The CDU in Baden-Wuerttemberg is conducting negotiations with the Greens in that state to decide if the two parties should form a coalition government. If they do, it will be the first “black-green” coalition at the state level, and another sign of fluidity in Germany’s post-reunification party politics.
Update: Maybe next time. The CDU and FDP will, according to reports today, continue the coalition that has run the southwest for the last 10 years. Germany changes slowly.
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European Tribune – How not to govern
But what is certain is that these decisions make a mockery of our institutions. It undermines the rule of law (“ignore the laws we pass”), it shows that thos government is such a lameduck that legitimacy for negotiations must come from the outside (the UMPparty), it turns the prime minister (for being sidelined for a junior minister) and the president (for being unable to get rid of his reckless prime minister) into objects of ridicule, and it shows, if ever proof was ever needed, that the interests of France are the last thing on these people’s minds, who are focused only on their personal prospects at the next election, still a year away.
Once upon a time, before it became the Paris edition of the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune published its late sports editor Dick Roraback’s ode to baseball’s opening day each year.
Under the fold, “The Crack of the Bat.”
(The fifth stanza is current again, after reflecting a bygone age for more than three decades. The Buc and the Nat refer to the Pittsburgh Pirates [buccaneers] and the Washington Nationals. In 1971, major league baseball left Washington, not returning until last season when the relocated Montreal Expos became the new Nationals. The fields in the stanza, Forbes and Griffith, are long gone. Forbes’ replacement is also gone, and Griffith’s replacement’s replacement is moving from drawing board to construction site this year.)
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Finally, a satisfying biography of Franz Kafka
Robert Alter reviews ‘Kafka: The Decisive Years’ by Reiner Stach.