Free Republic

- The "golden couple" of the French left -- Segolene Royal and Francois Hollande -- came to an end on Sunday, weeks after the Socialists suffered a painful defeat in their presidential bid. Royal, whose hopes of becoming France's first woman president were dashed last month by Nicolas Sarkozy, confirmed what had been rumoured for some time. She said in a book to be published this week that Hollande, the leader of the Socialist Party and the father of her four children, had been having an affair and that she had asked him to leave their home. Royal, 53, met...

Since he left office in 2001, former president Bill Clinton has been paid by InfoUSA, an Omaha, Nebraska company that has been identified as a key provider of specially designed databases that are sold to criminals who use the detailed information to defraud the unsuspecting elderly. Because Senate financial disclosure rules do not require Hillary Clinton to reveal exactly how much -- or for what -- the company has paid her husband over the past five years, we don’t know all the details. But we do know this: former presidents – especially Bill Clinton – don’t come cheap. And, just...

THERE ARE TWO THINGS to be said about the first major intramural spat of the 2008 Democratic primary season. The first is that David Geffen has a point (and we're not saying that just because there is a remote chance that we might work for him someday). The second is that if California moves up its primary, presidential candidates visiting here will soon have to pander to more than just Hollywood moguls. Geffen, once among Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton's biggest financial backers, threw Hollywood's first mega-fundraiser of the election cycle on Tuesday — for Barack Obama. His criticism of...

SORRY seems to be the hardest word for Hillary Clinton. The New York senator is not used to being challenged on either her policy positions or her votes - especially when it comes to Iraq. For the last six years, she's operated in a protective bubble - insulated from the press and the voters. Those days are over. -snip-But her refusal to apologize is typical of two other characteristics that so frequently land her in trouble: her stubbornness and belief that she is always right. We've seen this before. -snip- That's a key reason why she shouldn't be president.

As she prepares for her presidential race, confident that New Yorkers will re-elect her, Hillary Clinton is working to position herself properly to win the Democratic nomination by adjusting, tweaking and, where necessary, reversing her issue positions. But last week's flip-flop on gay marriage, in which she said she would approve of state action to legalize it, came with some reconstructed history that tried to paper over her switch by obfuscating the historical record. Her statement dismissed her support of her husband's Defense of Marriage Act as "a strategic decision to help derail a constitutional amendment that would have banned...