Word: hamstrung
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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There are, to be sure, some parallels. F.D.R. was hamstrung by a congressional ban on gifts of military equipment to foreign nations. But Roosevelt put together the destroyer deal with an openness totally at odds with the actions of Oliver North and Richard Secord. The plan was debated in a full Cabinet meeting. Even though he was in the midst of a hard-fought re- election campaign, Roosevelt felt compelled to consult Wendell Willkie, his G.O.P. rival. In cooperation with Winston Churchill, the Administration constructed a legal loophole: trading the destroyers for military bases in Newfoundland, Bermuda and the West...
Chronic cheater Southern Methodist University last week was expelled from football for a season and hamstrung for years to come by the most debilitating penalties ever assessed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. For alumni payments to their players, among other excesses, the Mustangs must hibernate in 1987. They may resume in 1988, but only for seven road games, and there is to be a two-year blackout of live TV. When all the lost revenue is totted up, it may amount to a $4 million fine...
...agents have been hamstrung in their efforts to catch smuggling kingpins south of the border because many Mexican government officials are on the traffickers' payroll. When smugglers tortured and murdered DEA agent Enrique Camarena Salazar near Guadalajara last March, Mexican investigators seemed to be looking the other way. But honest members of Mexico's government are just as upset as Americans about the violence bred by smuggling. In a massacre last November, an army of 50 marijuana traffickers equipped with automatic weapons shot and killed 17 Mexican police officers and seven guides...
Egyptian authorities are only too aware of the perils facing their greatest treasures, but they have been hamstrung by lack of resources. As recently as four years ago, the Egyptian Antiquities Organization's annual budget was a mere $2 million. But since the EAO's energetic director, Ahmed Qadry, a 54- year-old Egyptologist, took over in December 1981, the budget, swelled in part by increases in museum entrance fees and from tours of antiquities, has grown dramatically; this year it is $16 million. Says Qadry: "The quantity of restoration done in the past three years has been hundreds...
...exchange of good intentions to restore U.S.-Soviet relations to something approaching an even keel. "The problem for us has been translating policy intentions into practical steps," admits a State Department official. "We have not resolved the internal impediments there yet." For their part, the Soviets are apparently hamstrung by the uncertain leadership of the aging and ailing Politburo. They seem capable of responding only tentatively to overtures from the U.S. Shultz, for example, has made no secret of his desire to visit Moscow for talks with Soviet leaders early next year. At Indira Gandhi's funeral, when Soviet...