Lingua publica
The
good and the bad...presented with permission from The Patriot E-Journal
web posted September 25, 2006
"I don't know how you can explain five years of no attacks, five years of successful disruption of attacks, five years of defeating the efforts of al-Qa'ida to come back and kill more Americans. You've got to give some credence to the notion that maybe somebody did something right." -- U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney
"The biggest story since 9/11 is that there hasn't been an other 9/11. According to our hysterical media culture, everything's always going wrong. The truth is that we've gotten the big things right... Does that mean everything's perfect? Of course not... [S]ome terrorists will manage to hit us again. But if attempt No. 500 succeeds, it doesn't mean it wasn't worth stopping the other 499. Yet, after the next attack, we'll hear no end of trash-talk about how the War on Terror ‘failed'." -- Ralph Peters
"A Western civilization that will not recognize the essential role that Judaism and Christianity played in its development and will not defend its faith in these religions and the right of other faiths to exist unthreatened, will fall victim to the irrationality and violence of Islam, and the light of reason will be turned off." -- Alan Caruba
"I simply don't accept the notion that there's any partisan agenda in the way we cover the news." -- New York Times Assistant Managing Editor Richard Berke
"The drop in [gas] prices may last a couple of months, long enough to get through the November election. Could that be what the oil companies want?" -- CNN's Bill Schneider
"[Joe Lieberman] was one of the originators of public statements that misled the American people into believing that the Iraqi war was justified. He's joined in with the Republican spokespersons by saying that Democrats who disagree are really supporting terrorism. So for all these reasons, I've lost my confidence in Joe Lieberman and don't wish to see him re-elected." -- Jimmy Carter
"I think I'd be a good president. I don't care what the dominant, conventional wisdom is today; it will not be the dominant, conventional wisdom in a year." -- John Kerry commenting on his chances of running against Hillary
"[N]o Democrat that doesn't have a plan to get our troops out of Iraq should be voted for. Not one of them. You know, there's got to be some courage expressed, and that's what I'm worried about is that we're not going to have good choices." -- actor Sean Penn
"If you wonder why it took 50 years to get the truth about Joe McCarthy, consider the fanatical campaign of the Clinton acolytes to kill an ABC movie that relies on the 9/11 Commission Report, which whitewashed only 90 percent of Clinton's cowardice and incompetence in the face of terrorism, rather than 100 percent." -- Ann Coulter
"Say what you like about the left-wing kooks but they can still get a good hate on... Every morning I wake up to a gazillion e-mails from fellows wishing me ill, usually beginning by calling me a ‘chicken hawk' followed by a generous smattering of words I can only print here peppered with asterisks, and usually ending with pledges to come round and shove various items in a particular part of my anatomy. There's so much shipping scheduled to go up there I ought to get Dubai Ports World in to run it." -- Mark Steyn
"The U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill to build a 700 mile fence along the Mexican border. Apparently, the idea is to keep Mexicans from getting back to Mexico." -- Conan O'Brien
"[I]n heavily Democratic Rhode Island, [Lincoln] Chafee has a much better chance of defeating Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse than his more conservative opponent, Steve Laffey, would have. (Are we the only one to think there's a separation-of-powers problem with sending Whitehouse to the Senate?)" -- James Taranto
"Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela and renown loose cannon... said in a speech Tuesday it's possible the U.S. government had a hand in attacking itself on Sept. 11. Of course, it's also possible the U.S. government doesn't even exist, that it and we and Chavez himself are only figments of the imagination of a little autistic boy staring into a snow globe. Possible, but not bloody likely." -- Leonard Pitts, Jr.
