Word: draconianism
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...Administration slur. But few even took the time to rebuke Meese with specifics. Most forgot to point out, for example, that some 20 million Americans depend on food stamps to eat and that tens of thousands more--who don't qualify for federal assistance thanks to the Administration's draconian eligibility requirements--have been forced into soup kitchens. But it must have been party politics that prevented Democrats from giving Reagan's men credit for being so egalitarian about whom they go about alienating...
...biology and author of the acclaimed The Triumph of the Darwinian Method (1969), Ghiselin had resigned from the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley to devote more time to writing and research even before receiving his award. Says he: "I sold my house and was living in draconian parsimony. This award gave me the resources for going places and doing research. I was upset by the award at first-it was hard to deal with after coping with adversity for so many years. But I have no complaints." Indeed, by saving a portion of each monthly stipend, Ghiselin...
...sentence, the court noted that all of Helm's crimes were relatively minor, that none involved violence and that the punishment he received was the same or stiffer than that imposed in the state for far more serious crimes. The decision may prompt judges to be less draconian in sentencing small-tune offenders, but civil liberties lawyers expect no flood of petitions from current prisoners, in part because most state sentences cannot be challenged after 120 to 200 days...
...wake of these revelations, the CIA carried out a draconian house-cleaning program. Stansfield Turner, director under President Carter, cut more than 800 jobs, leaving the agency to concentrate on the task of intelligence collection and assessment. An Executive order signed by President Carter prohibited involvement in assassination attempts, and Congress passed a law requiring the Executive Branch to certify that any anticipated intelligence activity was considered "important to the national security." By the time Reagan took office, the CIA had fewer than 200 clandestine operatives, compared to the more than 2,000 in the heyday of the 1960s...
Driefontein's resistance to the draconian program had an unlikely leader in Saul Mkhize, 48, a quiet, slender accountant. He owned the land that his grandfather had settled in 1912, when 300 black families pooled their resources to purchase a 6,000-acre tract. But in 1981 the government announced that it needed all the land in Driefontein to build a dam. To show that they were serious, officials arrived to paint numbers on the heart-shaped gravestones in the Driefontein cemetery in preparation for moving the remains. Mkhize and his neighbors protested vigorously, insisting that they owned...