Lingua publicus
The last month in quotes...the good and the bad
"I do not regard this impeachment vote as some great badge of shame." -- Bill Clinton to Dan Rather on 60 Minutes II
"I wouldn't do that to the Constitution. I wouldn't do that to the presidency, I wouldn't do that to the history of this country." -- Bill Clinton explaining why he wouldn't resign on 60 Minutes II
"Bosnia -- just one of Clinton's current tar pits -- was supposed to be an in-and-out-and-over one-year commitment. Instead, we're going on four. The Bosnian swamp's already cost over 12 billion bucks and almost ruined three of our best heavy Army divisions, and there's no end in sight. ... Kosovo promises to be an even hotter and more dangerous mission than Bosnia. The Serbs may defend their sacred homeland ferociously.... American blood could really flow." -- Col. David Hackworth (US Army-Ret.), America's most-decorated living soldier.
"If by its action in Kosovo, NATO seems to affirm the principle of ethnic self- determination, or if the drama being played out there emboldens armed ethnic minorities to assert a right to self- determination, then NATO, which has expanded eastward and probably is not done expanding, could learn that a policeman's lot is not a happy one." -- George Will
"If three pro-Clinton protesters show up in front of the White house, CNN shows up with a satellite truck. We have had anti-Clinton protesters at the White House every Saturday for the last six months -- not one iota of coverage from the national media!" -- Free Republic's Connie Hair
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: "I am saying what
President Clinton has said and repeated a number of times, that he has
no intention of sending ground forces into this operation."
Bob Schieffer of CBS: "I don't say this to mean disrespect,
but we have learned to be very careful in interpreting the words of
this president. So when you say 'no intention,' does that mean that
that could change?"
Albright: "All I can tell you is the words. He will not
send ground -- he says he has no intention, he is the commander in chief
and when he speaks, he should be respected."
"Every woman in this country who struggles to balance work and family...who worries about how she'll pay her bills if she divorces her husband knows that our work is not done." -- Hillary Clinton on feminism
"Like in [the 1950s] if you wanted to ruin someone's career in Hollywood you claimed he was a Communist. Nowadays, you want to ruin someone's career in Hollywood, you claim they are Republican." -- Jay Leno
"The modern politician's repose is perpetual motion, there being no expectation of momentous thoughts during rapid movement." -- George F. Will
"In the aftermath of the acquittal of President Clinton of perjury as an impeachable offense, even his most strident defenders do not openly dispute that the Constitution imposes some limits on presidential powers. Yet within days of his acquittal the president engaged us in a military war, based on an unconstitutional principle." -- Jerome M. Zeifman
"Had Congress performed its constitutional duty, all of these facts would have been rigorously examined before our nation found itself committed to an illegal war in Yugoslavia. ... Had Congress been willing to exercise a check on presidential ambitions by withholding funds for the envisioned military deployment, we would have learned, in a timely fashion, about the unconstitutional arrangement through which the power to declare war was delegated to a Spanish Marxist, and the power to make war was assigned to NATO's military commander. Had we acted with statesman-like deliberation, we would have soberly discussed and contemplated the implications of the Kosovo precedent for our nation's future." -- Rep. Helen Chenoweth
"As 'genocide' was going on in Kosovo (so said the State Department), Bill Clinton played golf. The stresses of war, no doubt." -- Charles Krauthammer
"You know, for a draft dodger and war protester, Clinton is the most bomb-happy president since Lyndon Johnson." -- Charley Reese
"Bill Clinton and his NATO allies are racists. ... They justified NATO's unprecedented and illegal attack on a sovereign state on the basis that 2 000 dead in a civil war constituted a humanitarian crisis sufficient to justify going to war. Well, 700 000 Tutsis were slaughtered -- men, women, children and babies -- in Rwanda, and that only rated a bit of rhetoric from Clinton...By my math that means, in their minds, one European life is more valuable than 350 black lives." -- Charley Reese
"The tax code is being crammed with special-interest provisions intended mainly to advertise public solidarity with some selected constituency, social group or cause." -- Robert J. Samuelson
"Did Richard Nixon go to China so that his successor 25 years later could traffic in Chinese campaign contributions?" -- Wall Street Journal
"The human cost of moral incompetence in high places grows clearer by the day." -- Alan Keyes
"And so American youth are being sent into battle, and the security and reputation of America itself are being placed on the line, under circumstances that are woefully unclear by a leader no one can trust." -- David Horowitz
"How ironic that the anti-war protester has become the warmonger. With such moral inconsistency and divergent courses of action in similar situations, you might think that, by statistical chance, Clinton would have made the correct decision once. Amazingly, that is not the case. Defying the odds, Clinton has proved that even with inconsistent application of his twisted sense of morality that he is fully capable of being consistently wrong." -- Joseph Farah
"We are at the leading edge of the next frontier of the civil rights movement: the battle for a broader sharing of economic power and wealth. ... The people who run our companies and who control the allocation of capital in this country must come to understand the value of inclusion." -- Jesse Jackson arguing from Das Kapital
"I was going to ask about the flat tax. Do you think it would sell any better if Steve Forbes didn't look like a retarded janitor?" -- Bill Maher, host of Politically Incorrect
"I want them dead and their children dead." -- Susan McDougal on Ken Starr and his investigators
"On my income tax 1040 it says 'Check this box if you are blind.' I wanted to put a check mark about three inches away." -- Tom Lehrer
"Clinton no longer a lawyer? Whew, you thought his popularity rating was high now." -- Jay Leno on Mr. Clinton's pending disbarment
"I don't think ever has our nation had such a bunch of fools running our national security as we do now." -- Colonel David Hackworth (US Army-Ret.)
