Word: hot-button
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Something in the Baton Rouge air must make politicians go partway round the bend. Before their latest session ended, the state legislators pressed every hot-button issue within reach. They not only passed the strictest anti- abortion law adopted by any state since Roe v. Wade but almost passed a measure to encourage the beating of flag burners by reducing the penalty to a $25 fine. Then they approved a law requiring record companies to place warning labels on songs that promote deviant sex, violence, drug abuse, suicide, devil worship or incest...
...appeal to the progressive voters who gave the state a reputation for moderation by electing such Democrats as Terry Sanford, first as a forward-looking Governor and in 1986 as North Carolina's other Senator. The tart-tongued Helms, on the other hand, has won three terms by pushing hot-button hard-right issues -- pornography, school prayer, busing -- among whites in more rural parts of the state. To have a shot at Helms, local experts say, Gantt will need to add at least 40% of the state's estimated 2.5 million white voters to his strong support among some...
Part of the courtship involves paying lip service to hot-button right-wing issues like abortion, tuition tax credits and the flag, though Bush has done little or nothing to advance those causes. For example, in June he called for a constitutional amendment to reverse the Supreme Court's ruling that flag burning is legal. But last week, after the Senate passed anti-flag-burning legislation as part of a plan for derailing any change in the Constitution, the White House reiterated its preference for an amendment but stopped short of threatening a veto. In late September Bush broke weeks...
...result, child care has become a hot-button political issue, and both Democrats and Republicans are scrambling to cater to the concerns of working parents. Last week the Senate approved an ambitious Democratic plan, dubbed the Act for Better Child Care, or ABC, that would vastly expand the Federal Government's role, at a cost of $8.75 billion over the next five years. The bill would authorize $1.75 billion each year to help low-income parents pay for child care. Parents would receive 70% of the funds directly; the remaining 30% would go to the states to expand day-care...
...find out "exactly what the German position is" on a U.S. plan for upgrading 88 Lance nuclear missiles (range: 80 miles), most of them based in West Germany, with new longer-range weapons. That is a touchy subject for West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Modernization has become a hot-button issue in German politics, and Kohl would like to postpone modernizing the weapons until after national elections in December 1990. Already Kohl's Christian Democrats have suffered thrashings in six recent local elections, and his government might not survive an unpopular pledge to accept new nuclear weapons. Bush will...