Word: wrest
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...court as a whole. A poorly reasoned opinion by one Justice is hammered into something coherent and justifiable by others. During the Watergate crisis, when Burger took the court's decision on the Nixon tapes case for himself and botched it, the other Justices conspired to wrest the actual writing of the opinion away from the chief and inserted their own judgments into the final draft. True, Stewart scoffed that the final product had been edited from a "D" to a "B" by law school grading standards, but the incident showed that the court has internal checks and balances...
...battle is refreshingly straightforward. No ideological clash is involved, just a personal power struggle waged with the vim and verve for which Chicago politics is justly celebrated. Ever since Byrne, 45, defeated Mayor Michael Bilandic in a major upset in last February's primary, she has tried to wrest complete control of the machine from the old guard. She knew how. When Mayor Daley was faced with a rebellious politician, Byrne's in stincts were: "Why don't you cut him up a little bit?" Lately she has been slashing so ferociously at errant machine members that...
...often, however, the new arrivals join the jobless masses. Unemployment is officially listed at 19%; unofficial estimates put it as high as half the work force. With no other prospects, tens of thousands of Mexicans today wrest a living from the junk heap. In Mexico City, occupants of $250,000 houses in posh suburbs like Bosques de las Lomas daily witness scenes that evoke images from Dante's Inferno. Beneath a perpetual mushroom cloud of pollution rising from a huge garbage dump called Santa Fe, 1,000 pepenadores (those who pick things up) sift through a pile of rubble...
...selected as a compromise presidential candidate by liberal Czech Leader Alexander Dubcek, who hoped the choice would allay Moscow's growing doubts about Dubcek's fealty. The plan failed, and Dubcek was brutally ousted later that year. Svoboda, who retained his office until 1975, managed to wrest Dubcek and other liberal officials from Soviet custody but agreed in return to support the puppet regime of Gustav Husak, his successor...
...character herself. One moment Lulu is the innocent, pursued child; the next she ruthlessly manipulates Dr. Schon into marrying her. She is the victim but also the executioner, and her heartlessness is equalled only by her astonishment at the havoc she wreaks. To her credit, Anne Clarke manages to wrest a characterization out of this maze of contradiction, and falters only when the script itself cannot sustain her. She is able to present Lulu sympathetically, with the right mixture of helplessness and hardness...