BEHIND THE NEWS On the first day of her confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Ms. Kagan offered cautious and measured opening remarks, pledging "even-handedness and impartiality".
The commission engaged in some questionable maneuvers aimed at preventing the Yucca site from ever opening, thus carrying out pledges to scuttle the facility made by President Obama, while campaigning for the presidency in 2008, and Senator Harry Reid, a Democrat of Nevada and the majority leader, who has ferociously opposed the site for years.
And if that wasn't enough, the Conservatives were pledging more opening: they plan to ensure the NHS becomes a seven-day service.
Ali Mohsen's pledge opened the floodgates to a stream of defections from the regime.
The paper opens with a pledge by its chairman, Mark Moody-Stoart, to pursue a business strategy "that generates profits while contributing to the well-being of the planet and its people".
In the car on my way to Precinct 025, I heard one of Bachmann's campaign ads on the radio: it opened with a pledge to defend Israel — that was the first item on her to-do list as the next President of the United States.
The central bank made an "open-ended" pledge to buy unlimited amounts of short-term government debt to achieve its goal, starting next year.
JUST before the Fed announced its fresh round of quantitative easing, often described as QE3, the European Central Bank made an open-ended pledge to buy government bonds of any euro zone country that requested a rescue.
The Federal Reserve left short-term interest rates at 1percentthethe lowest level since 1958, but it jolted markets by retreating from its open-ended pledge to keep rates low for "a considerable period".
The White House made its first major entree into government by the people last month when it set up an online forum to ask ordinary people for their ideas on how to carry out the president's open-government pledge.
