Sentence examples for a flimsy pretext from inspiring English sources

Perhaps Ms. Bennett was worried that no one would listen to the Archbishop of Canterbury's long speech, providing Henry with a flimsy pretext to go to war.

Instead, with computers as a flimsy pretext, many seemed to take pleasure in frightening themselves to death over a coming calamity.

Alvi A. Karimov, a spokesman for Kadyrov, said he believed the licensing issue was a flimsy pretext for scratching a horse who was simply too good.

The whole argument about health, then, is a flimsy pretext for signalling the SNP's willingness – eagerness even – to get stuck in to the parliamentary powerplay that will follow the indecisive election that's now widely predicted for May.

The French commanding general, Latrille de Lorencez, concocted a flimsy pretext for breaking a bilateral treaty requiring the French to return to Veracruz in the event of hostilities, and instead led his troops west toward the capital.

But in 1804, when Napoleon stunned France with the unfair trial and hasty execution of the Duke d'Enghien on a flimsy pretext of conspiracy, Chateaubriand resigned his post in protest.

By creating a patently flimsy pretext for a holiday hike, they said, they are also ensuring that the beach walk remains, in its own way, innocent.

Texas's voter-identification law, plainly designed to prevent young, poor, and minority voters (i.e., Democrats) from casting ballots, is based on a similarly flimsy pretext of combating the nonexistent problem of in-person voter fraud.

Here is a man who, on the flimsy pretext of a trumpery jurisdictional dispute, is handing over years' worth of data that personally identifies thousands of people who have nothing to do with this case.

"This is a controversy only for those looking for the most flimsy pretext for a controversy and a kind of cut-and-paste thing that isn't even journalism," Costas told O'Reilly.

He was never accused of any specific crime by the Soviet authorities, and never took part in formal resistance to them, but the potential threat that he posed as a fluent German speaker and as a freethinker provided the flimsy pretext needed for his arrest.