Word: even
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...repeat that: even without a superpower rival like the Soviet Union - with its arsenals of nuclear weapons, fleets of tanks and armadas of warships, all manned by 10-foot-tall Red Army troops - the U.S. is now spending more preparing for war against, well, who knows, than we spent readying to fight Moscow. And the Obama Administration has made it clear that defense spending is going to continue to increase, even as fiscal pressures - for bailouts, health care, infrastructure - inexorably mount...
...sure, it would be difficult to hack away at the funds needed to wage the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet military spending today is 41% more than it was in 1998, not even counting the billions earmarked for the wars. The cost of a standing military, after eliminating inflation's impact, has soared to $459,000 per trooper - 78% higher than during President Reagan's defense buildup, 95% higher than in 1989 and three times the Vietnam-era average, according to a recent study by the liberal-leaning Project on Defense Alternatives. (See video of soldiers in Iraq...
...struck a deal with pro-life Democrat Bart Stupak to allow a vote on his amendment that would prohibit plans that cover abortion in an insurance exchange from receiving federal subsidies. The House voted to approve the amendment's tough language, which became part of the final bill. Even so, heading into the health summit, no one - from the White House on down - knows whether abortion will still be an obstacle to passing a reform bill. (See the top 10 players in health care reform...
Congress and the President have broad powers to find and fix what ails government. Congress has oversight and investigative authority granted implicitly by the Constitution and explicitly by statute. Pretty much every agency in the executive branch, even top-secret ones, has an inspector general charged with rooting out fraud, waste and abuse. And whole organizations exist to pursue and expose noncriminal bad behavior in government...
This isn't anything new for the Brotherhood. The group has been banned since 1954, but its popularity - derived mainly through Islamic charity work, calls for political reform and appeals to Muslim religiosity - makes it especially threatening to the authoritarian regime of President Hosni Mubarak. Even so, the Brotherhood has been tolerated to varying degrees over the years, the state having found a way to keep its members in check through a system of arbitrary arrests and detentions that rights groups say are illegal under international law. "It's a repeated situation," says Taha Ali, a political analyst...