"I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate."
--Romans 7:15 (RSV)
"The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families. . . . How is it possible that Children can have any just Sense of the sacred Obligations of Morality or Religion if, from their earliest Infancy, they learn their Mothers live in habitual Infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant Infidelity to their Mothers?"
-- John Adams (Diary, 2 June 1778)
Reference: The Works of John Adams, C.F. Adams, ed., vol. 3 (171)
Without liberty, law loses its nature and its name, and becomes oppression. Without law, liberty also loses its nature and its name, and becomes licentiousness.
-- James Wilson (Of the Study of the Law in the United States, Circa 1790)
Reference: The Works of James Wilson, Andrews, ed., vol. 1 (7)
"War, like most other things, is a science to be acquired and perfected by diligence, by perserverance, by time, and by practice." - Alexander Hamilton
"Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand." - Augustine of Hippo
"I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their own industry. This is the chief meaning of freedom." - Calvin Coolidge
"Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist." - Edmund Burke
"We are apt to be deluded into false security by political catch-words, devised to flatter rather than instruct." - James A. Garfield
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." - H. L. Mencken
"We focus on the negative and our politicians stoke our unhappiness all the more. They bribe us with our own money, promising to expand the government to address the grievances that they promote. But we ought to be careful what we wish for." - Tom Purcell
"The time is long overdue to stop gullibly accepting the left's vision of itself as idealistic, rather than self-aggrandizing." - Thomas Sowell
"[O]ver the course of Bill Clinton's (bungled, distasteful) presidency and Hillary Clinton's (bungled, distasteful) campaign for the presidency, the couple have separately and together become incarnations of the most unattractive attributes of their generation's elite- blind ambition cloaked in do-good self-righteousness, a sense of entitlement, high-handed snobbiness, hedonism, narcissism. As a poster couple for people of a certain age and demographic, they have become a bit of an embarrassment." - Kurt Andersen
"After years of learning how to fight an unfamiliar war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to protect us at home, we are finally getting most things right. But if our soldiers and intelligence agencies have learned how to win, our politically correct diplomats and the American consumer haven't- and are doing as much at home to empower radical Islam as those on the front lines are to defeat it." - Victor Davis Hanson
"Oh, let's also point out that, as a matter of political reality, Clinton might as well be calling for a ban on the use of unicorn meat in dog food, because there is no way her [gas tax holiday] proposal can actually, you know, happen." - Jonah Goldberg
"Every several weeks, I write a column suggesting what this presidential election might look like if we had serious candidates and a press corps that treated the presidency as an important office in which vital decisions would be made by its incumbent. I invariably get flooded with e-mails telling me, basically, 'Blankley, don't hold your breath'." - Tony Blankley
"I wouldn't want to give you the idea that my hometown newspaper is entirely heartless when it comes to right-wingers. In fact, just recently, I had occasion to write the following letter to the editor: 'First it was William F. Buckley who got a terrific, extremely respectful, front page send-off. Today, it was Charlton Heston's turn. Clearly, all a conservative has to do in order to get his just desserts from the L.A. Times is to die on a slow news day." - Burt Prelutsky
Jay Leno: Happy Cinco de Mayo. People love Cinco de Mayo. I saw this one woman throwing back shots of tequila one after the other. Then I realized it was Hillary Clinton working the Latino vote. ... Hillary Clinton told People magazine this week she's never had cosmetic surgery. She said it it's not for her. You know how politicians hate anything that's fake. ... Actually, there was a rumor she had cosmetic surgery back in the '90s. They said she had her eyes done when she was First Lady. It turns out it was right after the scandal. They just took the blinders off. That was all. No actual surgery was involved. ... Because of where John McCain was born- he was born in the Panama Canal Zone, you know, not in the United States- there was a question as to whether he could legally become president. Well, this week, the Senate declared McCain is eligible to become president, and listen to this, because of his age, also eligible to be a greeter at Wal-Mart. So that worked out great for him. ... President Bush blasted Congress for not allowing oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Democrats said it wouldn't do any good, because it wouldn't produce oil for 10 years. You know, the same thing they said 10 years ago.
"Without religion, I believe that learning does real mischief to the morals and principles of mankind." - Benjamin Rush
"Who could argue with the idea that, when it comes to sex education, our teenagers should be taught to say 'no'? Considering what's at stake (their health, their future, their dignity as human beings, their morality)- and because we love them and want what's best for them- nothing short of a clear-cut abstinence message will do. At least, that's how it appears out here in the Real World... Our teens deserve better than just a condom and a message to 'be safe.' Our children are not animals, incapable of controlling themselves. They are not hopelessly immoral creatures who are going to 'do it anyway.' Yet 'comprehensive' sex ed teaches them that they're just that. Parents, this is a slander against our youth. It's a lie- one that we must fight. Teaching abstinence may be hard work- and heaven knows it's not going to win you any popularity contests. But for the sake of our teens, there's simply no substitute. In the end, you're the only real 'protection' they've got. So don't let them down." - Rebecca Hagelin
"This year, American taxpayers will spend more than $9,200 on the average public-school student. That's a real increase of 69 percent over the per pupil expenditure in 1980. The total bill for a student who remains through high school will be almost $100,000. This spending would be worthwhile if it gave us the results we need to compete globally. But it hasn't been doing so. American students still score poorly compared to students from other countries, especially in math and science. The National Assessment of Educational Progress shows 18 percent of fourth-graders and 29 percent of eighth-graders scored 'below basic' in mathematics last year. And far too many students drop out. At least 1 in 4 quits high school. Among minority children, the picture is even bleaker. In 2002, only 56 percent of black and 52 percent of Hispanic students graduated, compared to 78 percent of white students. The Census Bureau has found that a full-time employee with a college degree will earn more than $2 million over a lifetime. One with only a high-school diploma will earn half as much, while a dropout, obviously, will earn even less. More ominously, an independent study found dropouts die an average of nine years sooner than graduates. Our educational system is a national problem- but one that calls for local solutions. One approach is to provide school choice." - Ed Feulner
