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President William ("Bill") Jefferson Clinton


Self Description

August 2007: "During the administration of William Jefferson Clinton, the U.S. enjoyed more peace and economic well being than at any time in its history. He was the first Democratic president since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win a second term. He could point to the lowest unemployment rate in modern times, the lowest inflation in 30 years, the highest home ownership in the country's history, dropping crime rates in many places, and reduced welfare rolls. He proposed the first balanced budget in decades and achieved a budget surplus. As part of a plan to celebrate the millennium in 2000, Clinton called for a great national initiative to end racial discrimination.

After the failure in his second year of a huge program of health care reform, Clinton shifted emphasis, declaring "the era of big government is over." He sought legislation to upgrade education, to protect jobs of parents who must care for sick children, to restrict handgun sales, and to strengthen environmental rules.

President Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe III on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas, three months after his father died in a traffic accident. When he was four years old, his mother wed Roger Clinton, of Hot Springs, Arkansas. In high school, he took the family name.

He excelled as a student and as a saxophone player and once considered becoming a professional musician. As a delegate to Boys Nation while in high school, he met President John Kennedy in the White House Rose Garden. The encounter led him to enter a life of public service.

Clinton was graduated from Georgetown University and in 1968 won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University. He received a law degree from Yale University in 1973, and entered politics in Arkansas.

He was defeated in his campaign for Congress in Arkansas's Third District in 1974. The next year he married Hillary Rodham, a graduate of Wellesley College and Yale Law School. In 1980, Chelsea, their only child, was born.

Clinton was elected Arkansas Attorney General in 1976, and won the governorship in 1978. After losing a bid for a second term, he regained the office four years later, and served until he defeated incumbent George Bush and third party candidate Ross Perot in the 1992 presidential race.

Clinton and his running mate, Tennessee's Senator Albert Gore Jr., then 44, represented a new generation in American political leadership. For the first time in 12 years both the White House and Congress were held by the same party. But that political edge was brief; the Republicans won both houses of Congress in 1994.

In 1998, as a result of issues surrounding personal indiscretions with a young woman White House intern, Clinton was the second U.S. president to be impeached by the House of Representatives. He was tried in the Senate and found not guilty of the charges brought against him. He apologized to the nation for his actions and continued to have unprecedented popular approval ratings for his job as president.

In the world, he successfully dispatched peace keeping forces to war-torn Bosnia and bombed Iraq when Saddam Hussein stopped United Nations inspections for evidence of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. He became a global proponent for an expanded NATO, more open international trade, and a worldwide campaign against drug trafficking. He drew huge crowds when he traveled through South America, Europe, Russia, Africa, and China, advocating U.S. style freedom."

http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/bc42.html

Third-Party Descriptions

December 2012: "Undeterred, some 30 states stepped forward in what became a full-out competition. One official, Bill Clinton, then the governor of Arkansas, traveled to Detroit offering income tax credits and sales tax exemptions worth nearly $200 million."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/us/how-local-taxpayers-bankroll-corporations.html

May 2012: "Several cases are winding their way through the judicial system, most of which challenge the Defense of Marriage Act, which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996 and defines marriage as between one man and one woman. The myriad indignities that gay couples and their families regularly encounter are one reason many of them say they are fighting to dismantle the law. But the financial burden they also bear can be measured. And several court cases put that into stark focus."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/12/your-money/gays-path-to-equality-probably-runs-through-courts.html

March 2012: 'In 1992 the threat to Bill Clinton’s first presidential bid was a “bimbo eruption.” Note how the slur was assigned to the lubricious co-conspirator, not the lustful (and philandering) candidate.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/opinion/bruni-limbaugh-and-one-way-wantonness.html

January 2012: "On the campaign trail, Mr. Gingrich, whose spokesman did not return calls or e-mails seeking comment for this article, promotes himself as an elder Republican statesman, often reminding voters that as House speaker, he worked with a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, to balance the budget and overhaul the welfare system."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/us/politics/the-long-run-gingrich-stuck-to-caustic-path-in-ethics-battles.html

