Word: standoffs
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Although a liberal Democrat, Milwaukee's Norquist has also taken a tough line with city workers. He was faced a few years ago with a standoff between his public-works and fire departments over the painting of firehouses. The fire department wanted the buildings painted in the summer, when its trucks could easily be kept outside, but public works said too many of its people would be on vacation. Norquist allowed the fire department to engage a private contractor to get the project done in the summer. "The good news for the public-works department is they learned from this...
...going on. Even right-wing militia wackos--folks you could always count on for antisocial behavior--are acting responsibly. Ever since Waco, it turns out, some militia leaders have been working secretly with the FBI to ease tensions between the feds and groups like the Republic of Texas, whose standoff this month ended without a conflagration. Even the once radical N.R.A. was overtaken by forces of moderation at its national convention. What's an angry white male...
Giggles aside, however, important and quite nasty skullduggery still goes on in the world. If you are Eric Truell, the young Paris bureau chief of a grand old American newspaper, you might, fizzing with nerve and careerism, sneak past police barricades and into a hostage standoff to interview the terrorists and note down their predictable, forlorn demands for social justice...
...leave the combination lean-to and trailer that was designated the "embassy compound." Thus, shortly after 4 p.m. on Saturday, with barely the pretense of extraterritoriality, Rick McLaren, self-declared "ambassador, consul-general and chief foreign legal officer" of the separatist Republic of Texas, ended his 6 1/2-day standoff against America, laid down 10 rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and agreed to a cease-fire. In a nod to protocol, the plenipotentiaries who negotiated the agreement--otherwise known as the Texas Rangers--watched as the separatists ceremonially arranged their arms in a circle...
...Midway through the almost comic siege, reporters joked that Governor George W. Bush might have to turn into Governor Fujimori--a reference to the Peruvian President who had to use force to end the four-month siege of the Japanese embassy in Lima. Officials took every precaution in the standoff, not least because Texas is the place that saw the Waco conflagration. (Earlier in the week, the Denver trial of Timothy McVeigh, who was allegedly motivated by Waco, was placed under tighter security after three men with ties to the Branch Davidians were arrested in a raid in Colorado...