"Everybody who knows him calls him his best friend," said Tony Alaimo, a colleague at Marsh & McLennan, still lapsing into the present tense.
He sipped it from the tin dipper, and though he still lapsed into Swahili from time to time — he was conceited about his fluency, too — he was more polite now, more solicitous, speaking to me slowly and deferentially".
Still, lapses in the licensing process have been a matter of concern, though typically they have been seen in certifying applicants for some crane licenses, ones that are less advanced than the license required to operate tower cranes.
A native of Boston who still lapses easily into what an Los Angeles Times editor called "Boston streetwise joshing," Mr. Casey was graduated from Harvard in 1943 and served three years as an Army lieutenant before returning to Cambridge to earn a master's degree in business administration.
They still have lapses and have trouble holding leads.
And American officials acknowledged there were still internal lapses of coordination, with the Pentagon, Department of Homeland Security and the Drug Enforcement Administration at times unaware of one another's operations.
But, after more than a decade and nearly $93 billion spent on reconstruction and security programs, there are still worrisome lapses in accountability, management and effectiveness.
There are still some lapses: A speech billed as a major national security address on the eve of Wednesday's debate was instead a discursive riff with little by way of new substance.
Still, these lapses, oversights and harmless exaggerations do not detract from the author's central message: I used to be an "infidel dog," and the rest of you infidel dogs had better listen up.
With Congress stalemated over whether to federalize airport screening workers, some airlines and airports are taking steps to improve security on their own, but passengers still encounter lapses they find alarming.
