Word: discerner
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Beneath the brass plating, the board's impact is harder to discern. Though its quarterly, two-day sessions take place in Rumsfeld's inner sanctum, the board's two full-time employees run the operation from another floor. Perle sets the agenda and briefers. The members take no votes, do not strive to reach a consensus and write no reports. Instead, they wrap up each session sharing what they have learned with Rumsfeld, who is free to ignore what he is told...
...trend? Perry thinks that may be exactly what we're witnessing, but Robert Cottrol isn't so sure. Cottrol who is professor of law at the George Washington University School of Law in Washington , D.C., specializes in criminal law and legal history. He urges caution when trying to discern macro-movements within the Court. "We can certainly distinguish three Justices - Breyer, Stevens and Ginsburg - who are deeply skeptical toward the death penalty," says Cotttrol. "But beyond that, the other six Justices vary in accordance with the legal issues raised by specific cases...
...already been pressed to explain why the FBI did not investigate Moussaoui more aggressively; on May 8, he told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that the lead Minnesota case agent "did a terrific job in pushing as hard as we possibly could with Moussaoui. But did we discern that there was a plot that would have led us to Sept. 11? No. Could we have? I doubt it." But in its most searching passage, Rowley's letter lays out the case that the FBI made fateful miscalculations by failing to see a possible connection between the Minneapolis investigation...
...more closely districts look, the less transparent the diagnoses. Beginning last year, Texas' Austin Independent School District began requiring principals to track discipline data by race to discern if any specific teachers were using a heavier hand with black students. The answer was yes, but the reasons were far from straightforward. Cornel Jones, principal of Austin's Oak Springs Elementary School, does not blame racism but chalks the problem up to "cultural misunderstandings" between his white teachers and the 97%-minority student body. One insidious source of confusion: When a teacher scolds a black or Latino student for a simple...
...that Putin was a man he could trust. After the visit, Bush aides expect the relationship between the two to grow stronger. Rice goes to great lengths to emphasize that Bush is not basing his Russia policy on his personal chemistry with Putin. But the distinction is hard to discern. After all, the next time Bush needs to talk to his friend in the Kremlin, that once mysterious former KGB agent, he will probably call Rice into the Oval Office and, using his pet nickname for the Russian leader, say, as he has in the past, "Get me Pootie-Poot...