Word: roberte
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Syndicated columnist Robert Novak died this week at 78, and I already miss him. I first talked to him 25 years ago, when I was a newly hired regional political director at the Republican National Committee. Guys like me weren't even supposed to talk with reporters, let alone bigfeet like Novak. Someone told me he was calling, and so, palms sweating, I picked up the telephone and sheepishly said hello. "I hear they hired some young whippersnapper over there," he said, "and wanted to introduce myself." Then, ending the small talk, he handed down Novak Rule...
...granted her another presidential term, she anointed a political successor, Fidel Ramos, and eased into retirement. Yet Aquino's example has not been fully followed in her homeland, where another woman President, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, has taken advantage of electoral loopholes to elongate her tenure. Far worse are the Robert Mugabes of the world, once genuine heroes who long outlived their welcomes. Aquino's rare gift was to realize that People Power was only half the battle. Equally important was knowing when to relinquish that power bestowed by the people...
...started the flurry was a comment on CNN's State of the Union by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that a government-run plan is "not the essential element" of the Obama Administration's drive to overhaul the country's health-care system. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs echoed that point on CBS's Face the Nation, where he said that Obama's "bottom line" is that there should be "choice and competition in the insurance market." Hardly a new development, considering that the White House and the President have been sounding pretty flexible for months...
Just as Americans did with their houses, casino owners borrowed way too much money to build hotels that were way too big. Economists like Yale's Robert Shiller have warned that the next big wave of failures in the U.S. recession will be in commercial real estate - and once again, Las Vegas is headlining. Even worse, the bottom fell out as casino owners were building, so a number of them couldn't replace construction loans with the financing that was once readily available to complete and open hotel-condo-casino projects. Deutsche Bank foreclosed on the $3.9 billion Cosmopolitan Hotel...
Second, after September 11, the U.N. Security Council-sponsored sanctions against Sudan that were placed because of the attempt on the life of President [Hosni] Mubarak [of Egypt] in Addis Ababa were removed. U.S. special envoys that came to us - and I recall [John] Danforth and [Robert] Zoellick - Danforth came and had an appreciated role in helping reach a peace agreement in southern Sudan. He tied the removal of Sudan [from the State Sponsors of Terror list] and the removal of sanctions and the blockade against Sudan, and normalizing relations [with the U.S.], to the signing of the peace agreement...