’s leader

Sarkozy currently is the president of UMP, the French conservative party, elected with 85% of the vote. During his presidency, the number of members has significantly increased. In 2005, he supported a “yes” vote in the French referendum on the European Constitution.

Throughout 2005, Sarkozy became increasingly vocal in calling for radical changes in France’s economic and social policies. These calls culminated in an interview with Le Monde on 8 September 2005, during which he claimed that the French had been misled for 30 years by false promises, and denounced what he considers to be unrealistic policies.^[18] Among other issues:

• he called for a simplified and “fairer” taxation system, with fewer loopholes and a maximum taxation rate (all direct taxes combined) at 50% of revenue;
• he approved measures reducing or denying social support to unemployed workers who refuse work offered to them;
• he pressed for a reduction in the budget deficit, claiming that the French state has been living off credit for some time.

Such policies are what are called in France libéral (that is, in favour of laissez-faire economic policies, although this judgment is made by French standards) or, with a pejorative undertone, ultra-libéral. Sarkozy rejects this label of libéral and prefers to call himself a pragmatist instead.

Sarkozy opened another avenue of controversy by declaring that he wanted a reform of the immigration system, with quotas designed to admit the skilled workers needed by the French economy. He also wants to reform the current French system for foreign students, saying that it enables foreign students to take open-ended curricula in order to obtain residency in France; instead, he wants to select the best students to the best curricula in France.

In early 2006, the French parliament adopted a controversial bill known as DADVSI, which reforms French copyright law. Since his party was divided on the issue, Sarkozy stepped in and organised meetings between various parties involved. Later, groups such as the Odebi League and EUCD.info alleged that Sarkozy personally and unofficially supported certain amendments to the law, which enacted strong penalties against designers of peer-to-peer systems.

Controversy

Many on the Left have a particular distrust for Nicolas Sarkozy; specific “anti-Sarko” movements have been started

Generally speaking, Sarkozy is a bête noire of the left (see below), and is also criticized by some on the right, most vocally by the supporters of Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin, such as Jean-Louis Debré, but also by social Catholics such as Christine Boutin; Boutin however, in the end, gave up her presidential bid and became a political advisor to Sarkozy. [3] [4]

Critics have accused him of being an authoritarian demagogue, ready to trade away civil liberties for political gains.^[19] Some of these accusations are echoed by French civil rights organisations.^{[citation needed]} He is also accused by the Left of being a populist who favours far-right ideas.^[20]

Kärcher remark

Since his famous Kärcher remark, Nicolas Sarkozy has been lampooned about his fondness for cleaning out the riff-raff; here, electoral posters of Sarkozy were posted on a Kärcher car wash

In the midst of a tense period and following a shooting that killed an 11-year-old boy in the banlieue of La Courneuve in June 2005, he quoted a local resident and vowed to clean the area out “with a Kärcher” (nettoyer la cité au Kärcher, Kärcher being a well-known brand of pressure cleaning equipment), and two days before the 2005 Paris riots he referred to the rioters as voyous (thugs) and racaille, a slang term which can be translated into English as dregs or riff-raff, ^[21] this being criticised as being too hard on the rioters.^[22][23]

Separation of powers

As Minister of the Interior, Sarkozy has made bold statements following heinous crimes reported in the media. As a consequence, he has been accused in certain cases of failing to respect the separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary by trying to apply pressure in certain cases. Most famously, he was criticised, not only by the left-wing Syndicat de la magistrature judges’ union, but also by the centrist Union syndicale des magistrats for attacks on the independence of the judiciary.^[24]

In September 2005 some youths were acquitted of an arson attack on a police station in Pau for lack of proof and Sarkozy was accused of having pushed for a hasty inquiry—Sarkozy had vowed that the perpetrators would be arrested within three months.^[25] On 22 June 2005, he announced to law enforcement officials that he had questioned the Minister of Justice about the future of “the judge” who had freed a man on parole, enabling him to commit a murder.^[26] These comments were criticised by both moderate and left-wing magistrates since the decision had been made by three judges.

