Sex, Lies, Arrogance: What Makes Powerful Men Behave So Badly?

When her husband Dominique Strauss-Kahn was preparing to run for President of France five years ago, Anne Sinclair told a Paris newspaper that she was “rather proud” of his reputation as a ladies’ man, a chaud lapin nicknamed the Great Seducer. “It’s important,” she said, “for a man in politics to be able to seduce.” Maybe it was pride that inspired French politicians and International Monetary Fund officials to look the other way as the rumors about “DSK” piled up, from the young journalist who says Strauss-Kahn tried to rip off her clothes when she went to interview him, to the female lawmaker who describes being groped and pawed and vowed never to be in a room alone with him again, to the economist who argued in a letter to IMF investigators that “I fear that this man has a problem that, perhaps, made him unfit to lead an institution where women work under his command.” Maybe it was the moral laziness and social coziness that impel elites to protect their own

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IMF Head on Suicide Watch in New York

— The maid came from one of the world’s poorest countries and worked long hours trying to support the teen daughter she raised alone. The penthouse suite at the Sofitel Hotel was just another room; she had no idea the man she says tried to rape her was a famous French politician

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National Affairs: Boyle’s Law

“I've certainly striven to conduct myself as my mother would wish me to,” said William Marshall Boyle to a Senate investigating committee. Many citizens mistakenly assumed that this statement by the chairman of the Democratic National Committee was a piece of pious patter.

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Hopes Rise in Japan As Engineers Restore Power Cables to Damaged Plant

Could there at last be a flicker of good news from Japan? On Saturday, Japanese officials announced that last-ditch efforts to stabilize the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that was damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami might be achieving a modicum of success.

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