For weeks, Commissioner David Stern has been setting and removing deadlines, creating momentary bursts of urgency that quickly pass as the calendar shrinks.
Geologist Paul Bierman of the University of Vermont in Burlington suggests that removing deadlines "filter[s] for the most highly motivated people, and the ideas for which you feel the most passion".
Remove all deadlines and you are left with dithering.
Consequently, men and women would once again have to unite and demand Congress remove the deadline, and then three more states would need to vote on passing the ERA.
In the previous two reviews in 1996 and 1998, the board removed the deadlines for 1998 and 2001, saying they were impractical.
In May, a compromise war funding bill that removed withdrawal deadlines but tied funding to progress benchmarks for the Iraqi government passed the Senate by a vote of 80 14 and would be signed by Bush Clintonn was one of those who voted against it.
For supporters, the advancing deadlines remove bargaining leverage; they increase it for opponents.
Mr Cameron now concedes that point: he has overruled Andrew Lansley, his health secretary, in removing the deadline for family doctors to take on responsibility for commissioning secondary health-care.
So the government, at that time run by the right-wing "Moderate" party, again changed course, removing the deadline and declaring that the plants would be phased out in line with their lifespan.The latest shift was to pledge that Barseback-1 would close by July this year, Barseback-2 by 2001, and the rest be retired gracefully.
Above all, it would remove the artificial deadline of the end of President Clinton's term, which has been fueling the intensive negotiations and putting artificial pressure on both negotiating partners.
