Lingua publica
The good and the bad...
web
posted January 28, 2002
"A Great Power should always keep its powder dry for the supreme fight.
We are in one now. And no amount of casualties will deter us." -- Charles
Krauthammer
"Before our very eyes, history is being transformed into politically
correct fantasy." -- Paul Craig Roberts
"[Leftists] love erasing the truth. They call their lies 'legally accurate,'
'affirmative action,' 'saving the Constitution' -- and now, 'art'." --
Ann Coulter
"So the controversial memorial to the fallen New York City firefighters
will not be built after all. ... At least nobody was planning to depict
the Sept. 11 attackers as a religiously diverse and politically satisfying
group of Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim and Hindu terrorists." --
John Leo
"What our country deserves from everyone who enjoys its fruits and freedoms
is a little more gratitude -- and a lot less greed." -- Michelle Malkin
"In Clintonesque fashion, the Democratic leadership in Washington is
putting their party before the nation -- and the nation sees it." -- Rush
Limbaugh
"The thing that kind of bothers me is his little angelic look about this
feigning of sincerity." -- House Majority Leader Dick Armey on Tom Daschle
"Why can't we honor brave men as individuals, rather than representatives
of their tribe -- white, black or Hispanic. Race is an accident of birth,
courage is a conscious choice.... While Americans come in all colors,
patriotism has no special hue -- neither does duty or honor." -- Don Feder
"In the United States Senate, one of the things I observed in the early
days -- and it's still used -- and that is that you take someone's argument
and then you misrepresent it and misstate and disagree with it. And it's
very effective. I've done it myself a number of times. But eventually,
eventually people catch on." -- Teddy Kennedy (D-Mass.) on the need to
raise taxes
"Ladies and gentlemen, this economic slowdown had begun before we passed
the tax cut -- and most of it hasn't even gone into effect...Even hinting
at a tax hike... is about the worst move we could make." -- Zell Miller
(D-Georgia) on the need to lower taxes
"Our internal bickering may be just what the terrorist ordered, the better
to distract us from what really does matter, starting with this: Wonder
what Osama's up to today?" -- Kathleen Parker
"Minimizing the consequences of folly maximizes the amount of folly.
However, the primary cause of Enron's collapse was not risky behavior
arising from belief in a net under them. Rather, the cause was the growing
arrogance of executives who became confident that no one was looking over
their shoulders, watching -- and understanding -- what they were doing."
-- George Will
"This is the story Democrats need to repeat until November. They need
to tell it till it hurts, because only when the media get sated with the
story will the country have fully digested it." -- Chris Matthews advising
Democrats to "pound home" the Enron story
"In the case of President Clinton, whom I'd known since the late 70s,
we'd editorially supported virtually every aspect of his program, and
were particularly evangelical I would say about his medical care reform
package." -- New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines on the paper's
support for Bill Clinton
"There are not so many [U.S. military] people here as to constitute a
sort of occupation or anything like that. That's not the purpose of it.
It is correct to say it is not just in this region. We have systems in
the military. We review everything every four years and then they [the
Saudis] have systems within every four-year period to review other things."
-- Bill Clinton "speaking" in Saudi Arabia
"Come on, get onto something serious, Russert." -- Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld, when asked by NBC's Tim Russert whether he saw himself
as America's stud at 69 years old
"George Bush [is] wondering what economic book Daschle [is] reading
from [when blaming the recession on tax cuts that have not been implemented].
Das Kapital comes to mind." -- Tom Adkins
"Great powers have not traditionally preoccupied themselves with inventing
currencies, preferring to leave that to banana republics." -- Mark Steyn
"Liberal compassion has been mugged by reality." -- Michael Novak
"Indeed, being against nuclear war is one of those easy positions, like
opposing child abuse, puppy torture, or tributes to Barbra Streisand."