Sarkozy has personal friendships with some of the most powerful figures in the French business world; for example, Martin Bouygues (from the Bouygues group, owner of the TF1 channel, as well as telecommunications and public works companies) and Bernard Arnault (from LVMH) were his marriage witnesses. His brother, Guillaume, is a senior executive of the MEDEF, the foremost business union in France; in 2005, he renounced running for the top position of that union because he said he did not want to hinder his brother’s political career.

Religion and state

Sarkozy, a Catholic, has caused controversy because of his views on the relationship between religion and state. In 2004, he published a book called La République, les religions, l’espérance (“The Republic, Religions, and Hope”),^[27] in which he argued that the young should not be brought up solely on secular or republican values. He also advocated reducing the separation of church and state, arguing for the government subsidy of mosques in order to encourage Islamic integration into French society.^[28][29] He flatly opposes financing of religious institutions with funds from outside France. After meeting with Tom Cruise, Sarkozy was criticised by some for meeting with a member of the Church of Scientology, which is classified as a dangerous sect in France.^[30]

War in Iraq

Nicolas Sarkozy, like almost all French politicians, disapproved of the US-led invasion of Iraq, but was nonetheless critical of the way Jacques Chirac and his foreign minister Dominique de Villepin expressed France’s opposition to the war. Talking at the French-American Foundation in Washington, D.C. on 12 September 2006, he denounced what he called the “French arrogance” and said: “It is bad manners to embarrass one’s allies or sound like one is taking delight in their troubles.”^[31] He also added: “We must never again turn our disagreements into a crisis.” This speech, given without the assent of the French president by a member of the French government traveling abroad (Sarkozy was still Minister of the Interior), was criticized by many in France. Jacques Chirac reportedly said in private that Sarkozy’s speech was “appalling” and “a shameful act”.^[31]

Regularisation of immigrant families

Sarkozy issued a memorandum (the ‘circulaire Sarkozy’) on 13 June 2006. In this decision sent to all prefects of France (his representatives in the provinces), he proposed to hand some immigration papers to immigrant families with children integrated in French schools. A strict series of conditions were listed in order to accept the regularisation of the situation of these families (proofs of integration in the country, proof of job, etc.). This offer attracted a large number of applications (around 25,000) handed to police services, usually under the advice of charities of specialised social associations. Most of the files were refused because the minister had fixed, beforehand, a number of “about 6000″ files to be accepted, whatever happened. The remaining 20,000 or so people have however been carefully registered in police files, including their personal address and child’s school (one of the criteria was providing school certificates). Some consider the situation to be a possible ‘trap’ for integrated immigrants.

View on genetic predispositions

A few weeks before the first round of the 2007 presidential elections, Nicolas Sarkozy said during an interview with philosopher Michel Onfray^[32] that he thinks disorders such as paedophilia and depression have a genetic as well as social basis, famously stating “I don’t agree with you, I’d be inclined to think that one is born a paedophile, and it is actually a problem that we do not know how to cure this disease”; he also claimed that suicides among youth was linked to genetic predispositions by stating, “I don’t want to give parents a complex. It’s not exclusively the parents’ fault every time a youngster commits suicide.” These claims were criticized by a few scientists, including geneticist Axel Kahn.^[33][34]

Marriages, divorce and separation

On 23 September 1982 he married Corsican-born Marie-Dominique Culioli, daughter of a pharmacist from Vico (a village north of Ajaccio, Corsica). They have two sons, Pierre (born in 1985) and Jean (born in 1987). Sarkozy’s marriage witness was the prominent right wing politician Charles Pasqua, later to become a political opponent. Sarkozy divorced Culioli in 1996, although they had already been separated for some years. Culioli continues to be a practicing Catholic and a charismatic and affirms that she still prays fervently for Sarkozy.^[35]

As mayor of Neuilly, Sarkozy met Cécilia Ciganer-Albeniz (great-granddaughter of composer Isaac Albéniz and of a Russian father)^[36] At the time, she was then married to TV host Jacques Martin. In 1989, Ciganer-Albeniz left Martin for Sarkozy. After a divorce lasting four months, Sarkozy married her in October 1996 (with witnesses Martin Bouygues and Bernard Arnault). They have one son, Louis, born in 1997.

