We're a nation of laws. Our courts are honest and they are independent. The President -- me -- I can't tell the courts how to rule, and neither can any other member of the government. Under our law, everyone stands equal. No one is above the law, and no one is beneath it.
All political power in America is limited and only given by the free vote of the people. We have a Constitution, now two centuries old, which limits and balances the power of the three branches of our government, the judicial(法庭的)branch, the legislative(立法的)branch, and the executive branch, of which I'm a part.
Many of the values that guide our life in America are first shaped in our families, just as they are in your country.American moms and dads love their children and work hard and sacrifice for them, because we believe life can always be better for the next generation. In our families, we find love and learn responsibility and character.
America is a nation guided by faith. Someone once called us "a nation with the soul of a church." This may interest you -- 95 percent of Americans say they believe in God, and I'm one of them.
1、How many objects are held in the hands of the Statue of Liberty?()
A、One
B、Two
C、Three
D、Four
2、According the passage, all people are _____ under the law of the United States.
A、the same
B、different
C、sometimes different
D、sometimes equal
3、The Constitution mentioned in this passage is round _____ years old.
A、100
B、200
C、300
D、400
4、According to the author many of the values of life are first developed _____.
A、in school
B、in the family
C、in work
D、in college
5、From the passage we can easily see that _____.
A、the majority of Americans often go to church
B、the government plays a very important role in a law court
C、light music is popular with old people
D、parents have little influence over their children
The importance of saving gas, then, cannot be stressed too much. Let's say, for instance, that the fuel used by each car could be cut back just 15 percent. This could be done by making fewer trips each day. It could be done through better driving habits. If it were done, our nation's use of fuel would fall by close to two-thirds of a million barrels per day.
We can all help save gas. One way is to ride the buses. Some of us could walk to work. We could ride mopeds(机动脚踏两用车) or bikes. Another way is to share a ride. We could join carpools (合伙使用汽车). About one-third of all cars are used for going to and from work.
Go shopping with a friend from time to time. If two people use a car instead of one, we all save. There would be fewer cars on the road. The savings on gas around the nation would come to more than one half million barrels a day.
Another way to save is by cutting our useless trips. Can you find one car trip per week that could be handled by telephone? Can you combine trips? If each car took one less 10-mile trip a week, we could save three-and-half billion gallons of gas a year. This comes to nearly 5 percent of the total passenger car demand for gas.
The way people drive decides how much fuel they save. Careful drivers may get20 percent more miles per gallon than normal drivers. They could get 50 percent more miles per gallon than wasteful drivers. Careful drivers obey the 55-mile-per-hour speed limit. They get to their desired speed quickly and keep a steady pace.
If just one gallon of gas were saved each week for each car in the country, we could all save about five-and-half billion gallons a year.
To decrease the number of useless car trips, you can use the ______.
A.bus service
B.subway service
C.telephone
D.airplane
More than 6,000 children were expelled (开除) from US school last year for bringing guns and bombs to school, the US Department of Education said on May 8.
The department gave a report to the expulsions (开除) as saying handguns accounted for 58% of the 6,093 expulsions in 1996—1997, against 7% for rifles (步枪) or shotguns and 35% for other types of firearms.
"The report is a clear sign that our nation's public schools are cracking down (严惩) on students who bring guns to school," Education Secretary Richard Riley said in a statement.
In March 1997, an 11-year old boy and a 13-year old boy using handguns and rifles shot dead four children and a teacher at a school in Arkansas. In October, two were killed and seven wounded in a shooting at a Mississippi school. Two months later, a 14-year old boy killed three high school students and wounded five in Kentucky.
Most of the expulsions, 56%, were from high school, 34% were from junior high schools and 9% were from elementary schools, the report said.
From the first paragraph we can infer that in the US schools______.
A.students enjoy shooting
B.safety is a problem
C.students are eager to be solider.
D.students can make guns.
