"Nothing in Iraq seemed to be going well, and there was this need to find somebody who could demonstrate that it was not a completely lost cause, " says Bacevich.

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It seems like dignity while traveling is a lost cause.

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However, the commentator says that this time, his party, the Il Popolo della Liberta (PdL) or The People of Freedom, will be less likely to spring to his defence, as it is now beginning to see Mr Berlusconi's war against the judiciary as a lost cause.

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When Jackie Earle Haley, known of late for playing deviants and psychopaths, shows up in "Lincoln" as a representative of the Confederacy, you can be sure his cause is as wrong as it is lost.

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But it is certainly time to disengage from the lost cause this great country once was and start putting together a personal Plan B.

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Prop. 37 clearly does not, and if it were approved by the voters, the state would need to spend years and millions of taxpayer dollars defending a lost cause in the federal courts.

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But despite prostate cancer being the second leading cause of deaths among men, with a life lost to the disease every six minutes, it is a taboo subject for many men, who can feel too embarrassed to mention the condition.

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