Word: svengalian
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Like a ghost out of his own past, the frail Russian prince sat in a darkened Manhattan courtroom and watched a TV re-enactment of one of history's most famous assassinations-the 1916 murder of Rasputin, the lecherous monk who held Svengalian power over the Czar and Czarina. Then the lights went on, and Prince Felix Youssoupoff, the man who did the deed, now a 78-year-old Parisian, got down to business-his $1,500,000 suit against the Columbia Broadcasting System for invasion of privacy...
Touching the Nerve. Of course, there is as much legend as fact in this image of Johnson, just as there is in his image as an overpowering arm twister. Johnson has a "treatment" all right, but its effectiveness is due neither to brute force nor to Svengalian hypnosis. Johnson simply is better than anybody else at finding and touching the most sensitive nerve a Congressman has-his own self-interest...
Such is the prestige of Supreme Court clerks that some ultracautious Congressmen have accused them of Svengalian powers and have urged "security" checks on clerks to keep them from infecting the Justices with sinister notions. Contrary to legend, however, the "junior court" does not come close to running the Supreme Court. Clerks have been known to help draft an opinion, and they serve the function of conveying what their old professors think (often not much) of their new bosses' thinking. But mostly they toil away at screening certiorari petitions (appeals for review), writing memos that sum up the issues...
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