Word: agent
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When it comes to incompetence, the campaign charge came up most specifically against Silvestre Reyes, the Hispanic from El Paso, Texas, who heads the Intelligence Committee. The Washington Post wrote that the "whispers" about Reyes center on his "intellectual firepower." He is a former border-patrol agent with a low-key manner and a hearing problem that often leads people to think he doesn't understand them. Not only does he lack the starched-shirt intimidating attitude, but his education is definitely not Ivy League: a two-year degree from El Paso Community College. The initial questions about Reyes came...
...leads to the payoff, when an agent tells the breathless owners, "I would list your house for ..." It may not be realistic (how certain can an appraiser be that a half-bath is worth exactly $20,000?). But it's brilliant TV, allowing us to indulge a little jealousy (say, of the lucky bastard who bought a Manhattan apartment for $90,000 in 1990) and vicarious money lust. And it demonstrates how the housing boom changed the way people look at their homes: as an expression of their financial savvy rather than their creative selves...
...mixed together in society as gays and straights are. Kids are also exposed constantly to an entertainment culture in which gays are not merely accepted but in some ways dominant. You rarely see a reality show without a gay cast member, while Rosie O'Donnell is a coveted free agent and Ellen DeGeneres is America's sweetheart. The notion that gays must be segregated out of the military for the sake of our national security must strike Americans younger than, say, 40 as simply weird, just as we of the previous generation find the rules of racial segregation weird...
...outside of al-Marri's wife and kids in Peoria, Illinois, prefers the last option. A citizen of Qatar, al-Marri allegedly trained at an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, palled around with Osama bin Laden and came to the U.S. on Sept. 10, 2001 as a "sleeper agent," a computer hacker bent on disrupting the American financial system. He was arrested at home three months later as a material witness in the investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks. Al-Marri denies any connection with al-Qaeda or terrorism, but constitutional issues aside, we might all rest easier...
Wilson continues in a line of recent Harvard non-seniors confronted with the option of departing school early to test their fortunes in the bushes. John Wolff and Frank Herrmann, a late-round pick and a free-agent pickup, respectively, both left Cambridge after their junior campaigns in 2005. Zak Farkes elected to return to campus in 2004 to improve his standing after being taken by his hometown Boston Red Sox in the 39th round following a 14-homer sophomore season. But Farkes was not picked again the next summer and inked a free-agent deal with...