-- Jonah Goldberg
"The idiot shoe-bomber pleaded not guilty today. Not guilty? Two
hundred people on an airplane saw you try to light a bomb in your shoe
on fire. Where does he think he is -- L.A.?" -- Jay Leno
"One of Osama bin Laden's relatives has started his own fashion
line. I believe it is his brother Tommy bin Laden. Tommy is the one that
doesn't have any wives, if you know what I mean." -- David Letterman
"ABC News said the CIA thinks Osama bin Laden slipped their grasp
and escaped the region by sea. The CIA denied the report, and said that
he's staying somewhere in a Taliban-friendly environment. He's just been
granted tenure at Berkeley." -- Argus Hamilton
web
posted January 21, 2002
"President Kennedy and President Reagan understood that the best way
to put more money in people's wallets is to leave it there in the first
place. After all, when you can keep most of what you earn, you have more
incentive to be productive and earn more. As your income grows, you spend
and save more. And that fuels economic growth. But the long-term logic
of this seems to escape most liberals." -- Edwin Feulner
"Last week, one of the widows of September 11th launched the inevitable
lawsuit against United Airlines. If I was United, my defense would be
that we were in full compliance with everything the federal government
required of us: 9/11 was not a failure of security, but of policy. The
official in charge of that policy, [Transportation Secretary] Mr. [Norman]
Mineta, appears to have learned nothing. But he can't be sacked because,
in Mr. Bush's otherwise Republican team, he's the token Democrat, and
he's also the first Asian-American Cabinet Secretary. He is, in that sense,
the most prominent beneficiary of political profiling, which, unfortunately
for the rest of us, is the only acceptable kind." -- Mark Steyn
"Military success breeds success. Let the breeding proceed until every
state that harbors and supports terrorism begins, either through sincere
conversion or sincere fear, to eliminate those who slaughter innocent
people for political ends." -- Barry Farber
"...[There is] a clear, unmistakable threat that al Qaeda could attack
the United States again. We must be prepared, we must be alert, we must
be vigilant. Al Qaeda-trained terrorists may act on their own, or as part
of the terrorist network, but we must assume that they will act." -- Attorney
General John Ashcroft commenting on new charges issued last week against
al Qaeda-trained sneaker-bomber Richard Reid
"In an administration of realists, [Secretary of State Colin] Powell
is as out of place as a ballerina in a bikers' bar." -- Don Feder
"To put the Enron money collected by Bush in his campaigns into perspective,
John Huang raised 800 grand -- easily -- in just two White House coffees."
-- Rush Limbaugh
"The Democrats, have become a party out of the New Deal era -- patriotic
on foreign policy, statist domestically." -- Michael Barone
"Immigration policy must now be considered a matter of national security.
America has the same sovereign right to defend itself against enemies
when the enemy attacks us from within." -- Rep. Ron Paul
"Liberals love victims. They just don't have much emotional energy left
over to be certain that sound results are achieved (from the perspective
of the needy). In fact, when people actually become less needy, liberals
lose their reason for being -- and their base of support." -- Michael
Novak
"In one century we went from teaching Latin and Greek in high school
to offering remedial English in college." -- Joseph Sobran
"For more than 40 years, the heathen left have successfully executed
a systematic, step by step dismantlement of a structure of morals and
values carefully put in place to protect the history, heritage and cultural
identity of America." -- Linda Bowles
"Faulting the tax cut for the newfound deficits is like blaming the person
who grabbed the last slice of pizza for eating the whole thing. In other
words, it's the spending, stupid!" -- Joel Mowbray
"The curtain was pulled back on Tom Daschle, and a bitter partisan, bully
and man who puts politics above everything was exposed." -- Oliver North
"Our country has labored under a federal income tax system that is inconsistent
with the liberty of a free people." -- Rep. Roscoe Bartlett
"The fashionable idiocy that haters must have justifications is one of
those ideas that George Orwell said only an intellectual could believe
-- because no one else could be such a fool." -- Thomas Sowell
"That Japanese admiral declared that he feared the attack on Pearl Harbor
had 'awakened a sleeping giant'." -- CBS correspondent Bob Schieffer on
the year in review, with some fractured history, as "that admiral" was
Isoroku Yamamoto, and he never uttered anything about "waking a sleeping
giant" -- it was the Hollywood-imagined line read by an actor playing
the part of Yamamoto in the movie "Tora! Tora! Tora!"
