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...years ago this month - Democratic Representative Lenore Sullivan of Missouri successfully championed a legislative amendment to launch a pilot food-stamp program to be run by the Agriculture Department. While the Eisenhower Administration showed little interest in the idea, President Kennedy's election the following year marked a major turning point: moved by the abject poverty he witnessed on the campaign trail in West Virginia, Kennedy authorized a three-year food-stamp program beginning in 1961. Following in McFiggin's footsteps, Mr. and Mrs. Alderson Muncy of Paynesville, W.Va., inaugurated the Kennedy-era program, buying a can of pork...
...major change to the program came in 1977, when Congress stopped requiring payment for food stamps and distributed them to all recipients for free (the price had steadily decreased over time, until it represented just a fraction of the face value). The move dismayed a number of observers, who had supported the program as a means to help the poor help themselves, not as a direct government handout (the Agriculture Department had insisted on selling food stamps for fear of undermining the dignity of recipients). The policy created a backlash - some middle-class shoppers indignantly complained that food-stamp users...
...were to pick the least likely Senator to help Barack Obama win a major legislative victory, Alabama's Richard Shelby, the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, would be a fine choice. Once a "boll weevil" Democratic opponent of Bill Clinton, Shelby became a Republican in November 1994, helping the GOP cement its hold on the Senate at a crucial moment. He has had a near perfect record of conservatism on social and foreign-policy issues since then. The tall, drawling former prosecutor questioned Obama's citizenship this past February, and when Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner first unveiled...
Still, Shelby has his reasons for wanting a bill to fix the financial sector, and they start with pride. "At 75 years old this is probably the last major thing he'll participate in," says one senior GOP Senate staffer. Democrats in the Administration and on Capitol Hill say they believe Shelby is negotiating in good faith. (Read "Geithner Faces Questions as He Prepares to Roll Out Toxic-Asset Plan...
...related but deeper fear is that Iran has the means to make life exceedingly unpleasant for Pakistan should it side with Tehran's enemies. Already struggling with a militant campaign that has ravaged the northwest and the tribal areas and terrorized major cities, Pakistan, analysts say, can ill-afford a revival of sectarian violence that plagued the country during the 1980s, when Saudi-backed Sunni militant groups clashed with Iranian-backed Shi'ite ones as part of a regional proxy war. Says Ayesha Siddiqa, an independent security analyst: "It isn't just Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan where Iran can create...