"In a quest to lower my impact on the environment, I calculated our [family's] carbon footprint if we cut our use of electricity and natural gas in half, switched our two cars for a single Toyota Prius and reduced our annual mileage by half, tripled our train travel, and never took an airplane. Furthermore, what if we became vegetarians, ate only local organic food in season, bought only second-hand clothes, furniture and appliances, never went to movies, bars or restaurants, and recycled or composted all our waste? Even then our combined carbon footprint would be 7.3 tons per year, but that would get us just below the world average of 4 tons per capita annually... The creators of Carbon Footprint claim that everyone in the world must eventually emit no more than 2 tons of carbon dioxide per year. When did Americans last emit so little carbon dioxide? Around 1870." - Ronald Bailey
"Are you willing to spend time studying the issues, making yourself aware, and then conveying that information to family and friends? Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community? Realize that the doctor's fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can't socialize the doctors without socializing the patients. Recognize that government invasion of public power is eventually an assault upon your own business. If some among you fear taking a stand because you are afraid of reprisals from customers, clients, or even government, recognize that you are just feeding the crocodile hoping he'll eat you last." - Ronald Reagan
"The McCain [health care] plan would provide an annual tax credit of $2,500 per individual or $5,000 per family. The idea is to encourage families to buy their own health care plans- preferably plans that save consumers money when they follow healthy lifestyles and make smart economic choices. Unlike Clinton and Obama, McCain would not require that insurers cover people with chronic illnesses. Instead, McCain proposes state 'guaranteed access plans' for those patients. Politically, Plan McCain may be suicide. Clinton and Obama have kept to the current employer-based system- which gives workers the happy illusion of not paying for their health care, when in fact it comes out of their paychecks. Like President Bush, however, McCain has concluded that the best way to curb health care costs is to return the incentive to save to patients. Because when you know a doctor's visit will only cost $25 and that you won't have to pay for a test you may not need, you have no incentive to economize. That's the problem with the status quo: The cheaper we make it look, the more it ends up costing. The way Americans look at health care has been distorted by a system that cuts costs where they are least onerous. Gone is the day when patients paid for annual medical exams and insurers picked up the tab if a family member became seriously ill. Now you don't have to be sick to be subsidized, and workers have come to expect someone else to pick up the tab for routine care, minus a modest co-pay. Credit McCain for proposing to make the process transparent, so that people have a more personal stake in the care they receive." - Debra Saunders
"Is the bottom falling out for Barack Obama?... The latest Fox News poll, conducted after the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's appearance at the National Press Club, showed Obama's favorable/unfavorables at 63 to 27 percent among Democrats, compared to Hillary Clinton's 73 to 22 percent. Suddenly she's not the only one with high negatives. And 36 percent of Democrats say they would be disinclined to vote for Obama because of his longtime relationship with his former pastor. There's more bad news in The Pew Research Center poll of Democrats. Obama's national lead among Democrats is down from 49 to 39 percent to a statistically insignificant 47 to 45 percent... Obama's standing as a general election candidate also seems to have taken a hit. Gallup showed him tied with John McCain 45 to 45 percent before the Wright appearance and trailing 47 to 43 percent afterward; at the same time, it shows Hillary Clinton tied with McCain 46 to 46 percent... A few pundits still are saying that Obama's choice of pastor is a distraction, an irrelevancy. But some voters, perhaps in the belief that a president's judgment and values have important consequences, don't agree." - Michael Barone
"The evidence is that if every eligible voter voted, national elections would probably remain unchanged. 'Simply put,' political scientists Benjamin Highton and Raymond Wolfinger wrote in a 2001 article, 'The Political Implications of Higher Turnout,' U.S. 'voters' preferences differ minimally from those of all citizens; outcomes would not change if everyone voted.' So, maybe, just maybe, we have our priorities wrong. Perhaps cheapening the vote by requiring little more than an active pulse (Chicago famously waives this rule) has turned it into something many people don't value. Maybe the emphasis on getting more people to vote has dumbed down our democracy by pushing participation onto people uninterested in such things. Maybe our society would be healthier if politicians aimed higher than the lowest common denominator. Maybe the people who don't know the first thing about how our system works aren't the folks who should be driving our politics, just as people who don't know how to drive shouldn't have a driver's license. Instead of making it easier to vote, maybe we should be making it harder. Why not test people on the basic functions of government? Immigrants have to pass a test to vote; why not all citizens? A voting test would point the arrow of civic engagement up instead of down, sending the signal that becoming an informed citizen is a valued accomplishment. And if that's not a good enough reason, maybe this is: If you threaten to take the vote away from the certifiably uninformed, voter turnout will almost certainly get a boost." - Jonah Goldberg
"May the father of all mercies scatter light, and not darkness, upon our paths, and make us in all our several vocations useful here, and in His own due time and way everlastingly happy." - George Washington
"On Monday [Rev. Wright] insisted that he is not anti-American: It is, he said, Americans' government, not the American public, that is a genocidal perpetrator of terrorism. So, he now denies that America has a representative government- that it represents the public. He believes that elections constantly and mysteriously- and against the public's will- produce a genocidal, terroristic government." - George Will
"I am all too familiar with the false theology of these racist black preachers. [They]... attempt to use their pulpit, the Bible and God himself to hide the evil that lies within their hearts. They use the anger of black Americans to keep them demoralized, dependent and Democrat." - Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson
"Could the pastor of a man hoping to become president really have said those things? And what would it mean for the nation and the world if America's highest officeholder had marinated for 20 years in that kind of thinking?" - Kathleen Parker
"Whom will Obama believe and trust if he is the president? How will he judge an ally and an enemy? How will he staff a vast Executive Branch? Whom will he appoint to the Supreme Court and how will he judge their characters and their personal histories?... If he even figures out who the radicals are, will he have the courage to refuse them office or influence?" - Hugh Hewitt
"The biofuels debacle is global warm-mongering in a nutshell: The first victims of poseur environmentalism will always be developing countries. In order for you to put biofuel in your Prius and feel good about yourself for no reason, real actual people in faraway places have to starve to death." - Mark Steyn
"Sometimes people come up to me and inquire, 'Justice Scalia, when did you first become an originalist?' You know, as though it's some weird affliction, you know, 'When did you start eating human flesh?"' - Justice Antonin Scalia
"Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread." - Thomas Jefferson