"It is a business scandal story. There is absolutely not even a whiff
of political scandal in this thing so far. And it's really funny to watch
the Washington press corps try to manufacture it." -- MSNBC analyst Lawrence
O'Donnell on the collapse of Enron
"America is a better place today because of the 50-plus years she has
given to the noble work of journalism." -- Bill Clinton on Helen Thomas
"I always thought he [John Ashcroft] was a scary, creepy guy, but now
that there are even scarier and creepier people in the world, I'm kind
of glad he's on our side. You know, it's like, hey, we have a nut, too."
--Bill Maher, host of ABC show "Politically Incorrect"
"I always love being introduced by a matinee television idol." -- U.S.
President George Bush after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld introduced
him at the Pentagon signing of the defense appropriations bill, with good-natured
ribbing about Rumsfeld's image as the administration's "babe magnet"
"Mass murderers should be executed (as should petty ones). Indeed, should
the executions be held at a NASCAR track, fans would pay $100 a ticket
in a New York minute. Send us your huddling predators, yearning to be
free. We know just what to do with them." -- Dave Shiflett
"Michael Jordan and his wife are getting a divorce. It turns out
Jordan has had half a dozen girlfriends over the past few years. Hey,
forget the NBA, this guy is presidential material." -- David Letterman
"Al Qaeda prisoners were flown to Cuba under very tight security.
They were chained to their seats, sedated and crammed together. No matter
what the Geneva Convention says, we want them to know what it's like to
fly coach in America." -- Argus Hamilton
web
posted January 14, 2002
"Sometimes it is hard to know the truth, but you don't get around that
by reporting every claim by an enemy regime with a long history of lying
-- and then pretending to believe that it is just as credible as what
you have learned from more reliable sources. Much of the media has a confusion
between being objective and creating an arbitrary 'balance' between 'the
two sides.' Objectivity is about facts. Medical science can be objective
about the facts about a disease without being neutral as between the bacteria
and the patient. Medical researchers' objectivity about the facts is what
enables them to discover how to save the patient's life and kill the bacteria.
News-gathering does not have to stop during a war. But news is what has
actually happened. Rumors and speculation are not news. Nor are American
military plans news. Reporting these plans and jeopardizing Americans'
lives is espionage." -- Thomas Sowell
"I believe many Americans, including this correspondent, would support
massive spending of tax dollars if the money would fix social problems
and make the world a better place. But the brutal truth is that we don't
have the solutions to most of the world's dilemmas, and this 'spend more
money' philosophy is simply designed to make the left feel better about
life. It is a shell game extraordinaire, and we are the nuts." -- Bill
O'Reilly
"Historians like to give names to various eras, the Age of Faith or the
Age of Reason. Ours can only be called the Age of Terrorism, for we are
no longer dealing with the isolated acts of bandits or deranged killers;
those we have always had. What we are living through is a revolt against
all ordered society, a war on civilization itself." -- Vermont Royster
"For the Palestinian strongman [Yasser Arafat], terrorism is diplomacy
by other means. ... If Arafat were sincere about fighting terrorism, he'd
have to arrest himself." -- Don Feder
"The American experiment is a moral, not just a political, exercise.
And as such, it assumes certain things to be true about human nature...."
-- Charles Colson
"We seem not to have learned a basic lesson of history: Capitalism harnesses
human self interest; socialism exhausts itself trying to kill it." --
Linda Bowles
"Americans as donors and taxpayers have been far too generous with the
higher education establishment. It's about time we stop paying for campus
anti-Americanism and academic dishonesty. Nothing opens the closed minds
of college administrators more than the sounds of pocketbooks snapping
shut." -- Walter Williams
"Not over my dead body will they raise your taxes." -- U.S. President
George W. Bush
"Remember the initial post-Sept. 11 why-do-they-hate us angst? How could
we possibly defeat this powerful, fanatical, ingrained, battle-hardened,
religiously grounded enemy? We discovered the answer: satellite-guided
thousand-pounders with the odd daily cutter thrown in." -- Charles Krauthammer
"Doesn't Chrysler know that its cars will be used in bank robberies and
drive-by shootings? Can't Rawlings foresee that thugs will use its baseball
bats to deliver vicious beatings? Isn't Stanley aware that adolescent
toughs (not to mention hijackers) use its box cutters as weapons?" --
Jacob Sullum applying consistently the same argument an Illinois appeals
court accepted as basis for suing gunmakers and gun sellers
"Americans, the most practical people almost anywhere, prefer doers to
thinkers, the earthy to the esoteric, hard heads to soft IQs and plain
thinking to squishy sophistication." -- Suzanne Fields
"Americans stand in jeopardy of remembering Geraldo Rivera, Christiane
Amanapour or Ashleigh Banfield as the heroes of the Afghan War. Relentlessly
narcissistic and buoyed by cloying network anchors at home, reporters
such as these have used dramatic license to heighten the sense of personal
danger to themselves and thus tacitly direct their reporting towards the
inevitable conclusion -- 'ain't I a hero?'" -- Decorated Gulf War combat
veteran John Hillen
"I know something about the culture of obfuscation." -- Former Clinton
legal advisor Lanny Davis on the Enron debacle
"The incentives are all for fudging the numbers and lying like hell....
