Austin Bay hoots and hollers over Sarkozy’s pick for foreign minister of France:

Nicholas Sarkozy strikes again — and again. Yesterday Saint Nicholas (”it’s Christmas for liberty”) appointed Bernard Kouchner as Foreign Minister. Touche’. Too-effin-che’. Magnifique. Kouchner supported the toppling of Saddam. Like Norm Geras and Christopher Hitchens, Kouchner’s a man of the Left who actually believes in liberty. Grind your teeth in your own buttock, M. Chirac.

The Times-OnLine has the background.

President Sarkozy yesterday appointed as Foreign Minister a socialist rights crusader who backed the US-British invasion of Iraq, causing bemusement and some anger in the French political world.

The appointment of Bernard Kouchner, 67, one of the most popular and outspoken public figures in France, was the most novel in a new “inclusive” government that mixes left-wing and centrist politicians with Mr Sarkozy’s Gaullist lieutenants.

The Socialist Opposition, in whose governments Dr Kouchner had served as Minister for Health and Humanitarian Action, immediately denounced him as a traitor and expelled him from the party.

Yup. Expelled. Cela va sans dire. Where the nutroots control, the purge shall follow. That’s because they are Stalinists at heart.

Indeed.  But score one for the anti-totalitarians (my kind of leftists). The New York Times has more:

“It’s an amazing appointment, a stunning event in French foreign policy,” said Richard C. Holbrooke, the former American ambassador to the United Nations and one of Mr. Kouchner’s closest friends. “He’s motivated by an antitotalitarian drive, whether he sees injustice from the left or the right. It will be very positive for U.S.-French relations because he does not come with a visceral anger towards the American ‘hyperpower.’ ”

I’m waiting for the nuanced wing of the Democratic Party—John Kerry, I’m talkin’ to you—to respond to this move from our oh-so-alienated ally France. Meanwhile: chalk one up for the (rare) good guys.***

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*** It has been a long time since I talked about my politics: I was hatched on the left and will always feel most at home there; I’m also strongly anti-totalitarian. Combine that with a strong innate anti-authoritarian streak, and … well, now you know my politics.

I praised Oliver Kamm’s book Anti-Totalitarianism here.

Indulging in my Mickey Kaus fix this morning, I was challenged to click a link.

Booker Prize: Ed Rollins and Arianna Huffington, together again! … [For some of why this is a potentially tense pairing, click here] … 2:01 A.M.

At that second link, I was pleased to find a juicy but very inside-the-Beltway blog post by Richard Bradley at HuffPo on the way-way-back backstory of Arianna Huffington’s apparent grudge against Tim Russert. I’m not very interested in that, but I was delighted to find a link to this, from 1996.

I forgot that Richard Bradley was at one time known as Richard Blow and that he was an editor at George. You can read all about the controversy surrounding his book American Son (about JFK Jr.) here.

One Amazon reviewer summarizes it [e.a.]:

This book is worth a read for those who just can’t get enough of the Kennedys, or about how “George” tried to make politics palatable to a mainstream audience by injecting celebrities into the editorial mix.

I wonder what JFK Jr. would make of this brave new media world. So much has changed. It’s hard to fathom that it’s only been 8 years since he died.