Ed points out that healthcare in France is excellent and costs about 1/2 what it does in the US and wonders why this is ignored during the health debate while the Canadians are regularly invoked. I'm thinking it's because the healthcare reformers are afraid of the "Freedom Fries" effect of invoking anything French in the US.
Michelle Bachmann is a US Representative from MN and thankfully she's mostly their problem. I say that because she says some of the craziest things you'll ever hear from someone in Congress, and I need no other proof than the fact that North Carolina's own Patrick McHenry, who is as staunch a Republican as you're going to find, has tried to talk her down from her latest chicanery (boycotting the Census).