That means the administration has one hell of an advantage on this." --
Rep. David Obey (D-Wisconsin), ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations
Committee, on "bipartisan" governmental budget processes
"If you look to our societies, we are already registered from birth until
death. Our governments know who we are and what we are. ... It's a basic
rule of management that if you want to manage something, you measure it.
It's the same with human beings and migration. But instead of measuring
it, you have to register them." -- Belgium's Pascal Smet at a UN meeting
to discuss the need to fingerprint and register everyone in the world
under a universal identification scheme
"I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to come and witness
my hanging. Fortunately it's my portrait." -- President George W. Bush
at the Texas Capitol unveiling of his official gubernatorial portrait
"The embargo on red whine has been lifted." -- Ron Marr on recent Leftist
attacks on economic and faith-based conservatism
"Politicians are wonderful people as long as they stay away from things
they don't understand, such as working for a living." -- P.J. O'Rourke
"A friend notes that Monica Lewinsky is 28 this week. And it seems like
only yesterday she was crawling around on the floor of the Oval Office."
-- Lyn Nofziger
"It's cold out East -- so cold that Al Gore said he is now in favor
of global warming!" -- Jay Leno
"It snowed! You can tell New York City is still jumpy, because when
people saw the white powder falling they started taking Cipro." --
David Letterman
"Don Rumsfeld said the Navy is building a high security jail in
Guantanamo Bay for al Qaeda detainees. It has four guard towers and barbed
wire. Cuba's building codes require that the facility look like all the
other buildings in the neighborhood." -- Argus Hamilton
web
posted January 7, 2002
"Although I have to leave you as mayor soon, I resume the much more honorable
title of citizen of New York and citizen of the United States." -- Former
New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani
"And, of course, liberals see no problem with using the government to
impose their cultural beliefs on others; they just won't admit that's
what they're doing." -- Jonah Goldberg
"I hope Americans are guilty of 'intolerance.' I hope we have zero tolerance
for those who aspire to destroy us as a nation." -- Brent Bozell
"There is a point where political correctness becomes an acid that erodes
freedom." -- Bill O'Reilly
"Media bias in editorials and columns is one thing. Media fraud in reporting
'facts' in news stories is something else. ...The issue is not what various
journalists or news organizations' editorial views are. The issue is the
transformation of news reporting into ideological spin, along with self-serving
taboos and outright fraud." -- Thomas Sowell
"The only time [the news media] utter the words 'left wing' is when they're
talking about an airplane." -- Bernard Goldberg
"But as you know, some people are also saying it just opens old wounds
at a time when we're trying to have political unity in this country. Was
that part of your consideration? ... You've lived in the political culture
long enough to know that admirers of the Clintons or other people who
are neutral in all of this are going to say, 'Look, this is just a continuation
of a political vendetta against that couple'." -- NBC anchor Tom Brokaw
hectoring Solicitor General Ted Olson about his decision to go ahead with
publication of "The Final Days: A Behind the Scenes Look at the Last,
Desperate Abuses of Power by the Clinton White House," by his wife, Barbara,
who was murdered on the airliner that crashed into the Pentagon on September
11, 2001
"... [Bill Clinton] was sustaining an unprecedented attack on his presidency,
an effort to oust him for reasons that had nothing to do with abuse of
power. What's more, the entire impeachment process had been propelled
by an effort to 'get' Clinton -- the 'vast right-wing conspiracy' of Hillary's
telling and accurate phrase." --Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen
explaining how Republicans distracted Clinton from neutralizing Osama
bin Laden
"I think people need to understand what's going on the other side of
the equation, how the U.S. is viewed by its critics." -- Harvard's Alex