"[T]he most recent government data shows food inflation for the average American household is now running at 4.5% a year. And some prices are rising even more quickly. The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They're all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%. These are trends that have been in place for some time. And if you are hoping they will pass, here's the bad news: They may actually accelerate. The reason? The prices of many underlying raw materials have risen much more quickly still. Wheat prices, for example, have roughly tripled in the past three years. Sooner or later, the food companies are going to have to pass those costs on. Kraft saw its raw material costs soar by about $1.25 billion last year, squeezing profit margins. The company recently warned that higher prices are here to stay. Last month the chief executive of General Mills, Kendall Powell, made a similar point. The main reason for rising prices, of course, is the surge in demand from China and India. Hundreds of millions of people are joining the middle class each year, and that means they want to eat more and better food. A secondary reason has been the growing demand for ethanol as a fuel additive. That's soaking up some of the corn supply... The emerging bull market in agricultural products is following in the footsteps of oil. A few years ago, many Americans hoped $2 gas was a temporary spike. Now it's the rosy memory of a bygone age." - Brett Arends
"We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money." - Davy Crockett
"[W]hen we talk about federalism here in Washington, we're really talking about putting the States more and more in charge. And that means that if what we conservatives believe in, if the principles that we stand for, are to succeed and prevail, we will need more conservatives... in our State legislatures... I can't help wondering about that old argument for federalism. It used to be said that if we gave the States more power they'd show that they had the maturity to handle as well as Congress handles its power. Talk about faint praise." - Ronald Reagan
"Politicians love a 'crisis.' John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama all think that the government should bail out homeowners who can't pay their mortgages. When they say the government should do this, they mean the taxpayers, including those who are paying their mortgages. They also think the government should regulate the lending and investment industries further. Why? Because 'crisis' justifies making big government bigger. It's why we now have a global warming 'crisis' and in previous years we had 'crises' over avian flu, the Y2K threat to computers, imaginary cancer spikes caused by pesticides, killer bees flying up from Mexico, and uncontrolled population growth leading to a 'Population Bomb' that will bring 'riots and mass starvation' by the year 2000. This is not to say that lots of homebuyers aren't having a hard time. But the rapid rise and fall in housing values in some parts of the country- and the rippling consequences at each stage- do not justify scrapping what we know about economic success and turning to government control. Prosperity and stability come from people being free to innovate and produce- and yes, fail... The best regulator of economic activity and source of knowledge is free competition. Of course, government inhibits that in many ways. If we want to avoid disruptions like the current one, let's undertake a wholesale examination of government intervention in the economy. Freedom, not control, is the ticket to success." - John Stossel
"Hillary Clinton is not Barack Obama's problem. America is Mr. Obama's problem. He has been tagged as a snooty lefty, as the glamorous, ambivalent candidate from Men's Vogue, the candidate who loves America because of the great progress it has made in terms of racial fairness. Fine, good. But has he ever gotten misty-eyed over ... the Wright Brothers and what kind of country allowed them to go off on their own and change everything? How about D-Day, or George Washington, or Henry Ford, or the losers and brigands who flocked to Sutter's Mill, who pushed their way west because there was gold in them thar hills? There's gold in that history. John McCain carries it in his bones. Mr. McCain learned it in school, in the Naval Academy, and, literally, at grandpa's knee. Mrs. Clinton learned at least its importance in her long slog through Arkansas, circa 1977-92. Mr. Obama? What does he think about all that history? Which is another way of saying: What does he think of America? That's why people talk about the flag pin absent from the lapel. They wonder if it means something. Not that the presence of the pin proves love of country any cynic can wear a pin, and many cynics do. But what about Obama and America? Who would have taught him to love it, and what did he learn was loveable, and what does he think about it all?" - Peggy Noonan
"Take [William] Ayers. Obama makes it sound as if the relationship consists of having run into each other at the DMV. In fact, Obama's political career was launched in a 1995 meeting at Ayers' home. Obama's own campaign says that they maintain 'friendly' relations. Obama's defense is that he was 8 when Ayers and his Weather Underground comrades were planting bombs at the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol and other buildings. True. But Obama was 40 when Ayers said publicly that he doesn't regret setting bombs. Indeed, he said, 'I feel we didn't do enough.' Would you maintain friendly relations with an unrepentant terrorist?... As people begin to learn about this just-arrived pretender, the magic dissipates. He spent six weeks in Pennsylvania. Outspent Hillary more than two to one. Ran close to 10,000 television ads- spending more than anyone in any race in the history of the state- and lost by 10 points. And not because he insufficiently demagogued NAFTA or the other 'issues.' It was because of those 'distractions' - i.e., the things that most reveal character and core beliefs." - Charles Krauthammer
"The citizens of the United States of America have the right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were by the indulgence of one class of citizens that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support."
-- George Washington (letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, 9 September 1790)
Reference: Our Sacred Honor, Bennett (330)
"We never cease to be amazed by the inability of the left to feel shame and its lack of reverence for America and those who defend its freedoms, including the right to be stupid. The cover of the April 21 issue of Time, taking the famous Joe Rosenthal photo of Marines planting our flag on the blood-soaked island of Iwo Jima and replacing our flag with a tree, qualifies for obscenity of the year. It echoes the greenie theme first advanced by Al Gore in his book Earth In The Balance that the internal combustion engine is the greatest threat in the history of mankind. Gore and Bill Clinton have both said that global warming is ultimately a greater threat than terrorism... This trivializing of the sacrifice of American blood and treasure to defend freedom ignores the fact that in World War II we faced a real enemy with a terrible agenda. The bombs that fell on Pearl Harbor were quite real, not the output of some badly fed computer model. 'Global warming may or may not be a significant threat to the United States,' Tim Holbert, a spokesman for the American Veterans Center, [said]: 'The Japanese Empire on February 1945, however, certainly was, and this photo trivializes the most recognizable moment of one of the bloodiest battles in U.S. history'." - Investor's Business Daily
"When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. He believes in anything." - G. K. Chesterton
"There is an inverse relationship between reliance on the state and self-reliance." - William F. Buckley Jr.
