<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://www.clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/c4bda022-1a28-4a86-b51f-f9a2941ceffb/0512B0AB-7EE0-4673-BAD7-FAD6719E2382/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.slate.com/id/2232169/" href="http://www.slate.com/id/2232169/" style="font-size: 11px;">www.slate.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.slate.com/id/2232169/"><P><SPAN><A href="http://www.slate.com/id/2232203/"><IMG height="168" alt="Silvio Berlusconi. Click image to expand." hspace="0" src="http://img.slate.com/media/1/123125/123036/2207915/2231495/091012_FOR_BerlusconiTN.jpg" width="252" vspace="0" /></A><LABEL>Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi</LABEL></SPAN>Silvio Berlusconi has been accused of bribery, tax evasion, corruption, and subversion of the press. His wife has left him on the grounds that he consorts with prostitutes and holds orgies at his villa in Sardinia. He makes embarrassing jokes (and then repeats them, as he did with the one about President Barack Obama's "<A href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6852051.ece" target="_blank">suntan</A>") and periodically disappears to undergo more plastic surgery. He is at war with the Italian legal establishment, with almost all the journalists who don't work for him, and with the Catholic Church. Last week, the Italian constitutional court <A href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/news/2009/10/091008_berlusconi_wt_sl.shtml" target="_blank">lifted his immunity from prosecution</A>, which means Italians can look forward to a whole new series of law suits and scandals. </P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.slate.com/id/2232169/">Yet by far the most interesting thing about the Italian prime minister is this: Italians keep voting for him. The somewhat ragged coalition he leads—<A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_People_of_Freedom" target=_blank>Il Popolo della Libertà</A>, the People of </blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.slate.com/id/2232169/">There seem to be several answers, some of </blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/0512B0AB-7EE0-4673-BAD7-FAD6719E2382/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content8.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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