"The new president of Mexico says that he wants to work with the United States to let people in Mexico work jobs that they want to in the United States. As opposed to creating new jobs in Mexico." -- Jay Leno
"Adding to this dangerous clash of civilizations is the need by despots to have an enemy in order to escape accountability for failing to improve their own societies. This is true not only of despots in other lands (today and in the past), but demagogues in our own." -- Cal Thomas
"[U.S. Ambassador to the UN John] Bolton's confirmation for another two years at the UN would be bad news for the secretariat. According to UN sources, [UN Deputy Secretary-General Mark] Malloch Brown has been stirring up anti-Bolton sentiment with his fellow ambassadors, who in turn have contacted senators. Bolton has demanded reform at the UN, and that has not made him popular with the world organization's bureaucrats. They would like nothing better than to give this conservative diplomat his comeuppance." -- Robert Novak
"It's time for the United States to leave the United Nations and spearhead the formation of a new, more workable international consortium... On Wednesday, our president -- and ‘our' includes Americans who do and don't like him -- was verbally assaulted before the United Nations General Assembly in a manner more befitting a wrestling match than what is supposed to be a solemn gathering of the world's nation-states. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez insulted President Bush by saying ‘the Devil was here yesterday,' and ‘it smells of sulfur still today.' That's right. This dictatorial brute came to our own New York City and spat in the face of our president. And the attacks didn't stop with Bush. Chavez declared that ‘the United States' empire is on its way down, and it will be finished soon.' How did those in the audience react? Many roundly applauded when he was done." -- Matt Towery
web posted September 18, 2006
"This time, we're not waiting for our enemies to gather in strength. This time, we're confronting them before they gain the capacity to inflict unspeakable damage on the world. And we're confronting their hateful ideology before it fully takes root." -- U.S. President George W. Bush
"We've come back to remember the valor of those we've lost, those who innocently went to work that day and the brave souls who went in after them." -- former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani
"It is more important that Congress do the right thing than do something. The best way to remember the victims of 9/11 and demonstrate the national resolve to prevail is to have the discipline to undertake only measures that serve to make America safe, free, prosperous, and proud." -- James J. Carafano
"Submitting to ignorance is submitting to defeat. Honor the victims of 9/11 by making a pledge: ‘I will not submit'." -- Michelle Malkin
"Americans have a reputation for giving a fight to whoever asks for it. We intend to live up to our reputation, too." -- Wesley Pruden
"The bottom line is that we haven't been hit since September 11, despite facing a determined and resourceful enemy. All means of national power must be harnessed to combat radical Islam." -- California Republican Rep. Ed Royce
"[I]t's time to face a hard cold fact: Militant Islam wants to kill us just because we're alive and don't believe as they do... Now, this threat is not just going to go away because we choose to ignore it... But some Americans, sadly, are not interested in victory. And yet they want us to believe that their behavior is Patriotic. Well, it's not." -- Rush Limbaugh
"Did you see that video of the two Fox journalists announcing they'd converted to Islam?... It doesn't matter how ‘understandable' Centanni and Wiig's actions are to us, what the target audience understands is quite different: that there is nothing we're willing to die for. And, to the Islamist mind, a society with nothing to die for is already dead." -- Mark Steyn
"Let us not forget that these crises play into the hands of all extremists. We can see this with terrorism, whether it tries to strike inside or outside our frontiers. Against terrorism, what's needed is not a war." -- French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin
"How covert was Valerie Plame at the CIA? Her top-secret code name was ‘Valerie Plame."' -- Ann Coulter ++ "Now that we've learned that Rove wasn't the one who leaked the name, that in fact the original source of the leak was Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, are you going to give Karl Rove an apology?" -- FNC's Chris Wallace to Howard Dean
"Of the two suicide cults America confronts, liberalism is by far the more lethal." -- Don Feder
"Discrimination is simply the act of choice. When we choose Bordeaux wine, we discriminate against Burgundy wine. When I married Mrs. Williams, I discriminated against other women. Even though I occasionally think about equal opportunity, Mrs. Williams demands continued discrimination." -- Walter Williams
"Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan has announced she's going to live in a tree house in Crawford, Texas. Now, you thought Bush liked to go to Crawford and clear brush and cut down trees before." -- Jay Leno
"In fact, Clinton did sign the presidential finding saying that we needed to either kidnap him or kill him, but just signing a piece of paper didn't result in any kind of action, because every time it came down to it and we had a chance to get bin Laden dead or alive, President Clinton chose not to." -- Lt. Col. Robert "Buzz" Patterson