December 2011: "Under President George W. Bush, the board all but stopped using its discretion to obtain court orders against employers before the board’s own, convoluted, administrative process was completed — a power that, used fairly, is a crucial protection for workers. In 2007, in what has been called the September Massacre, the board issued rulings that made it easier for employers to block union organizing and harder for illegally fired employees to collect back pay. Democratic senators then blocked Mr. Bush from making recess appointments to the board, as President Bill Clinton had done. For 27 months, until March 2010, the board operated with only two members; in June 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that it needed at least three to issue decisions."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/17/opinion/crippling-the-right-to-organize.html

July 2011: "WASHINGTON — A few days ago, former President Bill Clinton identified a constitutional escape hatch should President Obama and Congress fail to come to terms on a deficit reduction plan before the government hits its borrowing ceiling."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/25/us/politics/25legal.html

December 2010: 'For decades, being gay was grounds for discharge, and tens of thousands of service members were forced out after their sexual identities were exposed. President Bill Clinton, who had hoped to end that ban, authorized "don't ask" as a compromise in 1993. More than 13,000 troops have been discharged under the policy.'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/18/AR2010121801729.html

April 2010: 'When President Bill Clinton signed the bill, he expressed reservations, prompted by the First Amendment, and instructed the Justice Department to limit prosecutions to “wanton cruelty to animals designed to appeal to a prurient interest in sex.”'

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/21/us/21scotus.html

September 2009: "Under both Republicans and Democrats, administrations have historically fought efforts to disclose who comes inside the gates, arguing that it would intrude on presidential prerogatives. Former President Bill Clinton resisted releasing records showing how many times Monica Lewinsky visited the White House, relenting only under pressure from the independent counsel, Kenneth W. Starr. President George W. Bush resisted releasing records of industry executives who participated in the energy task force led by Vice President Dick Cheney, ultimately losing in court."

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/the-white-house-will-disclose-visitor-logs/

December 2008: "Mr. Winters, who died in 1984 at the age of 71, becomes only the second person on record to be granted a pardon posthumously, administration officials said. In 1999, President Bill Clinton issued a pardon to Lt. Henry O. Flipper, who was the first black graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1877 and then was convicted of thievery four years later on charges that appeared racially fueled."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/24/washington/24pardons.html

December 2008: "The scramble to find missing e-mails and copy them in a digital form that the Archives can comprehend amounts to a replay of the confusion that capped the transfer of President Bill Clinton's records at the end of his administration in 2001. Then, a series of defects in the White House e-mail archiving system led to congressional subpoenas and the administration's expenditure of $12 million to recover hundreds of missing e-mails from backup tapes. The effort was not completed until after Clinton left office."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/20/AR2008122002102.html

November 2008: 'The newspaper didn't get the name of the law right, initially calling the target of its ire the Community Redevelopment Act. Its editorial blamed President Clinton for today's mess because, by encouraging minority homeownership, "he helped create the market for the risky subprime loans that he and Democrats now decry as not only greedy but 'predatory.'"'

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/mortgages/20081106-mortgage-mess-blame-a1.asp

July 2008: "Against that backdrop, Mr. Bush has made little use of his clemency powers, granting just 157 pardons and six commutations. By comparison, over eight years in office President Ronald Reagan granted clemency 409 times and Mr. Clinton 459 times. More than half of Mr. Clinton’s grants came in his final three months."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/19/us/19pardon.html

June 2008: "This is hardly the first time a Democratic candidate has faced such a challenge -- Al Gore lost white voters by 12 points in 2000, and John F. Kerry lost them by 17 points in 2004 -- but it is a significantly larger shortfall than Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton encountered in their winning campaigns."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/21/AR2008062101825.html

June 2008: "The Congressional moratorium was first enacted in 1982, and has been renewed every year since. It prohibits oil and gas leasing on most of the outer continental shelf, 3 miles to 200 miles offshore. Since 1990, it has been supplemented by the first President Bush’s executive order, which directed the Interior Department not to conduct offshore leasing or preleasing activity in areas covered by the legislative ban until 2000. In 1998, President Bill Clinton extended the offshore leasing prohibition until 2012. One person familiar with the deliberations inside the White House said that Mr. Bush was briefed on Tuesday by his top aides, including Joshua B. Bolten, the chief of staff, and that the aides recommended lifting the executive order."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/washington/18drill.html

