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The Clerk of the Parliaments, an official of the House of Lords, traditionally states an Anglo-Norman formula indicating the Sovereign's decision. The granting of the Royal Assent to a supply bill is indicated with the words La Reyne remercie ses bons sujets, accepte leur benevolence, et ainsi le veult, translated as "The Queen thanks her good subjects, accepts their bounty, and wills it so." For other public or private bills, the formula is simply La Reyne le veult (the Queen wills it). For personal bills, the phrase was Soit fait comme il est désiré (let it be as it is desired). The appropriate formula for withholding Assent is the euphemistic La Reyne s'avisera...
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The other possibility -- well, I call that one the Obama-as-pushover scenario. In this one, Obama will come out of it having given away the store -- having neither significantly improved the health-care system nor lowered its costs, but rather having created a new entitlement that primarily benefits the health insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital industries. So far, the glimpses we've seen from behind all those closed doors suggest the latter scenario.
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I don't know how many times a president has to fail to solve this problem before we admit that it's not a matter of presidential messaging, or toughness, or will, or strategy. FDR, Truman, Nixon, Carter and Clinton all took runs at this prize. All of them failed. And Lyndon Johnson went for Medicare and Medicaid because he was daunted by the challenge of comprehensive health-care reform.
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That Grassley has cultivated a reputation for being a sensible moderate isn't just wrong, it's ridiculous.
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You should also bring the casebook to every class: Cases and Materials on Torts (9th ed. 2008) ISBN: 978-0-7355-6923-2, by Richard A. Epstein. Please do not settle for an earlier edition as the page numbering is different, as is the selection of cases.
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The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they've given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They've become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems.
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From the Times, January 2008: First, those who don’t want to nominate Hillary Clinton because they don’t want to return to the nastiness of the 1990s — a sizable group, at least in the punditocracy — are deluding themselves. Any Democrat who makes it to the White House can expect the same treatment: an unending procession of wild charges and fake scandals, dutifully given credence by major media organizations that somehow can’t bring themselves to declare the accusations unequivocally false (at least not on Page 1). The point is that while there are valid reasons one might support Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton, the desire to avoid unpleasantness isn’t one of them.
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