"We have to get back to the values and perceptions of those wise old dead white guys who invented this country." - Charlton Heston
"The Constitution is a written instrument. As such it's meaning does not alter. That which it meant when adopted, it means now." - United States Supreme Court, South Carolina vs. United States, 1905
"Outside the teachings of religion there is no answer to the problems of life." - Calvin Coolidge
"[Hillary's win in Pennsylvania] is great news. For Sen. John McCain. She's never getting out. Hillary will not leave the race tonight. She will not leave the race before the convention in August. She may not leave the race ever." - Rich Galen
"One of the key questions for a president is where do you draw your team from? Who are your friends? What and who influenced you?... When will the MSM get around to a sustained examination of Obama's ideological history? Thus far the farthest left major party candidate in American political history has received the least scrutiny of any modern near nominee of a major party." - Hugh Hewitt
"Ultimately, people have to wonder what it is about Obama that attracts the support of Hamas, Communists, and domestic terrorists to him." - Matt Lewis
"The big irony here is that while Obama has done extremely well for himself in our very unique free-market economy, he has the 'audacity' to demonize others who have done well for themselves, and to propose economic policies that, if implemented, would radically change our nation into something more akin to a Western European socialist state." - Austin Hill
"I think a healthy society needs both God and guns: it benefits from a belief in some kind of higher purpose to life on earth, and it requires a self-reliant citizenry. If you lack either of those twin props, you wind up with today's Europe- a present-tense Eutopia mired in fatalism." - Mark Steyn
"My guess is if tax time meant that everybody had to reach into his or her own bank accounts for the full tax amount owed, there would be a new mindset about taxes. Why don't we try it?" - Matt Towery
"The liberal world order will not let go of their global-warming assault on free economies until hell freezes over- by which point, obviously, the global-warming theory will be visibly disproven." - Tony Blankley
"The Carter administration was that bad: stagflation, gas lines, appeasement, never-ending sanctimony... You name a colossal mistake and Jimmy Carter probably made it a policy." - Paul Greenberg
"Hillary Clinton was endorsed by the Plasterers Union Tuesday. Support law and order, you get the Police Union, support tariffs, you get the autoworkers. Drink a shot and a beer on camera, and you are the national spokesman for getting plastered." - Argus Hamilton
Jay Leno: In Pennsylvania, Hillary and Obama celebrated Earth Day by throwing dirt at each other. ... According to some of the political blogs, Democratic operatives have been looking for dirt on John McCain since February. You know what you call someone who digs up dirt on John McCain? An archaeologist. ... As you know, Hillary Clinton is trying to appeal to the blue-collar voters. She's drinking, talking about hunting and fishing, and it's working. She is now, in the latest poll, up eight points in the mullet vote. ...
"It is too early for politicians to presume on our forgetting that the public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object to be pursued." - James Madison
"Before government hijacked charity in the form of the New Deal and Great Society, compassion and charity began at home. People were to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit prisoners, care for widows and orphans and love their enemies. Those were biblical commands to individuals, not government. Democratic politicians see things differently. Apparently believing there aren't enough caring people, they want compassion to originate in Washington, depriving it of its true meaning. They define compassion as big and ever-growing government and a guaranteed check forever with no expectation- or requirement- the recipient will ever better his or her circumstances. Traditionally, Republican compassion has encouraged private charity with government picking up the leftovers of what religious and other charitable institutions were unable to do. President Bush, through his 'faith-based initiative,' took this one step further by subsidizing religious groups with federal money. This removes the responsibility and privilege from individuals and turns it over to government. When that happens, religious organizations become one more constituency in the never-ending campaign for political support. Once, evangelicals 'prayed it in' when they needed money. Now too many of them ask government to 'send it in'." - Cal Thomas
"If you establish a democracy, you must in due time reap the fruits of a democracy. You will in due season have great impatience of the public burdens, combined in due season with great increase of the public expenditure. You will in due season have wars entered into from passion and not from reason; and you will in due season submit to peace ignominiously sought and ignominiously obtained, which will diminish your authority and perhaps endanger your independence. You will in due season find your property is less valuable, and your freedom less complete." - Benjamin Disraeli
"Meanwhile, Oprah seems to be doing somewhat better with the directives she issues to her followers- maybe because, while the church offers only eternal life, Oprah frequently hands out rewards right here on earth. Selected audience members have received college scholarships, houses and brand-new cars. The religion of Oprahism tells people what to eat (healthy food) what to wear (special 'O bracelets'), how much to sleep (getting enough rest purportedly leads to 'Intelligence. A better figure. Sex,' according to O magazine) and even which candidate to vote for (Sen. Barack Obama, naturally). We're living in a new era. When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. He believes in anything, G. K. Chesterton said. These days, it's certainly true that many Americans don't believe in God. Many seem to, however, believe in anything... anything that Oprah tells them to believe in." - Rich Tucker
"Wouldn't it be better for the human spirit and for the soul of this Nation to encourage people to accept more responsibility to care for one another, rather than leaving those tasks to paid bureaucrats?" - Ronald Reagan
"Was there any part of the globe, from the Caribbean to the Middle East, from Haiti to North Korea to the Balkans, where Jimmy Carter didn't cozy up to dictators? Wherever he goes, tyrants smile. The long, dispiriting trail of former President Carter's overseas travels has been marked by one diplomatic disaster after another. As for Jimmy Carter's role as a monitor of free-and-fair elections, the low point must have come when he gave his blessings to Robert Mugabe's takeover in Zimbabwe. Naturally, utter disaster followed. It hasn't ceased there since. And now Mr. Carter is at it again, [paying] court to just about the bloodiest terrorist leader in the Middle East, which is no mean distinction in those violent parts. He [lent] his ex-presidential presence to terrorist chieftain Khaled Meshaal, who as head of Hamas hides out in Damascus under Syrian aegis. (Let others die for the cause in Gaza; its leader is quite comfortable, thank you.) The only proper greeting for someone like Mr. Meshaal would be, 'You're under arrest.' Instead, saw Jimmy Carter pay his usual homage to those who champion violence. He calls this peace-seeking. Which raises the question, if this is promoting peace, what would encouraging violence be?" - Paul Greenberg
"The life of an ex-president is tough. Since leaving the White House the Clintons, mostly meaning Bill, have earned $109 million. And it's hard out there for liberal multi-millionaires... All good and moral people know that taxes are way too low. So the Clintons are forced- practically at gunpoint- to keep far too much of their own money. Sen. Clinton explained apologetically: 'We didn't ask for George Bush's tax cuts. We didn't want them, and we didn't need them.' What's a confirmed redistributionist to do? Repealing Bush's tax cuts should be a no-brainer, but a lot of greedy, selfish Republicans stand in the way. They've misled many otherwise decent Americans to believe people have a greater right to their own earnings than do bureaucrats and politicians. What that means is that even if a President Hillary Clinton wins the opportunity to make everyone increase their contribution to the collective, she and her husband won't be paying enough this year... The Clintons can set an example by giving back to the community a little more of that $109 million they've collected. We could call this initiative the Voluntary Clinton Surtax (VCS). Who should pay this surtax? Ideally, everybody. But those who (a) opposed the Bush tax cuts; or (b) claim Americans are under-taxed; or (c) complain about 'tax cuts for the rich'; or (d) pine for new spending programs; or (e) or say tax cuts are selfish should lead the way. In fact, a good rule of thumb would be: the more categories that apply to you, the higher your VCS. You've always wanted to put your money where your mouth is. Now you can!" - Doug Bandow
"It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war; the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf." - Thomas Paine
"It seems there is scarcely a serious bad actor on the planet with whom Jimmy Carter has not met. He is a serial tyrant-enabler, the very personification of Rodney King's risible appeal, 'Can't we all get along?' Mr. Carter has come to epitomize the notion that 'dialogue' is always in order, no matter how odious or dangerous the interlocutor- or the extent to which they or their agendas will benefit from such interactions." - Frank Gaffney, Jr.