June 2008: "The House of Representatives has voted to impeach two presidents -- Andrew Johnson, in 1868, and Bill Clinton, in 1999 -- but both were acquitted by the Senate and remained in office. No U.S. vice president has been impeached."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/11/kucinich.impeach/index.html

January 2008: 'In 1996, Congress passed, and President Bill Clinton signed, the Defense of Marriage Act, which says that no state is required to recognize a same-sex marriage that occurred in another state. States that do not recognize those marriages "would probably not divorce a same-sex couple from Massachusetts," said a 2004 handbook on marriage produced by the Massachusetts Lesbian and Gay Bar Association.'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/01/AR2008010101734.html

December 2007: "Mr. Clinton himself echoed those concerns this fall when he pledged to make public future donors if Mrs. Clinton was elected president. While disclosure is not legally required, failure to do so, Mr. Clinton said, would raise “all these questions about whether people would try to win favor with her by giving money to me.”"

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/20/us/politics/20clinton.html

November 2007: A combination of embarrassment, political necessity and internal pressure led to changes inside Wal-Mart’s headquarters. Among those weighing in was Bill Clinton, a close Wal-Mart observer from his days as governor of Arkansas; he urged Mr. Scott to look beyond the motives of his critics and focus on making the company a better employer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/business/13walmart.html

October 2007: Bill Clinton has tried to cast blame for the backlog on the Bush White House. 'Look, I'm pro-disclosure,' Clinton said in a testy exchange with reporters during a recent press conference. 'I want to open my presidential records more rapidly than the law requires and the current administration has slowed down the opening of my own records.' But White House spokesman Scott Stanzel tells NEWSWEEK the Bush White House has not blocked the release of any Clinton-era records, nor is it reviewing any. (Under the 1978 Presidential Records Act, the former president and the current president get to review White House records before they are disclosed. Either one can veto a release.) Ben Yarrow, a spokesman for Bill Clinton, says the former president was referring 'in general' to a controversial 2001 Bush executive order—recently overturned, in part, by a federal judge—that authorized more extensive layers of review from both current and former presidents before papers are released. (Hillary's campaign didn't respond to requests for comment.)

http://www.newsweek.com/id/57351

October 2007: Such resolutions long have irritated U.S.-Turkish relations, but passage of such a measure has been this close only once: In 2000, a similar resolution was pulled from the House floor after President Bill Clinton intervened.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/05/AR2007100502185.html

August 2007: Simply to find out who has donated to the ten existing presidential libraries is no easy task. In 2004, Josh Gerstein of The New York Sun went out to Little Rock and found a list of donors on a touch-screen computer on the third floor of President Clinton's $165 million library. That was the only way to get the names. Among those listed as 'Trustees,' who gave at least $1 million: the Saudi royal family and three Saudi businessmen; the deputy prime minister of Lebanon; and the governments of Dubai, Kuwait, Qatar, Brunei, and Taiwan. Foreign nationals frequently donate to presidential libraries--presumably because they are barred from giving to campaigns.

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20070827&s=editorial082707b

August 2007: [regarding celebrity visits to Africa] "'A lot of artists, including movie stars, have a genuine feeling for people who are different from them,' he says, warming to the topic. 'It's easy ... to say, 'Oh, this is not serious, they are just trying to get press.' My experience has been this is not true. Not everything every actor does, works. Just like not everything I do works. Not everything [Microsoft chairman] Bill Gates does works. But it's not true that it's not genuine. By and large, it just is.'"

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0822/p01s01-woaf.html

June 2007: In back-to-back debates in New Hampshire this week, every Democratic candidate raised his or her hand in support of repealing that policy, while not a single Republican embraced the idea. Democrats argued with striking unanimity that it was time to end the uneasy compromise that President Bill Clinton reached in 1993, after his attempt to lift the ban on gay men and lesbians in the military provoked one of the most wrenching fights of his young administration.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/08/us/politics/08gays.html

April 2007: Bill Clinton campaigned for president on the notion of expanding the federal government’s role as student loan guarantor into a more central position as the direct lender. The idea was that this would prove cheaper and simpler for students and be less costly for taxpayers because borrowers would pay interest to the federal government instead of to the lenders.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/education/15direct.html

