Word: draconian
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...tapped by the leading Millennium Democratic Party as the candidate to succeed Kim, is committed to engagement. A self-taught lawyer who never attended university, Roh acquired his liberal credentials by defending students and workers on strike who ran foul of the country's draconian national securities law. A card-carrying idealist, he once suggested that U.S. troops be ejected from Korean soil...
...trying to control and block potential candidates’ interaction with the press, the commission’s draconian stance has in effect prevented candidates who do not currently hold council office from freely communicating with the student body. While the effort to confine the actual campaigning to a manageable time frame is a reasonable goal, forcing students to keep their intentions secret before an arbitrary date is ridiculous. In neither federal, state, nor municipal elections are candidates ever barred from announcing their intentions. While it is up to the candidates and their campaigns to make the strategic decisions about...
...services, which were notoriously abusive under longtime dictator Suharto. A Western diplomat in Jakarta says if Megawati were to hand law-enforcement authorities too much power, "moderates of all stripes would make common cause against her out of fear that it marked the beginning of a return to the draconian methods of the Suharto days." Says Wolfowitz: "Americans need to understand we're dealing with a country that only recently became free after 50 years of dictatorship. Indonesians are leery about giving too much authority to the police." Whatever the causes, says Rohan Gunaratna, an expert on al-Qaeda...
...prevented his friends from calling the proper medical help when he needed it. According to a story in the New York Times earlier this month, a high school beer party in Harrison, New York resulted in the death of 17-year-old Rob Viscome, partially because of draconian drinking laws. After a 16-year-old punched him and his head hit the stone patio, Viscome’s friends refused to call 911 because they feared punishment. By the time Viscome made it to the hospital, it was too late to save...
South Dakota voters are currently considering whether to allow individual juries to acquit criminal defendants accused of violating laws deemed “misguided or draconian.” This power, known as jury nullification, would base criminal convictions on juries’ judgment not only on the facts of a case, but on the soundness of the law broken. Under the proposed Amendment A, to be voted on during the November elections in South Dakota, individual defendants could confess their guilt but ask for acquittal by arguing that the laws violated were misguided. Juries would then decide whether...