All of it added up to a simple but telling formulation: "Conservatives do have a choice because conservatives have a voice," Mr. Huckabee said.
It is a telling formulation, because it concedes at the outset the point on which intelligence officials invariably insist: that there are rules and procedures, safeguards and oversight mechanisms, meant to guarantee that the vast quantities of information ingested by the NSA and its global partners are used only for good purposes.
MOSCOW — At the end of a trip intended to reassure Russia's neighbors that the Obama administration would not forget them in its push to improve relations with Moscow, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton resorted to the simplest of diplomatic formulations, telling Georgia, the United States "can walk and chew gum at the same time".
I'm told the same formulation could be applied to "a" customs union, that in the long term a future Labour government could sign up to one, if the UK got the exact same benefits as it gets from "the" customs union - frictionless trade and a say over the external tariff on imported goods.
A proposal to appoint just one member to the committee -- a symbolic protest that would still allow them to keep tabs -- was "seriously considered," a Democratic aide with knowledge of the committee's formulation told The Huffington Post on condition of anonymity.
Mr. Bernanke offered a new formulation on Tuesday, telling the audience of economists that 6.5 percent would be the beginning of the Fed's internal debate.
When Alistair Darling unveiled last year's Energy Review to MPs in Parliament on July 11 2006 he used the same formulation as today telling MPs, "It will before the private sector to initiate, fund, construct and operate new nuclear plants and cover the cost of decommissioning", adding the elliptical phrase "and their full share of long-term waste management costs".
This "tell us" formulation is the frame for much of what follows, in which tough questions are reassuringly answered by the architects of the war on terror, with gentle coaxing from an affable Mr. Koppel.
This formulation seems to be telling us that nicotine addiction is mainly a matter of willpower.
The attorney general used a similar formulation in a Senate estimates hearing on 20 October, before telling the Senate on 12 November that "an announcement will be made very soon".
Given what was known at the time, it seemed like "purely good fortune" that they were able to create a lasting formulation, Katz told me.