"The problem is that for far too long members of Congress have endorsed the unconstitutional principle of complete presidential prerogative in military affairs. It is Congress, not the President, which is empowered to declare war. For years, though, Congress has allowed presidents - - Republican and Democrat -- to recklessly scatter our troops around the world to play the ill-conceived role of international policemen." -- Congressman Ron Paul
"If we got the guns out of schools and out of the hands of younger Americans, say nothing of their parents and older Americans...then perhaps this wouldn't be as pervasive a problem." -- MSNBC anchor Brian Williams on "the gun problem."
"I don't think we're going to be very eager to help the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army). They have a checkered past, but so many of us do." -- Geraldo Rivera, with some brilliant NBC reporting on "checkered pasts."
"Friends of Bill are fond of describing presidential critics as 'haters.' Does this mean that speaking ill of Bill might in time become a federal crime?" -- Tony Snow on Mr. Clinton's so-called "hate- crimes" legislation
"Mainstream America is counting on you to draw your sword and fight for them. These people have precious little time and resources to battle misguided Cinderella attitudes, the fringe propaganda of the homosexual coalition, the feminists who preach that it is a divine duty for women to hate men, blacks who raise a militant fist with one hand while they seek preference with the other, and all the New-Age apologists for juvenile crime, who see roving gangs as a means of youthful expression, sex as a means of adolescent merchandising, violence as a form of entertainment for impressionable minds, and gun bans as a means to lord-knows-what. We have reached that point in time when our national social policy originates on Oprah. I say it´s time to pull the plug." -- Charlton Heston
"Milosevic is no Hitler, despite the ceaseless propaganda to that effect. The more pertinent lesson might be drawn from the Balkans themselves -- the lesson of Sarajevo, where a single event, an assassination, drew shortsighted major powers into what soon became World War I." -- Joseph Sobran
"NATO's decision, which borders on the bizarre, to proceed with its 50th anniversary celebration is a metaphor for the war that NATO began imprudently, is waging peculiarly and is losing. The celebration, like the war, will proceed pretty much according to plan because there is no plan other than to pretend that things are going as planned." -- George Will
"If these kids were walking around that school in black trench coats, saying 'Heil Hitler', why didn't somebody pay attention? I guarantee you if little Cassie Bernall, the little girl who was asked 'Do you believe in God?' and she said yes and [was killed], if she and her friends had been walking through that school carrying Bibles and saying 'Hail the Prince of Peace, King of Kings,' they would have been hauled into the principal's office." -- Bill Bennett on the Littleton shootings
"We are going to have to do some serious thinking in this country about how we can take more control over what our children see and experience. The constant exposure to violence on TV, in the movies, on video games, in music -- there's much too much evidence that children get desensitized... There's so much of it. We're awash in it... We can no longer shut our eyes to the impact the media is having on all our children, and the potentially violent impact it is having on some of them." -- Hillary Clinton, who's husband accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from the people who creaed that violence on TV and in the movies...
"I honestly think -- and I am not an expert on the amendments - - I think the only people in this nation who should be allowed to own guns are police officers. ... It is 1999. We have had enough as a nation. You are not allowed to own a gun, and if you do own a gun I think you should go to prison." -- Rosie O'Donnell
