ROGER SIMON IS BACK FROM PARIS and blogging again:

[P]erhaps it was because I was there in the midst of the capture of Saddam… but the storied anti-Americanism now seemed almost the pathetic gesture of a failed state. To see the downcast newscaster on TV3 searching for something reassuringly cynical to say about the arrest of the Iraqi mass murderer was comical (she implied Saddam had been—unfairly?—impoverished and his capture didn’t mean much because he “only” had $750,000 in cash in the hole with him).

Bloggers Merde in France and the Dissident Frogman are correct (Yes, I met them and they are real—great guys!). France is in bad shape. Strange as this sounds, it reminded me in a way of some of my visits to the Soviet Union in the late eighties.

Read the whole thing.