Word: commoner
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...blatant, shameless greasing of congressional palms that violates good sense, good taste and good government. Capitol Hill is polluted by money -- campaign money, speech-giving money, outside money from investments, and money substitutes like all-expenses-paid vacations and gifts. Fred Wertheimer, president of the public-interest lobby Common Cause, is looked upon these days as an ethics ayatullah, but he is not overstating by much when he says, "Our nation faces a crisis in the way we govern ourselves. Our nation's capital is addicted to special-interest influence money. Members of Congress are living professionally and personally...
...rule is offset by a loophole that allows legislators to accept airfare, hotel rooms and meals if attending a legislative conference, visiting a company plant or taking part in a celebrity golf or tennis tournament. A spouse or an aide can go along; children somehow slip in. Common Cause found that in 1987 Congressmen took eleven years' worth of free vacations courtesy of this proviso...
Sexually explicit movies may lead some young men to reaffirm the all-too- common male attitude that when a woman says no she really means yes. Many experts believe that such films may be a contributing factor in date rape, one of the most common adolescent sexual crimes. "Teenagers are only doing what they are told to do," says sociologist Gail Dines-Levy of Boston's Wheelock College. "They are being conformists, not deviants...
...such latent infections has been uncertain. Now a study has shown that some people may carry the AIDS virus for three years or longer without its being detected by widely used antibody screening tests. If the results are confirmed, they could mean that latent AIDS infection is more common than was once believed...
...drew Dynasty's Linda Evans to Olympic, Wash. More recently, Dennis Weaver, Michael Landon and Robert Downey Jr. voiced their protest against offshore oil drilling at a rally in downtown L.A. And last weekend a gross of glitterati -- Diana Ross, Elton John, Sigourney Weaver -- joined world leaders in Our Common Future, a five-hour global telecast...