CAMPING FOR THE HOMELESS. In a rather cool article, The New York Times reports on the hundreds of middle class French who've begun sleeping outside in order to force the government to take action on the country's homeless problem. The tent-based organizing has worked, too: Chirac addressed the issue in his latest major address, and two of the major presidential candidates have signed the group's statement of demands. Now, it's true that France's homeless population is relatively small -- less than 100,000 on any given night, and so more akin to Los Angeles than the United States -- but the energy in their housing movement and the results of their direct action are heartening. John Edwards, incidentally, mentioned the importance of a national housing policy a few times while I traveled with him and swore an Edwards administration would be strong on that front, but didn't say much about what it'd look like. --Ezra Klein