September 2006: The party crashing began last Sunday, when former President Bill Clinton transformed an interview with Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday” into a finger-pointing tirade against what he called a “conservative hit job.” Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, quickly released a statement applauding Mr. Clinton for standing up to what he described as a right-wing, bullying propaganda machine.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/weekinreview/01manley.html

November 1999: At the time, President Clinton was grappling with the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, far-reaching legislation designed to limit securities-fraud class actions against corporate executives.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/11/15/MN18SIL.DTL

Relationships

RoleNameTypeLast Updated
Organization Head/Leader (past or present) Arkansas (State Government) Organization
Founder/Co-Founder of Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund Organization Jul 15, 2006
Student/Trainee (past or present) Owner of (partial or full, past or present) Georgetown University Organization
Student/Trainee (past or present) Oxford University/University of Oxford Organization
Organization Head/Leader (past or present) US Federal Government - Executive Branch Organization
Organization Head/Leader (past or present) Founder/Co-Founder of William J. Clinton Foundation Organization Dec 2, 2006
Student/Trainee (past or present) Yale University Organization
Friend (past or present) Zoë Baird Person Oct 7, 2004
Advised by (past or present) Michael S. Barr Esq., MPhil, Ph.D. Person Jul 24, 2009
Opponent (past or present) Rep. Robert "Bob" L. Barr Jr. ,Esq. Person Jul 15, 2008
Advised by (past or present) Paul Begala Esq. Person Oct 3, 2006
Opponent (past or present) William "Bill" J. Bennett Esq. Person Oct 4, 2005
Supervisor of (past or present) Sen. Lloyd M. Bentsen Esq. Person Jan 12, 2006
Advised by (past or present) Lanny A. Breuer Esq. Person Mar 9, 2013
Supervisor of (past or present) Appointed/Selected Ronald "Ron" H. Brown Esq. Person Sep 4, 2006
Cooperation (past or present) John Hope Bryant Person Aug 21, 2006
Successor to President George Herbert Walker Bush Person May 14, 2006
Succeeded by President George W. Bush Person May 14, 2006
Supported by (past or present) Melanie Campbell Person Nov 1, 2006
Appointed/Selected John W. Carlin Person Mar 18, 2008
Appointed/Selected Dr. Anthony P. Carnevale Ph.D. Person Mar 13, 2012
Advised by (past or present) James Carville Esq. Person Oct 3, 2006
Appointed/Selected Supervisor of (past or present) Henry Gabriel Cisneros Person Apr 9, 2007
Advised by (past or present) Richard A. Clarke Person Feb 10, 2006
Advised by (past or present) Clark M. Clifford Esq. Person Nov 21, 2005
Family Member Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton Person Jul 31, 2007
Family Member Roger Clinton Person Mar 18, 2008
Supervisor of (past or present) Sen. William S. Cohen Person Dec 23, 2005
Supervisor of (past or present) Appointed/Selected Andrew M. Cuomo Esq. Person Jun 12, 2007
Advised by (past or present) Lloyd Cutler Esq. Person Dec 12, 2008
Advised by (past or present) William B. Daley Esq. Person Jun 17, 2011
Appointed/Selected Prof. Devra Lee Davis Ph.D., MPH Person Nov 5, 2007
Advised by (past or present) Lanny J. Davis Esq. Person Aug 28, 2006
Supervisor of (past or present) Joycelyn Elders M.D., M.S. Person Jul 24, 2007
Appointed/Selected Douglas W. Elmendorf Ph.D. Person Jan 7, 2011
Opponent (past or present) Thomas "Tom" J. Fitton Person Mar 18, 2008
Appointed/Selected Laurie Flynn Person Jun 27, 2006
Supervisor of (past or present) Mark D. Gearan Person Jan 21, 2008
Advised by (past or present) David Gergen Person Dec 1, 2006
Research/Analysis Subject Prof. Steven M. Gillon Ph.D. Person Feb 19, 2012
Cooperation (past or present) Opponent (past or present) Speaker Newt Gingrich Person Feb 19, 2012
Cooperation (past or present) Financial Recipient from (past or present) Frank Giustra Person Mar 1, 2008
