Word: czars
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...drug czar is ready for pro wrestling. He already has the name, and now he's got the prefight talk down cold. In every speech he makes in Nevada, where Bush appointee John Walters has traveled to fight an initiative that would legalize marijuana, he calls out his three sworn enemies as if he were Tupac Shakur. The czar has a problem with billionaire philanthropists George Soros, Peter Lewis and John Sperling, who have bankrolled the pro-pot movement, and he wants everyone to know he's ready for battle. At an Elks lodge meeting in Las Vegas, he ticks...
Before the new czar was appointed in December, it was the government's preference not to address the legalizers. But the pro-pot movement has gained so much ground they can't be ignored as a fringe element. Americans, it turns out, aren't conflicted in their attitude toward marijuana. They want it illegal but not really enforced. A TIME/CNN poll last week found that only 34% want pot to be totally legalized (the percentage has almost doubled since 1986). But a vast majority have become mellow about official loopholes: 80% think it's O.K. to dispense pot for medical...
That's why the czar is in Vegas, sitting in a room at the Venetian Hotel guarded by U.S. marshals. The czar, a smart, likable, earnest man who believes he can help Americans by fighting the drug war, is derided by the opposition as "Bill Bennett's Mini-Me." Indeed, he worked for Bennett under Reagan in the Department of Education and then as Bennett's deputy drug czar in the first Bush Administration. When George W. appointed him, the President told the czar to watch the movie Traffic as a way to understand the problem. The czar, who told...
Lewis, 68, former CEO of Progressive, an insurance company, doesn't despise the czar quite as much, but he has been battling him even harder. The reasons for Lewis are more straightforward. He has been referred to by colleagues as a "functional pothead." He spends half the year on a $16.5 million, 255-ft. yacht, where he smokes pot regularly; he even got arrested in New Zealand on drug charges a few years ago, he told the Plain Dealer. He is one of the main backers of the radical Nevada proposal, having given heaps of money to the Marijuana Policy...
...facilities in the U.S. house toxic chemicals, and 123 of these have enough stockpiled that a leak at any one could threaten more than a million people in surrounding neighborhoods. U.S. intelligence has evidence that terror groups like al-Qaeda have eyed chemical facilities as targets; homeland security czar Tom Ridge worries there are "security deficiencies at dozens and dozens of those" facilities...