Though Mr Bush's stump speeches pay lip-service to other priorities such as the need to control health-care costs or curb frivolous lawsuits they are worryingly one-dimensional.

ECONOMIST: Lexington

In it, he went to absurd lengths to pay lip-service to the concept of U.S. leadership using the term (or its variants) no fewer than 23 times.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Center for Security Policy | America, The Impotent? ��Tarnoff Doctrine�� Begets The ��Please Hold�� Military Strategy; Sets Stage For Abandoned Commitments, Future Combat Losses

Islamist movements and secular governments anxious to pay lip-service to Islam have, between them, failed spectacularly to anchor themselves in genuinely Islamic principles: principles which, for Mr Allawi, are as much about inner spirituality as outward religiosity.

ECONOMIST: Islam

To be sure, as a lengthy (if grossly imbalanced) report in the New York Times yesterday makes clear, the Administration has been willing to pay lip-service to the need for such protection whenever it became politically necessary to do so.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Center For Security Policy

There is therefore a considerable risk that schools will pay lip service to the new reforms while continuing to cram students in the time-honoured fashion.

ECONOMIST: China

Instead of lip-service to communism and Russian dominance, pay it to capitalism and democracy, and you and your pals can still run Georgia much as you want.

ECONOMIST: Edward Shevardnadze, Georgia��s foxy president