tenced the Garfield County rancher to 10 years in jail (the maximum penalty) for using violence for political ends.The following day, four armed men were arrested when they entered the Musselshell County Courthouse and tried to file papers protesting the seizure of Rodney Skurdal's house by the Internal Revenue Service.Messrs. Stanton and Skurdal belong to a secessionist group, the ''Garfield County Freemen,'' whose theories of government include their right not to obey the current one. Skurdal is hiding from a warrant for criminal syndicalism, the terrorism statute.Garfield County is about the size of Connecticut, with a mere 600 households and per capita income of $11,000. Only 14 percent of county residents subscribe to the newspaper. Isolated geographically and economically, it is fertile ground for paranoia.Three other men, waiting in cars outside the Musselshell Courthouse, were also arrested. They had semiautomatic handguns, six assault rifles, video gear, and $80,000 in cash, gold, and silver in their car
Ugg Bailey Button Triplet Boots usters are more often threatened than waged. But in a ninehour filibuster over judicial nominations on Nov. 19, 2003, Democratic leader Harry Reid discoursed on the virtues of wooden matches and read chapters from his own book about his hometown, Searchlight: the Camp that Didn't Fail.Behind the drama are serious stakes in the capacity of a minority to delay or block a vote. Where some see a protection of minority rights and of the Senate's heritage as a deliberative body, the majority party sometimes sees a hijacking of democracy. Obstruction is a weapon, and like all weapons it is dangerous, wrote Franklin Burdette in Filibustering in the Senate, a 1940 book. Yet in the lives of nations as of men, he added, there are times when weapons are a safeguard.Nor is there much partisan consistency in how the filibuster has come to be viewed. For decades, northern liberals decried the filibuster as the key obstacle to civil rights legislation. South Carolina Sen. John C. Calhoun used it to defend slavery in 1841. Sen. S
Converse New individuals, the judiciary has also brought the conduct of India's top corruption watchdog, the CBI, under greater scrutiny.According to attorney K. Madhavan, the courts have ensured that the CBI is less prone to political pressure than ever, despite the fact that it is directly accountable to the prime minister.You can't fault the courts for what they are doing, says Mr. Madhavan, who quit the CBI over political interference in his investigations into a 1992 securities scam. And in any event the government brought this upon itself by its own conduct, by intervening too much and influencing the CBI's investigations.Former CBI joint director Shantonu Sen agrees. All this would not have happened without judicial activism, he says. The system seems to be working. It is not a closed society that we live in. You cannot indulge in corruption and cover your tracks all the time.For the Indian public, which for years had resigned itself to political coverups every time a new corruption scandal surfaced, the last 10 months
Ugg Bailey Button Boots 5803 effort, Gates pledged an astounding $100 million to various government agencies and charity groups, more than many developed countries give to AIDS research and treatment.The other purpose is much more complex. Gates pledged some $400 million for basic education and computer classes, and for enhanced computer systems and training for Indian government offices. One piece of that package, called Project Shiksha, aims to train 80,000 teachers and 3.5 million students at public schools to use computer software Microsoft products, of course.On the surface, this looks like good corporate citizenship. Gates himself said, My philosophy has always been to give back to society what you get from it. But analysts say that Microsoft's donations also could serve to put pressure on the Indian government, which recently decided to abandon Microsoft products for cheaper Linuxbased software.To avoid the Gates fourday juggernaut, one would probably have to stay in a faroff village. Even those readers of Indian newspapers who skip
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