"If Bill Clinton wishes in the future to complain about historical inaccuracies, I suggest he first answer one question: What handwritten notes, and by whom, were on the three copies of classified documents (out of five) that Sandy Berger chose to steal and cut up with scissors in 2003, smack in the middle of the 9/11 commission's investigation? When we know the answer to that question, Bill, then and only then will you be entitled to complain about historical inaccuracies in the record." -- Maggie Gallagher on Clinton's displeasure with an ABC miniseries on 9/11
web posted September 11, 2006
"We talk about [the Constitution] a lot. We have cases about it. But to actually sit down and read it doesn't happen that often, and that is a very rewarding exercise." -- Chief Justice John Roberts
"Immigration is the most melancholy element of a depressing Republican year. The Iraq intervention and its aftermath have hurt, and Republican inattention to runaway government spending has been deplorable. But immigration is the issue most likely to cause rank-and-file Republican voters to stay home on Election Day, and it may cost the party its congressional majorities." -- Robert Novak
"Some voters still cast ballots on the basis of whether a political party can actually pass legislation. If a GOP Congress working with a Republican president fails to address immigration, many voters will question what exactly they are capable of accomplishing." -- John Fund
"Talking about this dangerous world is not exploitation and demagoguery, though the Democrats will attempt to make it so. The president must not retreat when the Democrats say boo." -- Wesley Pruden
"Behind the Palestinians and the Syrians lies Iran, the guiding light behind the present jihad. Iran, with its burgeoning nuclear weapons program is the single greatest danger to international security." -- Caroline Glick
"Since Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush has repeatedly stressed that the war with terrorism will be long, difficult and frustrating. It is unlike any war the country has fought and so all comparisons -- from the time it is taking, to the number of casualties -- are imperfect. It is not a war America chose to begin; it is a war the United States could not escape." -- Cal Thomas
: "You know, if you were a real cynic, you could also wonder if the oil companies might not be pulling the price of gas down to help the Republicans get re-elected in the midterm elections a couple of months away." -- CNN's Jack Cafferty
"In addition to the people of Germany, the peoples of the Middle East have also borne the brunt of the Holocaust. By raising the necessity of settling the survivors of the Holocaust in the land of Palestine, they have created a permanent threat in the Middle East in order to rob the people of the region of the opportunities to achieve progress. The collective conscience of the world is indignant over the daily atrocities by the Zionist occupiers, destruction of homes and farms, killing of children, assassinations and bombardments." -- Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad
"The only reason [Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln] Chafee calls himself a Republican is that he believes that everyone above a certain income level is required by law to do so. He learned this from reading ‘Doonesbury' and watching ‘The West Wing'." -- Ann Coulter
"[Last] weekend two Fox News journalists, who had been kidnapped in the Middle East, were released. Afterwards, the Fox News journalists said it was the worst experience since being trapped at the Christmas party with Geraldo." -- Conan O'Brien
"A few days ago, [Reuters] made a big hoo-ha about the Israelis intentionally firing a missile at its press vehicle and wounding its cameraman Fadel Shana. Shana was posed in an artful sprawl in a blood-spattered shirt. But it had ridden up and underneath his undershirt was spotlessly white, like a summer-stock Julius Caesar revealing the boxers under his toga." -- Mark Steyn
"Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad dismissed the threat of sanctions Monday and proclaimed Iran's right to nuclear development. Is he seriously expecting the United States to negotiate on this? Perhaps Japan should explain to Iran what it means when you're dealing with a country whose State Department building is named after Harry Truman." -- Argus Hamilton
"Look, things could obviously be a lot better. But they could be a lot worse too. John Kerry could be president." -- Jonah Goldberg
"Germany has offered to send troops to the Lebanon border. I bet Israel's breathing a sigh of relief there. Nothing makes Jewish people feel safer and more secure than the German Army marching on their border." -- Jay Leno
"Some object that the term ‘Islamic fascism' is too vague to encompass the differing agendas of diverse groups such as the Wahhabis, al-Qa'ida and Hezbollah. But just as racist German Nazis found common ground with Asian supremacists in Japan, so too the shared hatred of the West trumps the internecine rivalries of present-day Islamists... In contrast, the fuzzy ‘war on terror' is the real inexact usage. The United States has never fought against an enemy's tools... Other groups today use terror -- like narco-dealers and Basque separatists -- but this war at this time is not against them... The real problem is not that ‘Islamic fascism' is inaccurate or mean-spirited, but that this identification earns such vehement disdain in Europe and the United States. That hysteria may tell us as much about the state of a demoralized West as the term itself does about our increasingly emboldened enemies." -- Victor Davis Hanson