"Liberalism is so impressed with its own brilliance that results apparently don't matter." - Brent Bozell
"Liberals are always at their best chuckling at the ways of those they regard as hicks. That's because liberals place far more importance on sophistication than on character, decency and values." - Burt Prelutsky
"These days Democrats are not sounding very liberal. Classic liberals, after all, would support free markets, internationalism and the universal desire for constitutional government, while downplaying racial affinity." - Victor Davis Hanson
"There is growing evidence that liberals are losing ground among blacks. In 1972, only one in ten of African-Americans identified themselves as conservative. Today, nearly 30% African-Americans publicly and openly identify themselves as conservative. Not Republican, mind you, but conservative." - Christopher Alan Bracey
"A hundred years from now, Americans might still be fighting militant Islamists in Iraq and other places. What could be worse than that? A hundred years from now, America and the West could have been defeated by militant Islamists." - Clifford May
"I would like to electrocute everyone who uses the word 'fair' in connection with income tax policies." - William F. Buckley Jr.
"To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection: it is plunder." - Benjamin Disraeli
"A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny." - Calvin Coolidge
"The current tax code is a daily mugging." - Ronald Reagan
"I'm proud to pay taxes in the United States; the only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money." - Authur Godfrey
"Lord, the money we do spend on Government and it's not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago." - Will Rogers
"As Americans [pass] another income-tax filing deadline, they are still burdened by an impossibly complex tax code that, with accompanying regulations, now consists of more than 60,000 pages. The average person who prepares his or her own taxes spends 34 hours on a 1040 long form, according to the IRS. That's almost a full work week. Of course, 84 million taxpayers, about 60% of the total, find the whole thing so daunting that they pay someone else to prepare their returns. This helps underwrite a $65 billion industry of tax preparation and related services, and it enables the wealthy to exploit the code's many artfully crafted loopholes. Alas, few people in Washington seem to care about the taxpayer's plight. The last serious pruning of the tax code came in 1986; since then, it has grown like kudzu. In his first three years in office, President Bush added new marginal rates, new deductions and a raft of temporary tax cuts... The major presidential candidates all propose tax changes, but none sees simplification as an end in itself... The sad truth about America's current political culture is that it no longer looks at the tax code as a way of efficiently raising revenue to provide for the common good. If it did, it would not tolerate a system so complex and subject to manipulation. Rather, the income tax has morphed into a way of appealing to broad demographic groups and narrow lobbies to achieve political and policy goals. Groups that have influence get tax breaks. Groups that don't end up paying, in dollars and in time." - USA Today
"In the final analysis, Jimmy Carter will be best remembered by history as a man whose time in and out of high public office was almost unblemished by success." - Frank Gaffney, Jr.
"[Jimmy] Carter is about to make a disgrace of himself yet again, this time by meeting in Syria with Hamas terrorist leader Khaled Mashaal. His influence is nonexistent except where he can perform the role of useful idiot for America's enemies." - Jed Babbin
"One of the hardest things about being a liberal Democrat is that, when you're talking to the resentful yahoos whose votes you unfortunately need, you have to pretend to care about them. When you're trying to sell Hope and Change, you need to give the rubes Hope that the Change is going to be Change they want. Even when you know there's no Hope of that." - David Kahane
"Is American public education a form of child abuse?" - Mark Steyn
"One way to reduce illegal immigration might be to translate some of our far left publications into Spanish and give everyone in Mexico subscriptions. After they read how terrible this country is, many may want to stay away." - Thomas Sowell
"Bill Clinton was ripped after House auditors revealed his taxpayer-paid office expenses. He has run up a $400,000 phone bill since he left office. It never occurred to Congress to block all 900 numbers for ex-presidents." - Argus Hamilton
Jay Leno: Hillary Clinton attacked Barack Obama, called him "elitist," and said he was out of touch with poor people. Later, Bill Clinton gave a speech on the subject, and charged a million bucks for it. ... In an effort to try and connect with some of the rural voters in Pennsylvania, Hillary said she has gone hunting, and once shot a duck. Don't confuse that with Barack. He shot himself in the foot. That's a totally different thing. Personally, I like Cheney. He shot a lawyer. ... Hillary Clinton was shown at a bar in Indiana drinking a beer, and doing a shot of whiskey. Hey, and it worked. Today, Ted Kennedy switched back. "I'm for Hillary now!"
"If duties are too high, they lessen the consumption; the collection is eluded; and the product to the treasury is not so great as when they are confined within proper and moderate bounds. This forms a complete barrier against any material oppression of the citizens by taxes of this class, and is itself a natural limitation of the power of imposing them."
