Word: almost
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...doubt that President Obama has changed American politics, consider that we are about to have the first Supreme Court confirmation hearing in almost a quarter-century that does not revolve, in one way or another, around Roe v. Wade. The appeals-court judge Sonia Sotomayor has ruled on just three cases that dealt, indirectly, with abortion. She has written a lot about racial preferences, though. That is one reason the country is set to have a knock-down, drag-out fight over affirmative action instead...
Affirmative action has been a revolution in American rights and in our ideas of citizenship. To judge from almost all polls and referendums over the past few decades, it is reliably unpopular. Judges prop it up. Since the election of the first black President, it has been a shoe waiting to drop. The rationale it rests on - that minorities are cut off from fair access to positions of influence in society - has been undermined, to put it mildly. Elevating a hard-line defender of affirmative action is thus a provocation in a way that it would not have been...
...Tricks of the Trade Each interrogator has his own idea of how to run an interrogation. Soufan likes to research his captive as thoroughly as possible before entering the interrogation room. "If you can get them to think you know almost everything to know about them - their families, their friends, their movements - then you've got an advantage," he says. "Because then they're thinking, 'Well, this guy already knows so much, there's no point in resisting ... I might as well tell him everything.'" When Abu Zubaydah tried to conceal his identity after his capture, Soufan stunned...
...though, there are reasons Brown - only two years into his premiership - could yet cling on. Rebel MPs have so far shown little sign of uniting around a single replacement for Brown. Even if they manage to, choosing a second successive unelected Prime Minister would make an immediate general election almost inevitable. - Adam Smith / London
...difficult to speak of winners in France's European parliamentary election on Sunday, given that almost 60% of French adults voted with their derrières by staying at home and avoiding the democratic process altogether. But those who did turn up rewarded two unlikely and rival contestants: the ruling party of France's unpopular President, Nicolas Sarkozy, and a union of traditionally marginal environmental parties now challenging the Socialists for leadership of the nation's leftist opposition...