"'Remember the Alamo,' ‘Remember the Maine' and ‘Remember Pearl Harbor' were rallying cries from past wars. Why do Americans have to be reminded to remember? We had better not forget 9/11 and the signal it sent. The enemy won't forget. For him, 9/11 was a continuation in a long war against America. He thinks he can wait us out. He thinks we're weak and will wilt before his demands in order to save our lives. He is betting everything he is right. Is he? Ask me on the 10th anniversary of 9/11." -- Cal Thomas
web posted September 4, 2006
"Simply put, liberals have a big baby problem: They're not having enough of them, they haven't for a long time, and their pool of potential new voters is suffering as a result. According to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had, between them, 147 children. If you picked 100 conservatives, you would find 208 kids. That's a ‘fertility gap' of 41%... A state that was split 50-50 between left and right in 2004 will tilt right by 2012, 54% to 46%. By 2020, it will be certifiably right-wing, 59% to 41%. A state that is currently 55-45 in favor of liberals (like California) will be 54-46 in favor of conservatives by 2020 -- and all for no other reason than babies." -- Dr. Arthur Brooks, Syracuse University
"Americans need a little more patience and Iraqis a little less. That's the judgment of Gen. John Abizaid... ‘Our problem is to give up some control. The Iraqi problem is to take control,' says Abizaid, who as head of Central Command has overall responsibility for U.S. forces here. He says Americans shouldn't think of the transition as a straight line -- 'as they stand up, we stand down' -- but as a process of gradual stabilization." -- David Ignatius
"Somehow, despite contrary facts that are palpably clear in the historic record, [American and European leaders] have managed to convince themselves and the world that the most terrible wars of the 20th century occurred because nations didn't do enough talking to resolve their differences [when in] fact, they occurred because shortsighted, peace-minded leaders allow[ed] good intentions and wishful thinking to take the place of an accurate assessment of the identity and intentions of their adversaries." -- Alan Keyes
"Why, oh why, do they hate us? As a passenger about to board an airliner, it's hard to work up an interest... A more immediate question occurs: ‘How do we keep them from killing us?' By random searches. By searching stereotypical suspects, too. By paying attention." -- Paul Greenberg
"Unless we in the West adapt more quickly than do canny Islamic terrorists in this constantly evolving war, cease our internecine fighting and stop forgetting what we've learned about our enemies -- there will be disasters to come far worse than Sept. 11." -- Victor Davis Hanson
"We are really enabling immigrants to avoid learning English and assimilating into our culture because we give them everything they need so they don't have to learn to speak English or become part of the traditional melting pot. By enabling these people, we build an enclave for them that looks like the one they ran away from at home..." -- Michael Reagan
"When something is more expensive, people want less of it. That's as true of labor as it is of ice cream cones." -- Stephen Moore
"We have to go back to 1974 to find such a favorable environment [for the Democrats]. If we can't win in this environment, we have to question the whole premise of the party." -- James Carville
"You guys in New York can't get a hole in the ground fixed, and it's five years later. So let's be fair." -- New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin on why his city is having problems rebuilding
"It is in the nature of the news business -- and in the nature of human beings -- that we love to hear bad news about other people. In real live we call this: Gossip. Don't believe me? Why do you think 30-second negative political ads are so effective? They move votes because we love gossip. Oh. YOU don't love gossip, but everyone else in your office does." -- Rich Galen
"Three years after the Valerie Plame kerfuffle began, it seems to be ending with a whimper -- that whimper being ‘Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War,' by Michael Isikoff and David Corn... who got the whole thing started by parroting Joe Wilson's claims that his wife's ‘outing' violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act... First of all, ‘Hubris'? This comes on the heels of Tom Ricks's ‘Fiasco.' Then there were ‘Slander,' ‘Treason' and ‘Godless.' It seems everyone wants to be Ann Coulter these days." -- James Taranto
"So, have the Lamonters and other victims of so-called BDS -- Bush derangement syndrome -- been routed? Not quite. Because BDS sufferers have a related secondary affliction: WMDS. This refers not to the unfound weapons of mass destruction but to Wal-Mart derangement syndrome. And the Democratic Party is ministering to these patients with reckless abandon." -- Jonah Goldberg
"Somehow, despite contrary facts that are palpably clear in the historic record, [American and European leaders] have managed to convince themselves and the world that the most terrible wars of the 20th century occurred because nations didn't do enough talking to resolve their differences [when in] fact, they occurred because shortsighted, peace-minded leaders allow[ed] good intentions and wishful thinking to take the place of an accurate assessment of the identity and intentions of their adversaries." -- Alan Keyes