-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 21, 1787)
Reference: The Federalist
"An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation." - John Marshall
"The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. But how is... legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay... If such a law is not abolished immediately it will spread, multiply and develop into a system." - Frederic Bastiat
"[April 15] is the last day for filing income tax returns- a day that reminds us that taxpayers pay too much of their earnings to the Federal Government. And Americans will continue to pay too much money to the Federal Government until the Congress acts on our proposals to reduce tax rates across the board... While April 15 serves as a reminder, the people of the United States truly do not need to be reminded. They are victims of inflation, which pushes them into higher tax brackets. They are robbed daily of a better standard of living. They are discouraged from work and investment... Taxes are much too high to deal in half measures... The choice before us is clear. I strongly feel that the great majority of Americans believe that nothing would better encourage economic growth than leaving more money in the hands of the people who earn it. It's time to stop stripping bare the productive citizens of America and funneling their hard-earned income into the Federal bureaucracy. Today is a day when the people reaffirm their commitment to our system by contributing a portion of their income to the Government. Americans have always been prepared to pay their fair share, but today they should make it clear to all elected officials that government has gone beyond its bounds and that the people will not tolerate the ever-increasing tax burden they have experienced in recent years." - Ronald Reagan
"Most of what Congress is constitutionally authorized to spend for is listed in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution and includes: coining money, establish Post Offices, to support Armies and a few other activities. Today's federal budget is over $3 trillion dollars. I challenge anyone to find specific constitutional authority for at least $2 trillion of it. That includes Social Security, Medicare, farm and business handouts, education, prescription drugs and a host of other federal expenditures. Americans who have become accustomed to living at the expense of another American would not want Congress to obey the Constitution, especially if it left out their favorite handout." - Walter Williams
"Could anything be more incoherent or sad? Gender Identity Disorder is not 'incredible,' no matter how politically fashionable it has become to claim otherwise. It is not just another hue in the rainbow of diversity. It is a dysfunction. It should be met with sympathy, counseling, and therapy, not with five-page spreads in People and appearances on 'Oprah.' Headlines notwithstanding, there is no 'pregnant man.' There is only a confused and unsettled woman, who proclaims that surgery, hormones, and clothing made her a man, and is clinging to that fiction even as the baby growing in her womb announces her womanhood to the world." - Jeff Jacoby
"There are only two ways to do things in life: voluntarily or forced. We reporters may be obnoxious, intrusive, stupid, rude, etc., but we cannot force anyone to do anything. All our work is in the voluntary sector. But litigation is force. When a plaintiff sues, a defendant is forced to mount a defense. If he settles or loses, he's forced to pay. Government is the enforcer. Sometimes we need force- including the force behind the litigators- to protect our freedoms, just as we may need missiles. But we try not to use our missiles because we understand that they do tremendous collateral damage. But litigation does collateral damage, too. The millions spent on legal defense can't be used to make life-enhancing- and life-saving- products. We ought to avoid using lawyers the way we avoid firing missiles." - John Stossel
"Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint."
-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 15)
Reference: Hamilton, Federalist No. 15.
"[Hillary Clinton's] view of America and its circumstances is remarkably dreary, considering that she and her husband have risen from the middle class to enjoy stratospheric influence and prominence, along with an income that puts them in the ranks of the super-rich- $109 million just over the last eight years." - Carol Platt Liebau
"Gun Control: Barack Obama says he won't take folks' guns away as long as they're hunters. But when the hunted are his constituents, well, that's different: He opposes concealed carry and the right to self-defense. There's something about an election that brings out the sportsman in a Democratic presidential candidate. Recall John Kerry's sudden fondness for hunting four years ago. And speaking in Idaho earlier this year, Barack Obama told the crowd, 'We got a lot of hunters in the state of Illinois, and I have no intention of taking away folks' guns.' Except he does. In a 1996 questionnaire, Obama wrote that he 'supported banning the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns.' He says now that the survey was filled out by an aide who misrepresented his views. Yet his record since then is consistent with that view. Never mind that Illinois and the other 49 states have a lot of two-legged predators... On the subject of the total ban on gun ownership in the District of Columbia, a Second Amendment case before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Nov. 23 Chicago Tribune said Obama believes in the right of local communities to enact common sense laws to combat violence and save lives. Obama believes the D.C. handgun law is constitutional... Obama's Web site says: 'He will protect the rights of hunters and other law-abiding Americans to purchase, own, transport and use guns for the purposes of hunting and target shooting'... Not, apparently, for you to protect your wife and children." - Investor's Business Daily
"I say that the Second Amendment is, in order of importance, the first amendment. It is America's First Freedom, the one right that protects all the others." - Charlton Heston
"If you talk about race, it does not make you a racist. If you see distinctions between the genders, it does not make you a sexist. If you think critically about a denomination, it does not make you anti-religion. If you accept but don't celebrate homosexuality, it does not make you a homophobe." - Charlton Heston
"As I have stood in the crosshairs of those who target Second Amendment freedoms, I've realized that firearms are not the only issue. No, it's much, much bigger than that. I've come to understand that a cultural war is raging across our land, in which, with Orwellian fervor, certain acceptable thoughts and speech are mandated." - Charlton Heston
"I'd rather play a senator than be one." - Charlton Heston
"Clinton's obsession with 3 a.m. phone calls seems bottomless- perhaps because of all those nights she got hang-up calls from Monica? Clinton just released a new ad in which she says John McCain won't be ready to handle a 3 a.m. call on housing foreclosures. My guess is he'll be plenty ready to scream at the idiot who thinks he should wake the president of United States in the middle of the night about something like that." - Jonah Goldberg
"In the latest ad, when she picks up the phone at 3 A.M. to take the emergency foreclosure breaking-news update, she's got perfect hair and make-up, and she's immaculately dressed. Is having to get up at 2 A.M. to put her face on for the 3 A.M. campaign ad causing her to retreat into Bosnian war fantasies?" - Mark Steyn
"The Clintons just released their tax returns to the public... It turns out that over the past eight years, they've donated over $10 million to charity. When they asked Bill Clinton why he gave so much money to charity, he said, 'She's a really good dancer'." - Conan O'Brien
Jay Leno: This week is Explore Your Career Options week. Especially if you work for the Hillary Clinton campaign. ... Hillary's senior campaign adviser, Mark Penn, has left the campaign. Apparently he was coming under some heavy sniper fire. ... Penn was credited for catapulting her from a veritable shoo-in to second place. ... Good news for Hillary Clinton. You know Hillary's ad where she says she's ready to answer the phone at 3 AM? This is interesting. Today, she got a call from India and they said if this presidential thing doesn't work out, they have a job for her in tech support. ... It looks like Barack Obama has taken a ten-point lead over Hillary Clinton. You know they say, behind every successful man there's a woman. Unfortunately for Hillary, it's her. ... Today, Barack Obama said that as president, when it comes to solving the problem of global warming, he wants to have Al Gore at the table... Al Gore at the table. Have you seen Al Gore lately? I think he needs to push a little away from the table. ... Former presidential candidate John Edwards announced he will not- will not- accept the nomination for vice president. Which is really important, considering no one has asked him.