Between 2002 and 2005, the couple often appeared together on public occasions, with Ciganer-Albeniz acting as a sort of chief aide for her husband. On 25 May 2005, however, the Swiss newspaper Le Matin revealed that Ciganer-Albeniz had left Sarkozy for French-Moroccan national Richard Attias, head of Publicis in New York.^[37]. There were other accusations of a private nature in Le Matin. This led Sarkozy to sue the paper.^[5]

In late 2005, the press reported that Sarkozy was in a relationship with Anne Fulda, a journalist from Le Figaro. Finally, in January 2006, a reconciliation with Ciganer-Albeniz took place.^[38]

Ciganer-Albeniz and Sarkozy are currently believed to be living together.^{[citation needed]} In early 2006, Sarkozy suggested to the press that he had welcomed Ciganer-Albeniz back from the USA, although the exact circumstances of the reconciliation are not known.^[39]

Candidacy for President

Main article: French presidential election, 2007

Nicolas Sarkozy in 2006

In Toulouse for the 2007 presidential campaign

On 14 January 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy was chosen by the UMP to be its candidate in the 2007 presidential election. Sarkozy, who was running unopposed, won 98% of the votes. Of the 327,000 UMP members who could vote, 69% participated in the online ballot.^[40]

In February 2007 Sarkozy appeared on a televised debate on TF1 where he expressed his support for affirmative action for minorities and the freedom to work overtime, but his opposition to homosexual marriage.

On 7 February, Nicolas Sarkozy finally decided in favour of a projected second, non-nuclear, aircraft carrier for the national Navy (adding to the nuclear Charles de Gaulle), during an official visit in Toulon with Defence Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie. “This would allow permanently having an operational ship, taking into account the constraints of maintenance”, he explained.^[41] This new view on the second aircraft carrier issue comes in conflict with a January report, where he was against a second carrier.^[42]

On 21 March President Jacques Chirac announced his support for Sarkozy, adding that he had his vote. Chirac pointed out that Sarkozy had been chosen as presidential candidate for the ruling UMP party, and said: “So it is totally natural that I give him my vote and my support.” To focus on his campaign, Sarkozy stepped down as interior minister on 26 March.^[43]

During the campaign, rival candidates had accused Sarkozy of being a “candidate for brutality” and of presenting overly hardline views about France’s future.^[44] He was also criticized by opponents for allegedly courting conservative voters in policy-making in a bid to capitalise on right-wing sentiments among some communities. However, his popularity was sufficient to see him polling as the frontrunner throughout the later campaign period, consistently ahead of rival Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal.

The first round of the presidential election was held on 22 April 2007. Nicolas Sarkozy came in first with 31.18% of the votes, ahead of Ségolène Royal of the Socialists with 25.87%. In the second round, Sarkozy came out on top to win the election with 53.06% of the votes ahead of Ségolène Royal with 46.94%. In his speech immediately following the announcement of the election results, Sarkozy stressed the need for France’s modernisation, but also called for national unity, mentioning that Royal was in his thoughts. In that speech, he claimed “The French have chosen to break with the ideas, habits and behaviour of the past. I will restore the value of work, authority, merit and respect for the nation.”

First term as president (2007-)

On 16th May, Nicolas Sarkozy will become the 23rd Président of French Republic.

The power transfer from Jacques Chirac is scheduled for the morning of 16 May at the Élysée Palace, where he will be given the nuclear codes of the nuclear deterrence and be presented the Grand Master’s Collar, symbol of his new function of Grand Master of the Legion of Honour. At that point he will become President. A public ceremony in Paris is also planned. The same day, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin will resign. Sarkozy will appoint his first Prime Minister on May 17. In a break with tradition, the first foreign statesman that the new President met following his election was the British Prime Minister Tony Blair on May 11. The first foreign statesman that he is scheduled to meet upon his taking up the office of President will be Germany’s Angela Merkel.

