Word: toothlessness
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...Federal Election Commission is probably the least-feared watchdog agency in Washington, which is why inside the Beltway its nickname is the "Failure to Enforce Commission." That explains why the hottest guessing game in town is figuring out how this nearly toothless body managed to do what volumes of editorial screeds, congressional bombast and urgent pleas from top FBI and Justice officials could not -- specifically, push Attorney General Janet Reno to the verge of naming a new independent counsel to investigate the financial maneuverings of the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign. The explanation, says an insider, is that an FEC audit...
That suits many congressional Democrats just fine. "We're not going to pass a meaningless and toothless bill and say it's important," vows Senator Ted Kennedy. A bloody brawl over managed care may be the Democrats' best hope for winning back the House. Which may suit the White House for its own reasons. Clinton aides say that ever since the tobacco bill went down--after the President assented to Republican amendment after Republican amendment, only to see the G.O.P. kill the whole package in the end--Clinton has lost his appetite for dealmaking. Says a Clinton strategist: "It really...
...crushing victory Tuesday in the former colony's first free elections since the handover, with more than 43 percent of the vote. Yet when the Democrats walk triumphantly back into the ruling Legco -- where they were turfed out last July -- they'll find themselves with a toothless 13 percent of the seats. Thanks to Beijing's system of "functional" constituencies, two-thirds of the assembly was chosen by fewer than a hundred thousand "professional" voters...
...after their son pleaded no contest to breaking and entering a church and drug-related charges. Their convictions were later overturned. Says Barry Krisberg, president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency in San Francisco: "Parental-responsibility law is a gray area. It's a toothless tiger. We have no research on the laws' effectiveness...
After haggling over language long into Monday evening, the U.S. tried to sound upbeat about the toothless resolution. U.N. ambassador Bill Richardson called it a "victory for the United States." President Clinton declared that "tonight's unanimous vote of the United Nations Security Council sends the clearest possible message: Iraq must make good on its commitment...