Word: present
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Although the celebrators' attention was officially on the past, circumstances kept wrenching it back to the implacable present. Louisiana Congresswoman Lindy Boggs, resplendent in red, presided over solemn ceremonies in stately Independence Hall, while not far away some 100 supporters of the National Organization for Women demonstrated for an Equal Rights Amendment, chanting, "Hey! Hey! What do you say! Ratify the ERA!" While speakers redundantly eulogized the Constitution, Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd, alluding to disclosures of the Iran-contra abuses, cautioned against "habits of power that are inherently undemocratic and unconstitutional...
...began on the Fourth of July weekend up at Camp David with hours of reminiscing about Fred Astaire, a Reagan friend who had died two weeks before. A collection of Astaire's old movies was Nancy Reagan's birthday present to herself. The first couple were spun again from nasty reality through the golden extravaganzas of Hollywood with Swingtime and Funny Face...
...investigated like all Latin American public figures by the agencies of the most powerful country in the world, and there has not been a shred of evidence against us. If there had been any, I would not be here. Therefore the Attorney General can call anyone he wants to present evidence...
...alludes to his birth and childhood in Danzig (now Gdansk), his service as a Hitler Cub during his early adolescence, and his later authorial relations to one Oskar Matzerath, the hunchbacked, stunted hero of The Tin Drum. Having asked for and received a pet rat as a Christmas present, the speaker begins suffering nightmares in which he must endure diatribes by "the She-rat of my dreams." She complains of, among many other things, the beastly treatment the rat has had to suffer at the hands of humans, dating all the way back to its exclusion from Noah...
With the Supreme Court's creationism decision, Louisiana teachers will no longer be forced to present biblical literalism as science. However, the ruling says only that the Louisiana law violates the constitutional separation of church and state; it does not say that no one can teach scientific creationism -- and unfortunately many individual teachers...