Word: harshness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...instituting a ban on assassinations. Some restrictions were eased in the '80s, when the agency backed Afghan mujahedin fighting against the Soviets and meddled in Central America. And since 9/11, the agency has attracted a new load of critics, this time for matters such as "extraordinary renditions" and the harsh interrogation of suspected terrorists in secret overseas prisons known as black sites. Poor Langley--praise is a scarce commodity for an agency whose missions, as President George W. Bush put it, remain "secret even in success...
...bulletproof buses to Jerusalem, 15 minutes away, via a "bypass road" - one of a vast network Israel has built in the West Bank. The Katzes believe Arabs arrived in the area only in the 1970s. "People tried to build here many times and failed because the conditions were very harsh, rocky, no water," Israel Katz explains. "Jews are very stubborn people. If they want something, they won't stop. Jews started coming here and to talk of a community. That's when Arabs started coming here." (See pictures of 60 years of Israel...
Facing growing resistance to the law, some Chinese officials have turned to harsh enforcement tactics. In 2007, for instance, bureaucrats reportedly took sledgehammers to a half a dozen towns, threatening to whack holes in the homes of people who had failed to pay fines for having too many children. Elsewhere, officials were accused of forcing pregnant women without birthing permits to have abortions and jacking up the fines for families disobeying the law. As a result, riots broke out. As many as 3,000 people demonstrated in Guangxi province, some overturning cars and burning government buildings. Several people may have...
...fail-safe, a device that would prevent a backtrack later on. Fielding crafted the commutation in a way that would make it harder for Bush to revisit it in the future. Bush not only noted his "respect for the jury verdict" and the prosecutor, he also emphasized the "harsh punishment" Libby still faced, including a "forever damaged" professional reputation and the "long-lasting" consequences of a felony conviction...
...then there was the commutation of 2007. Fielding told Bush that justice had been done in commuting Libby's harsh sentence nearly two years before. Bush had no moral obligation to do more. "You've done enough," he told the President. Presidential counselor Ed Gillespie, without passing judgment on the legal merits, told Bush a pardon would have political costs: it would be seen as an about-face or a sign that he hadn't been forthright two years earlier in declaring that a commutation was the fairest result...