Word: causticity
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Ageless, hip, erudite, caustic, lovable, tough and hypnotic: Jerry Wexler, who died Aug. 15 at 91, was a one-of-a-kind great man of music. Before helping shape the sound of the second half of the 20th century, he was the Billboard reporter who coined rhythm and blues to replace the category "race music" on the magazine's charts. With Ahmet Ertegun, he co-piloted Atlantic Records, once saying the label made "black music for black adults." But that underestimated the impact of the classics he produced--Aretha Franklin's Respect, Percy Sledge's When a Man Loves...
...President to override congressional oversight in time of war. A 2003 memo by John Yoo, a former Justice Department official, which was declassified last week, went so far as to discuss the potential of the President to approve the maiming, drugging or applying "scalding water, corrosive acid or caustic substance" on detainees...
...failure of oversight that allowed the Abandoned Chemical Weapons Disposal Corp. (ACWDC) to misappropriate approximately 100 million yen ($1 million) of public funds. And they question the government's commitment to removing the weapons, which remain lethal more than 60 years after the war. Cleaning up these caustic reminders of Japanese aggression in China would be a practical way for Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda to act on his stated desire to improve relations between the two countries. Yet, while a Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson said that the cleanup "is extremely important for improving trust," the government...
...Lincoln navigated the ensuing national convulsion, attempting to reconcile the obstreperous demands of political and military expediency, constitutional writ and, above all, his own galloping moral intelligence, though in places Miller's reverence for his subject borders on personal-ad territory (and he was tall! And funny!). A more caustic and fallible Lincoln appears in Lincoln and Douglas, which is surprisingly rip-roaring for a book about a series of debates in an Illinois Senate campaign. Lincoln makes fun of Stephen Douglas' height (5 ft. 4 in., or 1.63 m) and panders to his racist constituency. But he was always...
...ever accused Hollywood of having guts. American movies have routinely made mock of priests and ministers, but in R-rated comedies and miniature indie dramas. Yet when the notion is raised of being faithful to a popular fantasy series that takes a caustic view of organized religion, the moguls become as cautious and pious as Republican presidential candidates...