Word: forte
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...different -- and more serious -- problem. Although the wife of Speaker Jim Wright says she has a head for business, the House ethics committee could find little evidence that she used it in her $18,000-a-year job with Mallightco, the company founded by the Wrights and Fort Worth businessman George Mallick. Lawyers like a paper trail; they uncovered "no reports, no correspondence, no notes of telephone conversations, no investment ! analyses" by Mrs. Wright. The committee suspects Betty Wright's job of being a conduit for $145,000 in cash and gifts to the Speaker...
Anyone who thinks art reputations, once made, are imperishable, should think again -- about Guido Reni (1575-1642). The retrospective show of 51 of his paintings is on view through May 14 at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, having been seen in Bologna (in a larger form) and Los Angeles. Reni was the leading Bolognese artist of the 17th century. For nearly 200 years after his death, he was adored by a long line of connoisseurs and tourists who held him to have been angelically inspired, the greatest painter of his age: as famous...
...legalistic. Having found "reason to believe" that House rules were violated, the congressional equivalent of an indictment, the ethics committee must now judge whether there is "clear and convincing evidence" of the violations. In a couple of cases, the situation remains murky. One question, for example, is whether Fort Worth businessman George Mallick, who showered gifts on Wright and his wife, had a "direct interest" in legislation. If he did not, then Wright's acceptance of the gifts was no violation of House rules...
...with Wright. Let him be the Congressman from Fort Worth's 12th District, a place filled with the Texas legends of cattlemen and oilmen and other buccaneers who tamed a wild land. He can still be a hero there if his people choose. But Wright became Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. "In power and prestige, the Speaker can be compared only with the President and the Chief Justice of the United States," wrote Neil MacNeil in his book on the House, Forge of Democracy. "He has been the elect of the elect." That is the way Sam Rayburn...
Vowing to "fight to the last ounce of conviction and energy," Wright offered a point-by-point rebuttal of the three main charges against him. What made the nightly news, however, was his tearful defense of his wife Betty, whose salary from a Fort Worth developer is alleged to have been a way of funneling cash to the Speaker. Chin trembling, he declared, "I will damn well fight to protect her honor and integrity from any challenge, from any source, whatever the cost...