Under Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, the report declared, "Parliament has been rendered toothless, independent state agencies shorn of their powers.
But legally prohibiting domestic abusers from purchasing guns is toothless if states do not provide all records of prohibited abusers to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).
But the prohibition is often toothless because many states do not share their mental health records with the F.B.I.'s National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
They haven't even abided by the editors' code of practice, drawn up by the toothless Press Complaints Commission, which states that publication should be handled sensitively in cases of personal grief or shock.
The toothless machinery of the state rolls towards those who have the courage to resist the sickness.
In Hawaii and California, where fluoridated water is served to less than 30percentt of the populations, only 13percentt of the people in each state are toothless.
Every year for more than a decade, Brinkley recounts, donor organizations and states made toothless pleas that Hun Sen pass an anticorruption law.
Yet the sad truth, as Luo demonstrates in his article, is that the federal law and the subsequent gun restoration laws, passed or updated by 23 states, are "toothless".
Companies will have to disclose activities in tax havens, an amendment which has been added to earlier proposals, but campaigners say the measure may be toothless as European Union (EU) states have no common view of what constitutes a tax haven.
A growing number of prominent ranchers, including former Gov. Dolph Briscoe and the caretakers of the fabled King Ranch, are organizing against the oil industry, seeking changes in environmental and royalty laws, and portraying state regulators as toothless.
