Tag: English auxiliaries and contractions

He was just about to pack up his political aspirations when he got something he wasn't completely expecting -- a bid to run in a different race he hadn't even entered. Washburne received enough write-in votes Tuesday, in the same Democratic primary in which he actually ran, to win the party's nomination for mayor in his hometown of Mendham Borough. "I really haven't found an identical situation," the attorney, Fred Semrau, said on Thursday. No Democrats had filed to run for mayor in the primary, and Washburne was asked whether he would accept the nomination if enough voters wrote in his name. Washburne said he would accept, though he hadn't given up on winning the Congressional primary. Sherrill as expected cruised to victory on Tuesday, getting more than 77 percent of the vote in a five-candidate field. Ordinarily, Washburne's candidacy would have been quickly certified, except for the lack of an obvious comparable precedent for a candidate running in a federal primary and simultaneously winning a municipal race. Even if he gets on the ballot, Washburne's chances of winning the race for mayor are not much better than his prospects were against Sherrill. Washburne's national connections are in the running community and he campaigned under the slogan, "Running for Congress." He is president of the U.S Running Streak Association, an organization whose members commit to running at least a mile per day, every day.

Donald Trump said on Friday that he may grant a posthumous pardon to Muhammad Ali, seemingly unaware that the great boxer’s conviction was overturned by the supreme court 47 years ago. Departing for the G7 summit in Canada, the president told reporters at the White House he was looking at “thousands of names” of people who could be granted clemency. He received a draft-evasion conviction in 1967 and was stripped of his world heavyweight title. “He was, look, he was not very popular then, certainly his memory is popular now,” Trump said. “I’m thinking about that very seriously, and some others.” Ali was sentenced to five years in prison but he appealed and in 1971 the supreme court overturned his conviction, finding that the justice department improperly told the draft board Ali’s stance was not motivated by his religious beliefs as a Muslim. Trump’s gesture is therefore meaningless. Ali’s lawyer, Ron Tweel, said: “We appreciate President Trump’s sentiment, but a pardon is unnecessary. Earlier this week, he also commuted the life sentence of a woman whose cause was championed by Kim Kardashian West. “The power to pardon is a beautiful thing,” Trump told reporters. “I want to do people who are unfairly treated like Alice [Marie Johnson].” Trump has also floated a possible pardon for TV personality Martha Stewart and potentially commuting the sentence of former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted on corruption charges in 2011.

Conte will be the figurehead of the uneasy coalition between the country's populist parties, the Five Star Movement and the Lega Nord. Italy is set to name Giuseppe Conte, a relatively unknown law professor with hardly any political experience, as its next prime minister, according to Italian media reports. The appointment could be presented to Italy's president, Sergio Mattarella, as early as Monday. Italy's political system is unusual in that often, particularly during times of coalition government, its prime minister is not the leader of a political party but an appointed technocrat, generally put in place as a compromise between coalition partners. Conte's likely appointment fits that mold, with neither Five Star nor the Lega keen to have a leader appointed from the ranks of its partner's party. Conte — who lectures in public-administration law at the University of Florence and the University of Bologna — is by no stretch a politician. In a profile in Corriere Della Sera, one of the country's most prominent newspapers, it is said that while he has a "very long curriculum vitae," he also does not "have a clue about politics." An uneasy alliance Though neither Luigi Di Maio, Five Star's leader, nor Matteo Salvini, the head of the Lega Nord, has announced the name of his prime ministerial choice, Salvini said on Sunday that a candidate had been chosen. "It won't be me, nor Di Maio," he added. Five Star and Lega Nord are by no means natural bedfellows, but they have settled on a series of compromises that will allow them to govern after Five Star — which is the biggest single party — ruled out working with any of Italy's more established political parties.

"Tribal" politics over President Donald Trump threatens to polarize Congress to the point that it can't solve the nation's problems, U.S. Sen. Bob Corker says. But not so much anymore," Corker said. "Republicans used to believe in fair free trade, and, really, Republican congressional people still do. The Republican base out there, which has changed a lot since the election, all they want to know is, are you a Trumper? "And I would guess on the Democratic side they want to know one thing, are you doing everything you can to hurt the president?" But the hyped-up political bases of both parties are making it tough to do the people's business, Corker said. What takes courage is to burn your political capital to solve the nation's problems. If you begin to compromise our principles just to get along, what good is that? The question is whether the president's campaign had anything to do with it. "My sense is they had a lot of people doing things where they weren't using their head, but I'm not sure that it went further than that.