"That, as a republic is the best of governments, so that particular arrangements of the powers of society, or, in other words, that form of government which is best contrived to secure an impartial and exact execution of the laws, is the best of republics."
-- John Adams (Thoughts on Government, 1776)
Reference: The Works of John Adams, Charles Adams, ed., 194.
"Today, my heart is heavy with the loss of Charlton Heston. America has lost a great patriot. The Second Amendment has lost a faithful friend. So have I, and so have four million NRA members and eighty million gun owners. And so has every American who cares about the Bill of Rights, individual liberty, and Freedom. My heart is heavy, but not without a sense of pride. Pride in a man who devoted his life to his profession with grace and dignity. Pride in an American who devoted himself to civil rights, to correcting injustices around him, and to standing up for what he knew was right. Pride in a friend who stood with me and stood with fellow NRA members to preserve our freedom for future generations. Pride in a patriot who believed with every fiber of his being that our Bill of Rights is the foundation of our freedom that makes Americans singular among the masses of nations. And now, Charlton Heston has passed that duty to us- the next generation. I am as proud to continue his cause as I am to have known him as my friend." - Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association of America
"One of the biggest problems with government intervention in the economy is that politicians usually have neither the knowledge nor the incentives to intervene at the right time. Bruce Bartlett has pointed out that most government intervention in an economic downturn comes too late. That is, the problem it is trying to solve has already worked itself out and the government intervention can create new problems. More fundamentally, markets readjust themselves for a reason. That reason is that people pay a price for their misjudgments and mistakes. Government interventions are usually based on trying to stop them from having to pay that price. People who went way out on a limb to buy a house that they could not afford are now being pictured as victims of a heartless market or deceptive lenders. Just a few years ago, people who went out on that limb made money big-time in a skyrocketing housing market. But now that they have been caught in the ups and downs that markets have gone through for centuries, the government is supposed to bail them out. Solving short-run problems, especially in an election year, often means creating long-run problems. Pumping money into the economy can help many problems. But do not be surprised if it also leads to inflationary pressures and financial repercussions around the world." - Thomas Sowell
"I think the [California] state court is looking at the state Constitution upside down. The court finds no constitutional right to home school one's children. But in a free country, people are free to do anything not expressly prohibited by law. If the Constitution is silent about home schooling, then the right is reserved to the people. That's how the Framers of the U.S. Constitution said things are supposed to work. Last week, the appellate court surprised everyone by agreeing to rehear the case. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the judges 'hinted at a re-evaluation of its entire Feb. 28 ruling by inviting written arguments from state and local education officials and teachers' unions'. On top of that, state Schools Superintendent Jack O'Connell says he thinks home schooling is legal and favors choice in education. That's reasonable news. But why is education the business of government? It's taken for granted that the state is every child's ultimate parent, but there's no justification for that in a free society. Parents may not be perfect- some are pretty bad- but a cold, faceless bureaucracy is no better." - John Stossel
"It is truly fitting that America observe April 9 in recognition of our former prisoners of war; that date is the 46th anniversary of the day in 1942 when U.S. forces holding out on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines were captured. Later, as prisoners of war, these gallant Americans were subjected to the infamous Bataan Death March and to other inhumane treatment that killed thousands of them before they could be liberated. In every conflict, brutality has invariably been meted out to American prisoners of war; on April 9 and every day, we must remember with solemn pride and gratitude that valor and tenacity have ever been our prisoners' response... To our former prisoners of war who endured so much, we say that with your example and with God's help we will seek to meet the standards of devotion you have set; we will never forget your service or your sacrifice." - Ronald Reagan
"Obama's success is truly a remarkable commentary on the goodness of Americans and how far we've come in resolving matters of race. I'm 72 years old. For almost all of my life, a black having a real chance at becoming the president of the United States was at best a pipe dream. Obama has convincingly won primaries in states with insignificant black populations. As such, it further confirms what I've often said: The civil rights struggle in America is over and it's won. At one time black Americans did not have the constitutional guarantees enjoyed by white Americans; now we do. The fact that the civil rights struggle is over and won does not mean that there are not major problems confronting many members of the black community but they are not civil rights problems and have little or nothing to do with racial discrimination. While not every single vestige of racial discrimination has disappeared, Obama and the Rev. Wright are absolutely wrong in suggesting that racial discrimination is anywhere near the major problem confronting a large segment of the black community. The major problems are: family breakdown, illegitimacy, fraudulent education and a high rate of criminality. To confront these problems, that are not the fault of the larger society, requires political courage and that's an attribute that Obama and most other politicians lack." - Walter Williams
"Barack Obama, who informs campaign audiences that he taught constitutional law for 10 years, might be expected to weigh in on the historic Second Amendment case before the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices are pondering whether the 1976 District of Columbia law effectively prohibiting personal gun ownership in the nation's capital is constitutional. But Sen. Obama has not stated his position. Obama, disagreeing with the D. C. government and gun control advocates, declares the Second Amendment's 'right of the people to keep and bear arms' applies to individuals, not just the 'well-regulated militia' cited in the amendment. In the next breath, he asserts this constitutional guarantee does not preclude local 'common sense' restrictions on firearms. Does the Draconian prohibition for Washington, D. C., fit that description? My attempts to get an answer have proved unavailing. The front-running Democratic presidential candidate is doing the gun dance." - Robert Novak
"'When you set out to take Vienna,' Napoleon famously advised, 'take Vienna.' That might be updated to: 'If you're going to bowl, bowl better than a 37.' That's what Barack Obama scored when he set out to demonstrate he was just one of the guys at a Pennsylvania bowling alley recently. He started with a gutter ball. Hillary Clinton responded with an April Fools' Day gag about deciding the nomination with a bowl-off. 'A bowling night. Right here in Pennsylvania,' Clinton proposed. 'The winner take all. I'll even spot him two frames. It is time for his campaign to get out of the gutter and allow all the pins to be counted. I'm prepared to play this game all the way to the 10th frame. When this game is over, the American people will know that when that phone rings at 3 a.m., they'll have a president ready to bowl on Day One.' The saddest part is that this was, without a doubt, the absolute funniest thing Hillary Clinton has ever said (after, of course, 'I believe you, Bill'). Unfortunately, Obama missed an opportunity to explain that he was bowling so badly because he was under sniper fire." - Jonah Goldberg
"Let the American youth never forget, that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors; and capacity, if wisely improved, and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, property, religion, and independence."
-- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)
Reference: Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 718.
"Public affairs go on pretty much as usual: perpetual chicanery and rather more personal abuse than there used to be." - John Adams
"I would like to electrocute everyone who uses the word 'fair’ in connection with income tax policies."- William F. Buckley Jr.
"I make myself rich by making my wants few."- Henry David Thoreau
"I love a dog. He does nothing for political reasons."- Will Rogers
"The grand paradox of our society is this: we magnify man’s right but we minimize his capacities."- Joseph Wood Krutch
"I am not criticizing Democrats for being partisan; I’m suggesting they are cynically insincere or grossly self-deceived when they pretend to aspire to bipartisanship. They don’t seek compromise; they want the unopposed implementation of their unadulterated liberal agenda."- David Limbaugh
"The ideology of the Left is based upon identity, not ideas, and was therefore bound to degenerate into political cannibalism, as feminists and racialists scurry for power."- George Neumayr
"Wise men in our civilization have argued for centuries that four conditions must be met to justify war: It must counter a great and certain threat, it must be a last resort, it must have a reasonable chance of success, and it cannot be anticipated to cause more harm than it prevents. Leaving Iraq now would cause more harm than it prevents."- Terry Jeffrey
"Being a disinterested government official does not mean that you know what you are doing. That fact gets left out of the equation in a lot of proposals for new government programs."- Thomas Sowell
"The latest in the series of pointless gestures that constitute Congressional energy policy came yesterday, when executives from five major oil companies were paraded before Ed Markey’s House hearing on global warming. They served as political props for Members to denounce rising gas prices, ventilate Dick Cheney conspiracy theories and otherwise advertise their ignorance of the markets they purportedly oversee. Democrats, for instance, might rejoice over higher energy costs, which is precisely the eco-policy they’ve been advocating for years. Until Congress finds a way to abolish the price mechanism, paying more for gasoline is the only signal that will tell Americans to cut their consumption. How exactly do Democrats think a carbon tax or cap-and-trade regime is going to work? The oil executives performed a public service by pointing out other economic realities. About 70% of the price of gasoline is determined by the global price of crude, which is rising because of world-wide demand and volatility in the commodities markets, not to mention the Federal Reserve’s easy-money policy. Congress might also look to its gas mandates and the corset it has laced around domestic production. It’s true that industry profits are at a record high, but oil is a classic boom-and-bust business, which is why billions in capital investments are folded back into exploration and production. Besides, the industry’s effective tax rates are in the neighborhood of 40% to 44%. Over the past five years, Exxon Mobil’s total U.S. tax bill exceeded its U.S. revenues by some $19 billion. Mr. Markey also used the occasion to threaten special tax increases, grilling the executives about $18 billion in 'subsidies,’ which are actually a tax deduction that Congress itself extended to all manufacturers, including Big Oil. And he demanded that the companies commit 10% of profits to renewable energy. But as an Exxon vice president put it, fossil fuels are still going to account for at least two-thirds of the world’s energy consumption in three decades and whatever scientific progress is made, the practical prospects for alternatives remain 'very, very small’."- The Wall Street Journal
"When the going gets tough the not-so-tough surrender to hysteria."- Wesley Pruden
"About this business of Hillary coming under intense sniping, I have some sympathy. The Clintons got away with this sort of thing for so long that you can’t blame them for wondering how they missed the memo advising that henceforth the old rules no longer apply."- Mark Steyn
"Democrats run their own elections the way they run the government: in ways you can’t possibly understand that make no sense, that are not fair, and that are total bureaucratic nightmares."- Rush Limbaugh
"American women are the freest, wealthiest, most educated in the world. They are liberated enough to choose someone for president other than a female candidate out of uterus-based loyalty."- Michelle Malkin
"This weekend, Bill Clinton said Hillary should not drop out of the presidential race. Yeah, when asked why, Bill said, 'Because then she’d come home’."- Conan O’Brien
Jay Leno: Here’s kind of a philosophical question: If a sniper fires a gun in the woods and nobody’s around, does Hillary Clinton still hear it? ... Hey, have you heard Hillary Clinton’s new campaign slogan? "Incoming!" ... As you know, Hillary Clinton now blaming her embellishment of her Bosnia trip on lack of sleep. See, that’s the difference between Hillary and Bill right there. After a night of no sleep, Bill never had a problem coming up with a believable story. ... Actually, new revelations about Hillary’s trip to Bosnia. You know that whole thing? It turns out it was a misunderstanding. Now she says she went there looking to hire a sniper.... It looks like there’s a little more fudging of Hillary’s records. Remember when she said she was deeply involved in the Irish Peace Process? Turns out, she just saw "Lord of the Dance." ... It’s getting nasty. Hillary and Barack really going at it. They’re insulting each other, trading barbs, attacking each other’s credibility. In fact, the only break they take from attacking each other is when they promise the American people, if elected, they can unite the country.
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
- PJ O'Rourke
The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.
- Thomas Carlyle