Friend (past or present) Supervisor of (past or present) Possible/Unclear Cooperation (past or present) Vice-President Albert "Al" Gore Jr. Person Jul 13, 2008
Friend (past or present) Brian L. Greenspun Person Dec 24, 2008
Advised by (past or present) Gary G. Grindler Esq. Person Feb 27, 2010
Representative to (past or present) Marc Grossman Person Jan 24, 2007
Appointed/Selected Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg M.D. Person Mar 4, 2010
Representative to (past or present) Appointed/Selected Anthony Stephen Harrington Person Sep 3, 2007
Representative to (past or present) Supervisor of (past or present) Richard C. Holbrooke Person Nov 21, 2005
Appointed/Selected Eric H. Holder Jr., Esq. Person Nov 1, 2006
Advised by (past or present) Friend (past or present) Webb Hubbell Person Feb 5, 2007
Opponent (past or present) Paula Jones Person Aug 1, 2005
Supervisor of (past or present) Advised by (past or present) Justice Elena Kagan Esq. Person May 18, 2010
Appointed/Selected William "Bill" Kennard Person Nov 19, 2008
Supervisor of (past or present) Dr. David Aaron Kessler M.D. Person Jul 11, 2008
Opponent (past or present) Larry Klayman Esq. Person Oct 14, 2006
Represented by (past or present) Gov. Madeleine May Kunin Person Oct 24, 2011
Financial Recipient from (past or present) Supported by (past or present) William S. Lerach Esq. Person Jun 26, 2005
Supervisor of (past or present) Arthur Levitt Jr. Person Jul 27, 2006
Friend (past or present) Monica Lewinsky Person Sep 5, 2009
Advised by (past or present) Prof. Kenneth "Ken" G. Lieberthal Ph.D. Person Mar 21, 2008
Supervisor of (past or present) Advised by (past or present) Ira C. Magaziner Person Mar 1, 2008
Advised by (past or present) Robert Malley Person Oct 20, 2006
Supported by (past or present) Dr. Terri Marsh Ph.D. Person Sep 4, 2011
Supervisor of (past or present) Mike McCurry Person Apr 28, 2010
Advised by (past or present) Thomas "Mack" F. McLarty Person Mar 11, 2005
Advised by (past or present) Abner J. Mikva Esq. Person Dec 12, 2008
Cooperation (past or present) Dick Morris Person Nov 11, 2012
Supervisor of (past or present) Hazel R. O'Leary Esq. Person Oct 23, 2008
Supervisor of (past or present) Advised by (past or present) Leon Edward Panetta Esq. Person Feb 20, 2007
Appointed/Selected Prof. Robert A. Pastor Ph.D., M.P.A. Person Jan 10, 2009
Appointed/Selected Gov. Deval Patrick Esq. Person Jun 9, 2007
Supervisor of (past or present) Advised by (past or present) John David Podesta Esq. Person Jul 22, 2004
Supervisor of (past or present) Franklin D. Raines Esq. Person Jun 17, 2011
Advised by (past or present) Bruce Reed Person Aug 13, 2005
Supervisor of (past or present) Prof. Robert B. Reich Ph.D. Person Sep 7, 2007
Possible/Unclear Marc Rich Person Aug 31, 2007
Supervisor of (past or present) Governor William "Bill" Blaine Richardson Person Dec 15, 2005
Supervisor of (past or present) Appointed/Selected Alice A. Rivlin Ph.D. Person Mar 26, 2010
Supervisor of (past or present) Dr. David Satcher M.D., Ph.D Person Jul 24, 2007
Appointed/Selected Mary L. Schapiro Esq. Person Dec 25, 2008
Advised by (past or present) Representative Joe Sestak Person Jun 12, 2010
Supervisor of (past or present) Prof. Donna E. Shalala Ph.D. Person Sep 19, 2006
Research/Analysis Subject Sally Bedell Smith Person Mar 18, 2008
Advised by (past or present) Gene B. Sperling Person Oct 19, 2006
Research/Analysis Subject Opponent (past or present) Kenneth W. Starr Esq. Person Oct 12, 2007
Supervisor of (past or present) Dean James B. Steinberg Esq. Person Jun 19, 2006
Advised by (past or present) George Stephanopoulos Person Sep 24, 2006
Advised by (past or present) Supervisor of (past or present) George John Tenet MIA Person Jun 16, 2006
Advised by (past or present) Karen A. Tramontano Person Mar 1, 2008
Appointed/Selected Prof. Joseph "Joe" A. Vail Esq. Person May 8, 2007
Supported by (past or present) Appointed/Selected Mark S. Weiner Person Mar 1, 2008
Opponent (past or present) John W. Whitehead Esq. Person Jul 17, 2006
Appointed/Selected Senator Sheldon Whitehouse Esq. Person Dec 9, 2007
Advised by (past or present) Joseph C. Wilson IV Person Jan 24, 2007

