1.   This is a depressing conclusion for liberal reformers.

2.   And no change in the foreseeable political atmosphere can possibly accommodate the most liberal would-be reformers.

3.   He offers some elements of his thinking on the economy and dashes any possibility of bringing back any liberal reformers into the government.

4.   In the past, liberal reformers feared that public opinion was against them, so they resorted to the courts rather than trying to push legislation through Congress.

5.   Rising from the ash can of the Soviet empire, the Russian Communist Party rolled today toward victory in nationwide parliamentary elections that left liberal reformers in disarray.

6.   The Communists want Putin to heave overboard the liberal reformers who managed this summer to force controversial new laws on land, labor and pensions through parliament.

7.   The current scandal over sexual abuse by some Catholic priests may have tipped the balance back in favor of liberal reformers, at least within the United States.

8.   Worse, it can only further narrow the maneuvering room of the battered Yeltsin government, alienating liberal reformers without beginning to satisfy militarists and nationalists.

9.   Yeltsin has already been pushed away from the liberal reformers by nationalists and Communists in the last three years.

10.   Yet if liberal reformers were hoping that the scandal might spur their ideological opponents to switch sides, they are likely to be disappointed.