S. Jones arguing on behalf of Osama bin Laden's perspective, forgetting
perhaps that bin Laden's perspective was on display on September 11
"Donations of this type reflect certain political realities which are
followed by all major corporations." -- Robert Bennett on the $100,000
energy trader Enron Corp. donated to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign
Committee in late November, as the company was a week out of bankruptcy
filings. Notably, the media failed to call for an investigation as it
did for Enron's donations to Republican groups
"Bill Clinton has always asked a lot of his friends. But this time he
really, really wants a lot. He's counting on a small circle of spinners,
hypesters, prevaricators, hucksters and over-the-hill midway men to find
his reputation, disinfect it, scrub it down, polish it up and make it
fit for decent company. That's a tall order." -- Wesley Pruden on the
"Summit to Rewrite the Clinton Legacy"
"Frivolity is so over, so last-decade. That's why witty airheads like
Maureen Dowd now come across as op-ed dinosaurs, and the scandals that
seemed delicious last summer, such as Chandra's disappearance, Rudy's
divorce, and the Bush twins' misadventures in Margaritaville, have all
the resonance of middle Babylonian history." -- Charlotte Allen
"If you give a man a fish he will eat for a day. But if you teach a man
to fish he will buy an ugly hat. And if you talk about fish to a starving
man then you're a consultant." -- Scott Adams in the comic strip "Dilbert"
"A rattlesnake loose in the living room tends to end all discussion of
animal rights." -- Time magazine's Lance Morrow on Middle East relations
after September 11
"Everything was more important than fighting terrorism. Political correctness,
civil liberties concerns, fear of offending the administration's supporters,
Janet Reno's objections, considerations of cost, worries about racial
profiling and, in the second term, surviving impeachment, all came before
fighting terrorism." -- Dick Morris on the Clinton era
"Here we have a president who defended perjury, had the meaning of the
word 'is' changed to fit his own definition, yet he couldn't find a lawyer
to find a way to take out bin Laden? Instead, we fire 66 missiles in one
day with no follow-up campaign, which weakened our prestige in the Middle
East. When I look at what the Clinton administration said -- and did --
it was astounding." -- Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich -- nearly incredulous
at reports Sudan had offered to hunt down bin Laden and turn him over
to the U.S., but Bill Clinton declined the offer for "legal reasons"
"Just exactly what is it about displaying national pride that could possibly
be offensive to foreigners who are among us as a matter of privilege?
Why would anyone be offended at our cause against terrorism? And, if they
are, should we defer to their misguided thinking?" -- David Limbaugh
"The theory goes like this. Our enemy in Afghanistan is religious extremism
and intolerance. It's therefore more important than ever to honor the
ideals of tolerance -- religious, sexual, racial, reproductive -- at home.
The GOP is out of the mainstream, some Democrats will argue [this] year,
because it's too dependent upon an intolerant 'religious right'." -- Newweek's
Howard Fineman on reports that Democrats are planning a media campaign
that would demonize the Christian right
"We are determined to fight this evil and fight until we are rid of it.
We will not wait for more innocent deaths. We will not wait for the authors
of mass murder to gain the weapons of mass destruction. We act now because
we must lift this dark threat from our age and save generations to come."
-- U.S. President George W. Bush
"Thirty-nine percent of Americans say that George W. Bush is the
man they admire most, according to a Gallup poll. This is the highest
rating in the history of Gallup polls. The figure could go higher, though.
They're still waiting on votes from Florida. After those are in, the rating
will skyrocket!" -- Jay Leno
"Don Rumsfeld assured that Osama bin Laden will be captured soon
by the massive manhunt out to find him. He's only safe if he goes home
to Saudi Arabia. It's the one place on earth where nobody needs the $25
million." -- Argus Hamilton
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