Informal rules, often called "manners", describe correct and incorrect behavior. in such situations as eating in a restaurant, going on a date, or working in an office. If one is impolite or misbehaves in these situations, other people often consider offender insensitive. And although we can strongly disagree to such misconduct, we can no legally punish someone for simply being inconsiderate or unpleasant.
Neither laws nor manners are inflexible; both changes as society develops. For example, in the early twentieth century, the selling of strong spirits was forbidden. This law, however, had to be changed because the government found it impossible to force people to drink only soft drinks. More recently, many people who were dissatisfied with the unequals between the rights of men and women worked to pass the equal rights law, as women became more independent and took on new roles, a new law was considered necessary to reflect that change.
According to the passage, people who offended the law may be ______.
A.put to death
B.put on afire
C.doing fine
D.put into prison
At the core of this debate is chairman Gerald Levin, 56, who took over from the late Steve Ross in the early 1990s. On the financial front, Levin is under pressure to raise the stock price and reduce the company's mountainous debt, which will increase to $ 17.3 billion after two new cable deals close. He has promised to sell off some of the property and restructure the company, but investors are waiting impatiently.
The flap over rap is not making life any easier for him. Levin has consistently defended the company's rap music on the grounds of expression. In 1992, when Time Warner was under fire for releasing Ice-T's violent rap song Cop Killer, Levin described rap as a lawful expression of street culture, which deserves an outlet. "The test of any democratic society," he wrote in a Wall Street Journal column, "lies not in how well it can control expression but in whether it gives freedom of thought and expression the widest possible latitude, however disputable or irritating the results may sometimes be. We won't retreat when we face any threats."
Levin would not comment on the debate last week, but there were signs that the chairman was backing off his hard-line stand, at least to some extent. During the discussion of rock singing verses at last month's stockholders' meeting, Levin asserted that "music is not the cause of society's ills" and even cited his son, a teacher in the Bronx, New York, who uses rap to communicate with students. But he talked as well about the "balanced struggle" between creative freedom and social responsibility, and he proclaimed that the company would launch a drive to develop standards for distribution and labeling of potentially objectionable music.
The 15-member Time Warner board is generally supportive of Levin and his corporate strategy. But insiders say some of them have shown their concerns in this matter. "Some of us have known for many, many years that the freedoms under the First Amendment are not totally unlimited," says Luce. "I think it is perhaps the case that some people associated with the company have only recently come to realize this."
An American senator criticized Time Warner for
A.its raising of the corporate stock price.
B.its self-examination of the soul.
C.its neglect of social responsibility.
D.its emphasis on creative freedom.
According to the passage, slowly rising birthrate perhaps is good for ______.
A.a developed nation
B.a developing nation
C.every nation with a big population
D.every nation with a small population
He personally__________ the nation’s foreign polity.
A.instructed
B.guided
C.conducted
D.directed
A.gestion, action
B.relation, nation
C.bastion, station
D.notion, digestion
What explains these large differences in living standards among countries and over time? The answer is surprisingly simple. Almost all variation in living standards is attributable to differences in countries' productivity—hat is, the amount of goods and services produced from each hour of a worker's time. In nations where workers can produce a large quantity of goods and services per unit of time, most people enjoy a high standard of living; in nations where workers are less productive, most people must endure a more meager existence. Similarly, the growth rate of a nation's productivity determines the growth rate of its average income.
The fundamental relationship between productivity and living standards is simple, but its implications are far-reaching. If productivity is the primary determinant of living standards, other explanations must be of secondary importance. For example, people might think that labor unions or minimum-wage laws contributed to the rise in living standards of American workers over the past century. Yet the real hero of American workers is their rising productivity.
The relationship between productivity and living standards also has great implications for public policy. When thinking about how any policy will affect living standards, the key question is how it will affect our ability to produce goods and services. To improve living standards, policymakers need to raise productivity by ensuring that workers are well educated, have the tools needed to produce goods and services, and have access to the best available technology.
Which of the following countries has enjoyed the fastest economic growth in history?
A.Mexico.
B.The United States.
C.Japan.
D.South Korea.