Early political career

He became a delegate to the Texas state Republican convention in 1974. He was an unsuccessful Republican candidate for election to Congress in 1974, a heavily Democratic year, against the incumbent Democrat Robert R. Casey. When President Gerald R. Ford appointed Casey as head of the Federal Maritime Commission, a special election was held in April 1976 to choose a new congressman. Paul won that election but lost six months later in the general election to Democrat Robert A. Gammage. He then defeated Gammage in a 1978 rematch. Paul won new terms in 1980 and 1982.

Paul was the first congressman to propose term limit legislation for the House of Representatives, where he declined to attend junkets or register for a congressional pension. Paul was an unsuccessful candidate for the U.S. Senate in the 1984 GOP primary against Phil Gramm. In 1985, Paul returned to medical practice and was succeeded in his seat by Tom DeLay, then a member of the Texas House of Representatives.

In 1988, Paul won the nomination of the Libertarian Party for the U.S. Presidency. He placed third in the popular vote (with 431,750 votes – 0.47%), behind George H. W. Bush and Michael Dukakis. Although he had been an early supporter of Ronald Reagan, Paul was critical of the unprecedented deficits incurred by Reagan’s administration, for which his opponent George H.W. Bush had been vice-president.

Return to Congress

In 1996, Paul was again elected to the House as a Republican. Paul won the primary and went on to win the general election despite opponent Greg Laughlin’s support from leaders within the Republican Party, including House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Governor George W. Bush.

Leaders of the Texas Republican Party made similar efforts to defeat him in 1998, but he again won the primary and the election. The Republican congressional leadership then agreed to a compromise: Paul would vote with the Republicans on procedural matters, and remain nominally Republican, in exchange for the committee assignments normally due to him according to his seniority. Paul was convincingly re-elected in 2000 and 2002. Unopposed in 2004 he was re-elected to his ninth term in the Congress, and was re-elected again in 2006 for his tenth term by a 20-point margin.

Political affiliations and support

Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas. He also remains on good terms with the Libertarian Party and addressed its national convention as recently as 2004.

Paul served as honorary chairman and is a current member of the Republican Liberty Caucus, a political action organization dedicated to promoting the ideals of individual rights, limited government and free enterprise within the Republican Party.

Unlike many political candidates, Paul receives the overwhelming majority of his campaign contributions (96.8% in 2005-2006) from individuals.

Views

Main article: Political views of Ron Paul

In his campaign, Paul has said that he would like to “reinstate the Constitution and restore the Republic.” His voting record is consistent in rejection of a welfare state or nanny state role for the federal government, and advocacy of hard currency and a non-interventionist foreign policy.

He voted against the Iraq War in 2002 and has offered alternatives such as granting the President authority to grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and allowing armed pilots. He is the only 2008 Republican presidential candidate to have voted against the Iraq War.

Paul’s desire to secure U.S. borders remains a key topic in his 2008 presidential campaign. He opposes the North American Union proposition and its proposed integration of Mexico, the United States of America, and Canada. Paul voted “yes” on the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which authorizes the construction of an additional 700 miles of double-layered fencing between the U.S and Mexico. Paul opposes illegal immigration as well as amnesty for illegal immigrants.

In the May 3, 2007 GOP Debate, Ron Paul stated that as President, he would seek the immediate abolition of the IRS and the abolition of the income tax. As Congressman, he has long fought for the prohibition of direct taxes by repeal of the 16th Amendment which created the income tax.

2008 Presidential Campaign

Main article: Ron Paul presidential campaign, 2008

Ron Paul formally declared his candidacy for the Presidential election in 2008 in 12 March 2007 as a guest on Washington Journal on C-SPAN.
Political analyst James Kotecki interviewed him regarding his candidacy, foreign policy, Congress and the Constitution, and personal liberties.

Ron Paul participated along with nine other Republican presidential candidates in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library’s 2008 Republican Presidential Candidates Debate on May 3, 2007 sponsored by MSNBC. In a six part MSNBC on-line survey following the debate, Paul with over 40% came in ahead of the other candidates with the highest positives and lowest negatives of the top 4 candidates, out of approximately 70,000 votes as of May 9. According to ABC News, the conclusion of the MSNBC vote was that Ron Paul appeared to win the debate. In an ABC News debate vote “WHICH REPUBLICAN CAME OUT ON TOP?”, Ron Paul garnered over 85%. The C-SPAN debate vote had similar results with over 70 percent casting their votes for Paul. ABC News has attributed Paul’s success to possible viral marketing by his supporters, noting that Paul has a “robust online presence”.

