Socialist Bloodletting Continues

The latest salvo is from Julien Dray, who may have reasons of his own for resenting Martine Aubry but who is nevertheless right about the fiasco of her first few months as leader.

More on the Polling Controversy

An interesting discussion of the "representativity" of OpinionWay's survey methods.

Contagious Threats of Violence

After workers at New Fabris threatened to blow up their factory if their severance pay wasn't increased, workers in similar situations elsewhere have adopted the same tactic. Workers at JLG successfully pressed a demand for 30,000 euros in severance pay by threatening to blow up cranes worth ten times that amount. As far as I know, we've heard nothing from Sarkozy on this tactic. Has le premier flic de France taken his kinder, gentler new image to heart and gone soft on machine-breaking?

One can understand the lads losing their jobs going after a bigger severance package by any means available, but hasn't it occurred to their union leaders that the threat of midsummer bonfires isn't likely to prove enticing to new capital?

Dispatch from the front. And from Le Monde. And this on the Nortel plant, another site of threatened violence.

Law and Religion

The Cardozo Law Review has a special issue on "Constitutionalism and Secularism in an Age of Religious Revival," including articles by noted scholars on laïcité, the veil, religious symbols in public space, etc. (h/t Patrick Weil)