Articles and Resources

139 Articles and Resources. Go to:  [Next 20]   [End]

Date Fairness.com Resource Read it at:
Jan 25, 2013 Court Rejects Obama Move to Fill Posts

QUOTE: In a ruling that called into question nearly two centuries of presidential “recess” appointments that bypass the Senate confirmation process, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday that President Obama violated the Constitution when he installed three officials on the National Labor Relations Board a year ago.

 New York Times
Dec 01, 2012 As Companies Seek Tax Deals, Governments Pay High Price

QUOTE: states, counties and cities are giving up more than $80 billion each year to companies. The beneficiaries come from virtually every corner of the corporate world, encompassing oil and coal conglomerates, technology and entertainment companies, banks and big-box retail chains. The cost of the awards is certainly far higher....A portrait arises of mayors and governors who are desperate to create jobs, outmatched by multinational corporations and short on tools to fact-check what companies tell them....Many of the officials said they feared that companies would move jobs overseas if they did not get subsidies in the United States. Over the years, corporations have increasingly exploited that fear, creating a high-stakes bazaar where they pit local officials against one another to get the most lucrative packages.

 New York Times
May 11, 2012 Same-Sex Marriage Activists Look to Law

QUOTE: Several cases are winding their way through the judicial system, most of which challenge the Defense of Marriage Act, which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996 and defines marriage as between one man and one woman. The myriad indignities that gay couples and their families regularly encounter are one reason many of them say they are fighting to dismantle the law. But the financial burden they also bear can be measured. And several court cases put that into stark focus.

 New York Times
Mar 12, 2012 Limbaugh and One-Way Wantonness (Op-Ed)

QUOTE: When attacking a woman by questioning her sexual mores, there’s a smorgasbord of slurs, and you can take your rancid pick. Help me out here: where are the comparable nouns for men? What’s a male slut? A role model, in some cases. In others, a presidential candidate.

 New York Times
Jan 26, 2012 Gingrich Stuck to Caustic Path in Ethics Battles

QUOTE: Mr. Gingrich, Democrats and Republicans here agree, emerged as one of Washington’s most aggressive practitioners of slash-and-burn politics; many fault him for erasing whatever civility once existed in the capital. He believed, and preached, that harsh language could win elections; in 1990, the political action committee he ran, Gopac, instructed Republican candidates to learn to “speak like Newt,” and offered a list of words to describe Democrats — like decay, traitors, radical, sick, destroy, pathetic, corrupt and shame. Those same qualities are now on display as Mr. Gingrich, a Republican candidate for president, turns his caustic tongue against Republicans and Democrats alike.

 New York Times
Dec 16, 2011 Crippling the Right to Organize (Op-Ed)

QUOTE: three decades of Republican resistance to the board — an unwillingness to recognize the fundamental right of workers to band together, if they wish, to seek better pay and working conditions. But Mr. Obama is also partly to blame; in trying to install partisan stalwarts on the board, as his predecessors did, he is all but guaranteeing that the impasse will continue.

 New York Times
Jul 24, 2011 The 14th Amendment, the Debt Ceiling and a Way Out

QUOTE: former President Bill Clinton identified a constitutional escape hatch should President Obama and Congress fail to come to terms on a deficit reduction plan before the government hits its borrowing ceiling. He pointed to an obscure provision in the 14th Amendment...

 New York Times
May 19, 2011 My Take: Doomsdayers show what’s wrong with all religion

QUOTE: Religion is used by dishonest people who claim to know the way to the one thing humans want most: immortality. To combat fear of death, religious people ignore their intellect, believe the lie, and follow the preacher, usually blindly and sometimes to the point of insanity....He realized that religion is a great way to make tax-free money off the backs of well-meaning people...