On May 9, 2007 “Ron Paul” was listed as the #1 top Internet search term by Technorati.com and ranked #815 on Wikicharts , a measurement of most-viewed Wikipedia pages, above mainline Republican contenders such as Mitt Romney, Rudy Guiliani, and John McCain. The U.S. News & World Report article titled “Ron Paul’s Online Rise” states “Technorati spokesman Aaron Krane confirmed that, to the best of the company’s knowledge, the online support for Paul is genuine. (Tech-savvy devotees occasionally attempt to enlist programs called “bots” to artificially boost their candidate on search engines, but Krane said Technorati is usually able to detect and delete the cheaters.)”

Source: wikipedia

The United Kingdom’s House of Lords has since sponsored state plans which will allow investigations using human-animal hybrid embryos. The vote came as a reprieve for scientists who had campaigned in favor of permitting such research. However, the end consequence was too met with disenchantment from certain memberships who see the creation of such embryos as unethical. These creations are formed from primarily human tissue for, but also contain a minimal amount of animal DNA. Today England has rejected a bill that would put a ban on creating human-animal hybrids clearing the way to be the world’s first nation to license such creations to private business for use in medical research. They are wasting no time, just one day after the announcement trials are scheduled to begin. The decision is setback for those who don’t view humanity as a genetic playground for corporate profits.

In addition, they already have a movement to create living human embryos from the genetic material of two females as well as a drive to force the harvesting of organs and human material from deceased Britons without their consent.

On Thursday, Bush left for a weekend in Kennebunkport, Maine, and his family’s summer compound, Walker’s Point. On Monday, he heads to his Crawford retreat, where he has spent all or part of 418 days of his presidency, according to Mark Knoller, a CBS News White House correspondent and meticulous record-keeper.

Never a fan of Washington’s more cosmopolitan pleasures, Bush will be in Central Texas for about two weeks, with an overnight trip to Ottawa to meet with the leaders of Canada and Mexico.

At a White House press conference Thursday, Bush appeared to be already inhabiting his vacation mode, shedding the businesslike, sometimes grim demeanor he’s had of late to slouch against the podium and be avuncular.

He gamely joked and mugged with reporters, at one point raising two fists in a boxing stance to illustrate what not to do in a photo op with the president of Iran.

“You don’t want the picture to be kind of, you know, duking it out, you know?” Bush said ” ‘OK, put up your dukes.’ That’s an old boxing expression.”

Bush’s August sojourn will be his 65th trip to Crawford, according to Knoller.

The 1,600-acre ranch has proved a durable haven for Bush, who often disappears into its varied landscapes for days or weeks at a time without public appearances. He has an attractive stone house, shaded swimming pool, miles of rugged bike trails and law enforcement at every entry point keeping people out.

“I fell in love with it the minute I saw it,” Bush said of his ranch in 2001. “I like being out here. I like spending a lot of time outside.”

The presidential vacation-time record holder is the late Ronald Reagan, who tallied 436 days in his two terms. At 418 days, and with 17 months to go in his presidency, Bush is going to beat that easily.

Even so, this year’s August vacation for Bush is a contrast to previous years such as 2005, when he dragged out vacation in Texas to five weeks. That was also the year Bush remained on vacation immediately after Hurricane Katrina hit.

Vice President Dick Cheney generally takes August off, often heading to Wyoming or coastal Maryland. Congress left last weekend and is gone until Sept. 4. The Iraqi parliament is taking August off, too.

Still, all this governmental time off is more than most Americans are taking. A recent survey by Yahoo Hot Jobs found nearly half of American workers did not take all of their vacation days last year.

Bush, on his 10th visit to Kennebunkport as president (according to Knoller), is scheduled for lunch Saturday with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Indeed, on the issue of vacation, at least, Bush is much like a pleasure-seeking Frenchman. According to Expedia.com, French workers get about 39 days off a year and generally take all but one.

Julie Mason