Meanwhile, future-focused consumer advocates seem to be giving CMS a free pass on its current failure to provide a basic, reliable and usable tool.

FORBES: Fixing Medicare's Failed "Physician Compare" Website

Glass concludes that, as a tool to achieve work-life balance, telecommuting is, in fact, a failure.

FORBES: Taking It Easy Through The Holidays? Working From Home Won't Help

But if enlargement has been the EU's most successful foreign-policy tool, the attempt to promote reform in borderland countries with little hope of joining has largely been a failure.

ECONOMIST: Charlemagne