 CNN (Cable News Network)
May 07, 2011 In Rarity, a Player Speaks Out for Gay Rights

QUOTE: (Sean Avery) recently recorded a video, becoming one of only a few active athletes in American team sports to voice support for gay rights, and is believed to be the first in New York to publicly advocate for same-sex marriage... Homosexual slurs remain in use to insult opponents and officials.

 New York Times
Apr 20, 2011 A Return to the Cultural Revolution?

QUOTE: This episode reveals not only the essence of a system where the individual has no rights, but also the evolution of a new brand of repression: the perverted “rule by law” instead of the “rule of law.” In other words, the application of legal loopholes to violate human rights instead of protect them.

 New York Times
Apr 17, 2011 The Middle-Class Tax Trap

QUOTE: Asking a population that’s increasingly brown and beige to accept punishing tax rates while white seniors receive roughly $3 in Medicare benefits for every dollar they paid in (the projected ratio in the 2030s) promises to polarize the country along racial as well as generational lines.

 New York Times
Apr 12, 2011 Countering the Siege

QUOTE: In Wisconsin and Ohio, newly enacted laws will cripple the bargaining rights of 200,000 members of his union and may cause many to quit… The union… is also under assault in Florida and New Jersey, where governors and lawmakers are seeking to curb bargaining rights or achieve far-reaching concessions on what many say are overly generous health benefits and pensions.

 New York Times
Apr 08, 2011 Why humanitarian wars can go so wrong

QUOTE: The big democracies usually stand idly by during the worst atrocities, including the Holocaust and the genocide in Rwanda… Western democratic leaders have powerful political incentives to do humanitarianism on the cheap… These governments were more worried about the safety of their own soldiers than about protecting Bosnian civilians.

 Washington Post
Mar 14, 2011 In Germany, Uproar Over a Doctoral Thesis

QUOTE: Guttenberg’s troubles thrust into embarrassing national relief the dirty secret that to gain such credentials, many Germans, well-connected ones anyway, apparently cut corners or worse, and universities often look the other way. The minister couldn’t admit to having farmed out his dissertation, because that’s literally a crime here, but he was generally suspected of having hired someone to write the work for him.

 New York Times
Jan 05, 2011 Microlenders, Honored With Nobel, Are Struggling

QUOTE: microloans have prompted political hostility in Bangladesh, India, Nicaragua and other developing countries....But as with other trumpeted development initiatives that have promised to lift hundreds of millions from poverty, microcredit has struggled to turn rhetoric into tangible success.

 New York Times
Dec 19, 2010 'Don't ask, don't tell' is repealed by Senate; bill awaits Obama's signing

QUOTE: The U.S. military will for the first time in history allow gays to serve openly after the Senate voted Saturday to repeal "don't ask, don't tell," the policy that has required such troops to hide their sexual identity or risk being expelled from the services. While opponents said repeal would create a battlefield distraction that could endanger troops, supporters drew parallels to the military's decision to end racial segregation in the 1950s and the admission of women to military service academies in the 1970s.

 Washington Post
Apr 20, 2010 Justices Reject Ban on Videos of Animal Cruelty

QUOTE: In a major First Amendment ruling, the Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down a federal law that made it a crime to create or sell dogfight videos and other depictions of animal cruelty....suggest that the Roberts Court is prepared to adopt a robustly libertarian view of the constitutional protection of free speech.

 New York Times
Sep 03, 2009 The White House Will Disclose Visitor Logs

QUOTE: President Obama announced on Friday that he will open up White House visitor logs on a regular basis for the first time in modern history, providing the public an unusually extensive look at who gets the opportunity to help shape American policy at the highest levels.

 New York Times
Jul 17, 2009 Who is the CIA allowed to kill? Cheney's secret assassination program may be terminated, but the U.S. is already carrying out "targeted killings"

QUOTE: The United States has had plenty of legal latitude to carry out targeted killings during the so-called war on terror -- and has been exercising that option vigorously for the past eight years.

 Salon
Mar 24, 2009 Getting the Juvenile-Justice System to Grow Up

QUOTE: As egregious as the [Pennsylvania juvenile court scandal] case is, experts say it is all too indicative of a juvenile-justice system racked with abuses yet subject to far less scrutiny than the adult system it increasingly mirrors.

 Time Magazine

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