That will be a real loss to Mr Schröder: not only a useful centre-right counterweight to the chancellor's mainly left-leaning administration, but a particularly intelligent, cultured and valued member of it.
Laurent Joffrin, editor of the left-leaning Libération, this week accused Mr Sarkozy of installing "an elective monarchy .Yet Mr Sarkozy's planned constitutional reforms include others to make parliament a stronger counterweight: rights to oversee presidential nominations and authorise long-term military engagements abroad, as well as limits on the use of decrees.
Was JFK serious about this as an actual threat or was he symbolic in encouraging a cultural counterweight to right-wing forces in the military, media, and politics?
If the centrifugal pull of the 2012 election is likely to be to the right, is there any potential counterweight?
If I understand the situation correctly, McBride got mixed up with Labour blogger and psychotherapist, Derek Draper – not always a wise move – in trying to create a leftwing counterweight to the right's dominance of the political blogosphere.
Thus, the right to health as a counterweight to the priorities of the global marketplace offers important opportunities, but also formidable conceptual and practical challenges.
On the other hand, he adds, declaring access to be a human right can be an important counterweight to the notion that public interests should be left to the free market.
Many on the left are angry at the nomination because they want to have a counterweight to the right-wing Antonin Scalia.
At the same time, left-wing blogs are acting as a powerful counterweight to the right-wing radio opposition that flourished during the 1990s.
It was probably Alexander who organized the mass of his people as a hoplite army called pezhetairoi ("foot companions"), with rudimentary political rights, to act as a counterweight to the nobility, the cavalry hetairoi ("companions").
In 2010, UNICEF helped a group of non-governmental organizations prepare a shadow report to the United Nation's Committee on Child Rights that acted as a counterweight to the government's report on the progress made in protecting children in this country.
