John Kerry has been repeating the charge of stubbornness at every chance he gets.The administration has responded to Mr Clarke's charges with a torrent of personal censure, impugning his motives by accusing him of everything from frustrated ambition to political disloyalty and to being "out of the loop" (Dick Cheney's term).
It's possible, then, that expectations driven by the outlook for commodity-dependent headline inflation are weakening without impugning the American recovery.
But the candidates include a former Labour press officer, whom Mr Mandelson once sacked, and who is vigorously impugning his integrity.
It and its surrogates have spent millions on advertising in swing states, casting aspersions on Mr Romney's conduct as an investor, raising questions about his finances and generally impugning his character.
Fair enough, said Lord Hutton; but "where a reporter is intending to broadcast or publish information impugning the integrity of others the management of his broadcasting company or newspaper should ensure that a system is in place whereby his...editors give careful consideration to the wording of the report and to whether it is right...to broadcast or publish it".
The "inference and speculation" you admitted ("Riddles, mysteries and enigmas", May 5th) are hardly a sound basis for impugning the integrity of a price-assessment process that has well served the oil markets for over 20 years.You have got it wrong.
But as a philosopher, Sidney Hook, once said, "before impugning an opponent's motives, even when they legitimately may be impugned, answer his arguments".
That does not stop both sides from impugning Mr Ross's objectivity.
But none of this alters the basic fact that, in genome research, science and profit have mixed very productively.The question of third-world drugs is undeniably more vexed but impugning the profit motive is a fatuously inadequate answer.
But why dwell on that AT&T's rivals, Verizon and Sprint, issued "talking points" to their salespeople, with helpful hints for impugning the iPhone's divinity.
But at the simplest level, he was still standing at the presidential bully pulpit and jabbing his thumb in the eye of the party with which he is doomed to share power for at least the next two years, and impugning their motives at precisely the moment when he needed them to make a concession for the good of the country.
