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The good and the bad...

web posted June 23, 2003

"What needs saying is that no peace is possible between the two adversaries -- road map or no -- so long as the Arab nations insist, as they have been doing for generations, on teaching their children that hatred of Jews and suicide bombing is serving Allah. If the Arabs leaders were looking forward to a peaceful, negotiable resolution of the half-century conflict would Syrian school textbooks be peddling anti-Semitism?" -- Arnold Beichman

"Wishful thinking might bring comfort, but not security." -- U.S. President George W. Bush

"We need to beware of the modern tendency to admire image and personality over character and conviction." -- Chuck Colson

"Now more than ever we must press on and give to the terrorists and their abettors no quarter -- and to the reformers help, protection, and hope. ...Let them choose and let us act accordingly, as unyielding to our enemies as we are magnanimous to our friends." -- Victor Davis Hanson

"Deep down, those who scream for Iraq's weapons of mass death right now! probably hope they remain concealed. If they never materialize, they will focus on the absence of equipment rather than the presence of evil, now vanquished, and thus dismiss Iraq's liberation as a worthless escapade." -- Deroy Murdock

"But reporting 'facts' in a moral vacuum is not objectivity; it is, in fact, just the opposite." -- Joel Mowbray

"How can there possibly be liberty and justice for all, when, in the name of justice, people claim rights to income, food, housing, education, health care, transportation, ad infinitum? We can't." -- Gary M. Galles

"Exaggeration is the handmaiden of analysis. The trouble is that economic complexities defy the simplicities of political rhetoric and prejudice." -- Robert J. Samuelson

"Some politicians say more money is the answer to the problems in the public schools. If it were, the United States would have the best-educated students on Earth, because we are spending record amounts." -- Cal Thomas

"So far Americans in Iraq haven't had much luck in finding WMDs -- Weapons of Mass Destruction -- but it turns out that they're doing pretty good at finding VMDs -- victims of mass destruction -- slaughtered by the hundreds on orders of Saddam Hussein and buried in mass grave sites around the country." -- Lyn Nofziger

"The credibility of this country is based upon our strong desire to make the world more peaceful and the world is now more peaceful after our decision.... And history will show ... time will prove that the United States made the absolute right decision in freeing the people of Iraq from the clutches of Saddam Hussein." -- U.S. President George W. Bush

"The battle of Iraq was a major victory in the war on terror, but the war itself is far from over. We cannot allow ourselves to grow complacent. We cannot forget that the terrorists remain determined to kill as many Americans as possible, both abroad and here at home, and they are still seeking weapons of mass destruction to use against us. With such an enemy, no peace treaty is possible; no policy of containment or deterrence will prove effective. The only way to deal with this threat is to destroy it, completely and utterly." -- U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney

"If the U.S. intelligence agencies bent their data to damn Saddam, why is it that the French, German and Russian intelligence services all came to the same conclusion? Why is it that every country on the Security Council, including Syria, in the unanimous Resolution 1441, declared that Saddam had failed to account for the tons of chemical and biological agents he had in 1998?" -- Charles Krauthammer

"The spending problem is deeply rooted in Washington bureaucratic culture, and no administration is immune. ...When neither Congress nor the administration is capable of fiscal self-control, the taxpayer is always the loser. How do you feel knowing the federal government just wrote itself a trillion dollar loan using your labor as collateral?" -- Ron Paul

"Every state has individuals who are extreme Leftists, but California has more per capita than other states. Because the American people are a tolerant people and believe in 'diversity,' we allow Leftists to wear their sandals and smoke their pipes on campuses, but they remain on the fringe in most states. In California, they get elected to office where they can effectively implement their social change ideas; and the California Legislature is their primary laboratory. In a nutshell, that is the explanation for the fact that California is bleeding red ink in barrels." -- Ward Connerly

"We'd just as soon move past the Clinton years, but if its partisans are going to rewrite history, someone has to keep track of the billing records. Now Senator Clinton has presidential ambitions, and her memoir is being portrayed as an attempt to clear away the 1990s for her White House run. If she really wants to be trusted in the future, she could start by being more honest about the past." -- The Wall Street Journal

"Political Correctness ... blind-sided us. We had no idea how bad PC could get. In fact, at first we thought it was rather cute, like some sort of parlor game. Who could be the first in the crowd to remember to call blacks 'African-Americans' and NOT to call grown women 'girls.' The creep, then the trot, then the gallop, and now the icy tyranny of PC makes me feel like the victim in Edgar Allan Poe's chilling tale 'The Cask of Amontillado' in which the dinner guest slowly realizes that what seemed like a silly after-dinner prank staged by his host was actually going to be the end of his life." -- Barry Farber

"Unfortunately, this is how conventional wisdom is molded. A badly flawed study leads to an even more flawed New York Times article." -- Eugene Volokh on the reportorial breathlessness over recent research finding gun ownership associated with death by shooting

"Look, we know each of our major newspapers comes with an established point of view.... And USA Today's is that of Sean Penn's character in 'I Am Sam' after inhaling paint fumes." -- Dennis Miller

"Now Iraq isn't another Vietnam, it's another Watergate! This is what's behind the 'debate' over whether the Bush administration 'lied' about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction." -- James Taranto on the shifting critques of the battle of Iraq

"Miss Hillary's new book surely will make it on The New York Times' bestseller list. The only suspense left is whether it will be placed on the fiction or nonfiction list." -- Tony Blankley

"Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, Monica Lewinsky? A vast right-wing conspiracy." -- Kathleen Parker

