Word: burnish
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...especially at public universities. Congress should go full bore on this one. True, football has always enjoyed inordinately privileged status on most large campuses. To their credit, the programs galvanize a school's sense of community and, in cases like Bryant's, often showcase coaches as exemplary teachers who burnish instead of blemish a school's academic aura. But that's precisely the sin of Alabama and other schools: by morphing the college coach from Knute Rockne into Jack Welch, they're once and for all admitting that when it comes to building their self-esteem as institutions of higher...
...time for a change." Last week police interviewed his political gatekeeper Ruth Turner about whether Labour sold peerages to big donors, part of an inquiry that has led to the arrest of three people (all deny wrongdoing). But Blair clings to 10 Downing Street, convinced he can still burnish his legacy with new domestic initiatives, as well as a plunge into Middle East peacemaking that leaves even British diplomats dubious about what leverage he can bring to bear. As a result, Labour floats in a semi-leaderless limbo - the ideal conditions for conspiracies against the heir apparent, Chancellor...
...Justice Department, it's the need to burnish the Bush Administration's image among its political base, the Christian right. In recent years, the department has rarely participated in civil rights cases, except when pro-life and other conservative causes were at issue. Its position that the school district's "censorship was unconstitutional" squares with that record...
...Palestinians of Gaza, who have been under siege by the Israelis for two weeks since they seized an Israeli captive of their own. Moderate Arab governments like Egypt and Jordan appear unable to ease the plight of the Palestinians, and Hizballah may be helping its main sponsor, Iran, burnish its claims to be standing up to Israel and the U.S. on behalf of the whole region. The movement gained a kind of pan-Arab hero status in 2000, when Israel quit Lebanon and Hizballah was acclaimed as the only Arab army ever to have forced an Israeli retreat...
...because he trusts her totally," says a presidential adviser. Rice appears to have won some internal arguments--such as getting Bush to offer conditional direct talks to Iran and calling for the closure of Gitmo--but she has yet to pull off any major diplomatic breakthrough that could burnish the Bush legacy. And neoconservative allies of Bush blast Rice for pursuing diplomacy for its own sake. "When you are bereft of options, you pursue process and call it progress," says Danielle Pletka, a vice president of the American Enterprise Institute...