Word: reformer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...country will break the ominous century-cycle next year and make 2010 "a moment of peaceful transformation." Last month, he predicted next year will see "Mexico on a different trajectory toward development and progress." Calderón tried to get the ball rolling this month with a major political reform proposal that would allow re-election for Mexican office holders like mayors and legislators, a change he insists will give voters more power. It would still limit Presidents to one six-year term; but the move is significant, especially on the eve of 2010, because the ban on re-election...
...coagulation of these extremes - a united front against the turgid ceremonies of legislative democracy, like compromise, and disdain for the politician most responsible for nudging our snarled checks and balances toward action, Barack Obama. The issue that has brought them together is opposition to the Senate's health care-reform bill, which makes some sense on the right, but none at all on the left. (See the 5 things that the House and Senate have to iron out on health care...
...Actually, both the left and right opponents of health care reform are drinking from the same watercooler. Activists on both sides - consulting their focus groups, no doubt - found that the message that most roused their troops was the same: a government takeover of health care. The tidbit in the plan that came closest to embodying that message was a worthy but relatively minor provision called the public option, which would offer something like Medicare as one of a menu of choices for several million Americans not receiving health insurance from their employers. For the right, this was socialism...
...international furor over China's execution of a British man convicted of heroin-trafficking has drawn attention to the country's harsh criminal-justice system. The execution has sparked a diplomatic row between China and the U.K., but global condemnation will do little to provoke reform. China is the world leader in the use of the death penalty - Amnesty International documented some 1,700 judicial killings in China last year, but the true total could be as much as three times that - and Beijing makes no apologies for its hard line. In a statement issued after the execution, a Chinese...
...declared that as a result of "our campaign's growing momentum, voters are starting to realize that there are vast differences between me and Charlie Crist on a number of important issues." But Crist ads will question that assertion - as well as Rubio's record on matters like immigration reform and cap-and-trade policies to limit companies' greenhouse-gas emissions, issues where Rubio, while Florida's House Speaker, didn't exactly follow the Rush Limbaugh path. (He has blasted Crist for supporting cap-and-trade, for example, but voted for it himself last year, and both he and Crist...