...icans is waiting to deliver on a much-hyped manifesto for change. To top it off, the president’s prospects for reelection aren’t looking particularly promising either. That this could be said of two Presidents—Bill Clinton in 1994 and Barack Obama in 2010—says two things. Mark Twain was probably right when he said that history doesn’t repeat itself; it rhymes. But given the points of similarity that do exist, Obama should expect the worst and mak...
...nd intermediate cartridges. For all intents and purposes, the term assault rifle delineates a very specific type of firearm. Assault weapons, however, are not assault rifles. The first attempt to regulate assault weapons, the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, did not legally affect machine guns, assault rifles, or indeed any fully automatic weapons for that matter. These weapons, being fully automatic, have been regulated since 1934 when Congress enacted...
...to nuclear fallout. The Marshallese were divided into two groups (“exposed” and “control”) to observe the short- and long-term effects of the nuclear contamination. The 1954 study was highly secretive and only declassified in 1994, in order to avoid negative public backlash. The US response to the nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands fit with a general pattern of denial that was seen in the aftermath of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear events....
...“New Jim Crow.” A study published in 2005 by The Sentencing Project found little evidence that increasing incarceration rates decreases crime. In 1972, the United States incarcerated approximately 330,000 people. From 1970 to 1994, the American crime rate remained relatively consistent. Since 1994, the United States has continued to expand its prison population, not because crime has increased, but because of longer sentences, harsher penalties,...
...heir mother country or independence. War erupted in 1988 and, in the ensuing six years, an estimated thirty thousand were killed and over one million were forced to flee their homes. A Russian brokered ceasefire was signed in 1994, though the conflict was never formally ended and remains “frozen.” The international community still considers N-K to be a part of Azerbaijan, though the country exercises almost no control over the region, which has i...
...Golden Horn, today synonymous with its local soccer stadium. The neighborhood is also the childhood home of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the clerically educated, football playing, and generally brash politician who in 1994 jumpstarted his political career by taking the reigns of this sprawling city at the confluence of Eastern and Western culture. To many forward-thinkers in the Middle East, Erdoğan’s time in both municipal and national g...
...t-Cold War imperialist effort to influence elections abroad. As mentioned by Professor Taylor Boas, political consultants can and did at times serve the same purposes as covert CIA operations and coups during the Cold War. In 1994, for instance, Sawyer Miller received money from the US government to advance Russia’s privatization programs and, according to the Wall Street Journal, pocketed 50 to 90 percent of the aid contract. Apart from this sto...
...bling still is their ability to convince their allies to follow suit and declare economic warfare over what amounts to two rocks in the South Atlantic and ignore repeated overtures for mediation. The Argentine Constitution of 1994 states that the “recovery of said territories [the Falklands] and the full exercise of sovereignty, respectful of the way of life of their inhabitants and according to the principles of international law.” Maybe d...
...e killer set up trip wires in his apartment to blow up responding police officers, and yet it doesn’t really mean anything. The media response was theatre, a show put on for a few days, with real emotion, but no substance. In 1994, a shooting in Colorado sparked a slew of gun legislation. After Columbine, many states passed gun control laws. When 33 people died at Virginia Tech, legislation requiring more extensive background checks was put in pl...
photo from Wikimedia Commons These days, in Italy, the courts dominate the news. Six scientists (and one government official) were convicted of manslaughter on October 22 for failing to predict correctly the 2009 L’Aquila earthquakes. They may face up to six years in jail and pay damages of more than $10 million. Silvio Berlusconi, the world-famous and scandalous Italian prime minister who served from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006, and 2006 to 200...
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