Getting Tough ... Not

After 13 nights of street mayhem, France's overmatched government has instituted 50-year-old get-tough laws designed to bring order to dozens of ravaged French cities. Even so, some in the land of wine and cheese are not happy and say officials have gone too far.

"The prime minister seems to be losing his cool," the liberal Le Monde newspaper wrote. Turning to laws from France's colonial period betray that the prime minister "does not have the nerves that a statesman needs."

Do the laws authorize the gendarmes to shoot looters on sight? No, they merely institute a curfew at night. If that's considered losing one's cool, no wonder France is being overrun.