Word: plot
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Government need not prove that the antiwar priest and his five co-defendants ever approached the presidential adviser or even laid eyes on him. It must simply show that there was an agreement and that at least one conspirator took an overt step toward carrying out the alleged plot...
Dershowitz's dictum is extreme; outright repeal of conspiracy laws seems unwise. They are needed to stop dangerous plots before they are executed. But eminent scholars do support two basic reforms. For one thing, prosecutors should not be allowed to bring conspiracy charges when the plot has been carried out and the participants can be prosecuted for the very crime they conspired to commit. Second, critics like Yale's Goldstein contend that conspiracy law should be more compatible with the more explicit law of attempts. Under that doctrine, an illegal act must be close to consummation before...
...prosecution of the clerical conspiracy may yet happily produce another national holiday. After all, America has no equivalent to Guy Fawkes Day, commemorating an unsuccessful plot in 1605 to blow up the English Houses of Parliament...
...involuted politics compressed into the twelve-part series fuddled British audiences, and even Alistair Cooke, who opens each episode with a primer for Yanks, seems a mite confused. Viewers are just as well off ignoring the incomprehensible Popish Plot and other games of succession to concentrate on the sexual politics and the wigs-off look at the life-style of the 17th and 18th century British court. It is perfectly clear, for instance, why Churchill came home from Continental wars so lovelorn that he dove into bed with Sarah without taking time to remove his spurs...
Mystery writers get an undeserved dividend from critical custom, which forbids reviewers to reveal the plot or the gimmick to readers even if it is threadbare or an insult to ordinary intelligence...