Word: governments
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...months, Poland's Communist Party had been losing its grip on power. Beset by strikes, debt ridden, repudiated by an overwhelming majority of voters in elections in June, the regime was drained of the ability to govern. After more than 40 years in power, the old order staggered toward its demise. And yet the alternative seemed inconceivable. Never in Europe's postwar history had a Communist government handed authority over to a non-Communist opposition...
...concerned. The Republican candidate, former state attorney general Marshall Coleman, is a strict antiabortionist who says that if he wins, he will appoint only pro-lifers to health and children's services positions. His Democratic opponent, Lieutenant Governor Douglas Wilder, is seeking to become the first black elected to govern a state, and will not risk alienating moderate voters. So he has been waffling on abortion, proposing that parental consent be required for abortions on girls 18 and under and refusing to say whether he would veto any other restrictions. His indecision will not cost him pro-choice votes -- "There...
Public mores may have changed over the past three decades, but the press still finds itself trapped by the rituals that govern its coverage of scabrous gossip. Today the journalistic rules of righteous rumormongering have been liberalized, even though the results in the form of tarnished reputations often remain all too familiar. Leading newspapers and the television networks are less likely to permit the wire services to do their dirty work for them. Instead, the new, more permissive approach allows them to write and broadcast artfully crafted stories about the rumors themselves, thereby spreading calumny while piously decrying...
...international laws govern the christening of countries: the label that sticks is determined by the tastes or even the sanity of its rulers. Anti- colonialism, however, is the most common rationale for national renaming. During the 1950s and '60s, anti-colonialism swept through the newly independent nations of Africa. The Gold Coast dubbed itself Ghana, in honor of an ancient African empire that was located hundreds of miles from the modern nation. When the Belgian Congo became independent in 1960, it renamed itself the Republic of the Congo. Eleven years later, President Joseph Mobutu rechristened it the Republic of Zaire...
...anything, these few morality trials do not go nearly far enough. The real scandal in Congress is not what's illegal; it is what's legal: the blatant, shameless greasing of congressional palms that violates good sense, good taste and good government. Capitol Hill is polluted by money -- campaign money, speech-giving money, outside money from investments, and money substitutes like all-expenses-paid vacations and gifts. Fred Wertheimer, president of the public-interest lobby Common Cause, is looked upon these days as an ethics ayatullah, but he is not overstating by much when he says, "Our nation faces...