self-justifying

As long as Russia is run as a one-man show, the frustration expressed this weekend will only build, and some day it will explode on Mr. Putin's self-justifying claims that Russia needs his strong hand to ensure "stability."

A Putin Reality Check 2011

Skeptics also say some of these smaller departments tend to wield their powers indiscriminately, even for seemingly minor infractions, in ways that seem self-justifying.

Federal Police Ranks Swell to Enforce a Widening Array of Criminal Laws Louise Radnofsky 2011

Christopher Gair asserts that "Although Buck's liberation appeals to the sentimentality of the popular reading public-seducing them into a belief in the 'natural' rightness ... of their culture's moral crusade and generosity to others-the text's displacement of that public's appetite for violence and superstition onto other cultures simultaneously reminds us of the self-justifying nature of American imperialistic discourse."

America's Greatest World Novel 2010

Still Washington kept up his drumbeat of self-justifying letters.

George Washington’s First War David A. Clary 2011

Still Washington kept up his drumbeat of self-justifying letters.

George Washington’s First War David A. Clary 2011

Still Washington kept up his drumbeat of self-justifying letters.

George Washington’s First War David A. Clary 2011

Of course, the “need” to manage wolves is both a self-created and self-justifying excuse to kill animals that most hunters wish would just go away or at least believe should be kept at much lower numbers ....

On Wolves And The Future Of Hunting 2009

There were none of the self-justifying excuses that are often employed by someone intent on doing something stupid.

Fatal Error J.A. Jance 2011

In Lolita, the narrator, Humbert Humbert recounts in a manner that is both self-castigating and self-justifying his hopeless passion for the 12-year-old American girl Dolores Haze.

Father Ralph and Humbert Humbert « Tales from the Reading Room 2010

She fixed Lena with a self-justifying smile that was the purview of politicians and maiden aunts.

Three Stages of Amazement Carol Edgarian 2011