Word: branches
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...This is a big bluff, a primitive myth created by Yeltsin and his entourage. Ever since Gorbachev's reforms, despite all the suffering, Russians realize there is no way back. You should see this political struggle from a different angle. It is the executive branch that is seeking to use neo-Bolshevik methods. Entire sections of the former Communist Party Central Committee simply drifted into the President's administration, together with their archives, safes and even their telephones. Under the guise of working for a democratic President, they are simply restoring old party ways. They have no use for laws...
...JUST A WHILE, THE SIGNS WERE HOPEFUL. THE parties in Waco's six-week standoff seemed to look beyond, toward the multiboard legal chess match bound to follow a peaceful resolution. The Texas Rangers, for instance, were reportedly miffed that fbi negotiators had unintentionally caused the Branch Davidians to sanitize possible court evidence -- scrubbing away blood, sweeping up spent cartridges and reducing automatic guns back to semiautomatics. The FBI denied the report. The Davidians,too, employed a kind of spin control that implied something will remain intact to spin. David Koresh's attorneys talked about contesting some government assertions...
Judge Learned Hand once said to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, "Do justice, sir, do justice!" Holmes replied, "That is not my job. My job is to apply the law." The judiciary is not in the business of making the laws. That duty is reserved to the legislative branch. Extremists who apply a single-issue litmus test to a nominee wish to achieve ends in the judiciary which they have no hope of achieving in the legislatures of this country. This is a circumvention of democracy and must be stopped...
Unfortunately, neither Holmes nor the founders ever envisioned a legislative branch that was so fearful of vocal, well-heeled bands of extremists. And they never conceived of presidents who would play such political games with decisions that were specifically intended to be apolitical. And they never in their worst nightmares thought the American people would try to force the federal judiciary to take up the slack borne of their own disinterest in democracy...
Koresh passed. He may have a more spectacular event in mind. In a phone call to the Today show made from McLennan County jail, Brad Branch, one of 14 adults who have left the compound since the siege started, said last week that Koresh wanted a television appearance with other famous religious figures -- to engage them in a contest of biblical interpretation. "He wants to put on a challenge to all the churches and all the heads," Branch explained. "The Pope, Billy Graham, Pat Robertson...