"And if using gregarious Bill as the advance man for chilly Hilly's own ambitions wasn't the original plan, it is now. Whatever she says, I can see her running, and, in certain circumstances, I can see her narrowly winning. Another Clinton presidency, and a disaster for the country. History repeats itself, but in defiance of the usual order: first the trouser-dropping farce, then tragedy." -- Mark Steyn

"Apparently the first guy that showed up at bookstore at midnight to buy Hillary's book was one of her campaign aides. The whole thing was staged. It's typical Clinton." -- Rush Limbaugh

"...[T]here is considerable evidence from recent opinion polls that the American public these days regard the Clintons as mostly a hairball it would like to get over." -- Thomas Lipscomb

"Hillary has called for a Senate inquiry to review the credibility of the intelligence used to justify the war and if people were misled. And if there's one thing the Clintons won't stand for, it's misleading the American people." -- Jay Leno

web posted June 16, 2003

"Since new competitive media have forced [Leftists] to confront opposing points of view, they seem to have abandoned emotionalism as their main argument. Their new posture is mock hardheaded realism. [Leftists] flex their spindly little muscles and announce that everything that used to make them cry -- guns, racial profiling, torturing suspects -- simply doesn't work: The fact is, it doesn't work, this is according to several studies, and no, you can't see them, why would you ask? ...It's as if [Leftists] held focus groups on how to best present their ridiculous ideas and were told: Passion you've got! But what respondents say you lack is: intellection, thinking things through, understanding elementary human nature, and a basic awareness of what people are like. If conservatives have not yet persuaded [Leftists] to give up on socialism and treason, we have at least gotten them to fake linear thinking. The next hurdle is substance." -- Ann Coulter

"Democrats have always been more aggressive than Republicans in advancing their vision for the judiciary. This is no doubt because they depend on a politicized, activist judiciary to deliver much of their political agenda. ...Aggressive Democrats seeking a more political judiciary and an evenly divided Senate with several liberal Republicans make the next Supreme Court vacancy perhaps the most important domestic leadership opportunity for our new president. No matter what the liberal media say, most Americans would agree that they, and not unelected judges, should run the country and define the culture. 'We the people' should once again mean something. If he ignores the speculators and would-be intimidators and promotes a judiciary that follows rather than fashions the law, Mr. Bush can truly establish a legacy of freedom." -- Thomas L. Jipping

"Patriots aren't born, they're made. We're born citizens, but citizenship has to be learned." -- Suzanne Fields

"We'll solve the WMD puzzle, but it may take some time. The main question for us to consider now, though, is this: Is the world a better and safer place now that Saddam Hussein is gone? Without a doubt." -- Peter Brookes

"Properly understood, peace is not merely the absence of war. It means actual freedom and opportunity for people. ...But true peace is based on actions, not mere talk." -- Rich Tucker

"Has there ever been a period of strengthened national security, lower tax rates and an expanding money supply that did not produce prosperity? Never." -- Larry Kudlow

" What we want is the worldwide spread of prosperity and, importantly, the spread of freedom that underwrites it." -- Alan Caruba

"The idea that the state is exempt from ordinary moral strictures has no reasonable justification. It is merely a convenient excuse put forward by state agents and their apologists, who, like everyone else, would prefer to operate without any limitations on their own actions, while binding everyone else to obey moral rules." -- Gene Callahan

"Big government is the most corrupt industry in America." -- Malcolm Wallop

"Around the world we've seen how government can be perverted into an instrument of kleptocracy. ... 'Kleptocracy' is not too strong a word if you believe our tort system should be a means of compensating the truly wronged and not a means of transferring large amounts of wealth to those who are adept at manipulating the levers. ... We've reached the point where the Democrat Party's captivity [to the trial lawyers] has become an embarrassment and threat to the nation." -- Wall Street Journal

"Five particular issues -- homosexuality, abortion, cloning, child abuse and pornography -- were each listed by less than one-half of one percent of the public as being among the most serious national issues. Whether this is because people are burned out on these issues, they don't understand the nature of the underlying concern, or they simply do not care one way or the other, the fact is that such 'hot button' issues are hot for a relatively chosen few. Most Americans either yawn or cringe at the mention of those issues." -- George Barna, on a recent study by the Barna Research

"So you've got this President, who'd been waving his wand at everyone who walked by for their entire marriage, and he does it in the Oval Office with an intern and she says that Starr's the one obsessed with sex? Hello?" -- Brit Hume on Hillary Clinton's version of the Lewinsky scandal

"I wouldn't know how to judge it [the 'vast right wing conspiracy']. That may not have been the most artful language because it's not really a conspiracy, which seems to suggest something that is done under cover of darkness or in secret. It's a very open agenda that's being pursued." -- Hillary Clinton on her prior characterization of the Bill Clinton's political opponents

"Well I like to do my own research so I think what I would say is that we haven't found Saddam Hussein and I don't know anyone who's running around saying he didn't exist. It takes time. Does that sound reasonable?" -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the continuing search for Iraq's WMD -- and their previous owner.

"Sunday night, Barbara Walters lived up to her eternal caricature, the pampering puffball princess who asks tough questions like: 'If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?' She should have tried that with Hillary Rodham Clinton, so the senator could tell us she would be a weeping willow. ...Truth is the first casualty in the Clinton wars ... and the booking wars." -- Tim Graham

"...[P]ersonally, I feel you'd be safer trusting a rabbit to deliver a carrot than to trust the new Republican Party to stand by the Constitution." -- Gary Nolan

"The Democratic field this year looks like the Great Dismal Swamp, and to call the pretenders to the throne the seven (or eight or nine) dwarfs is to insult dwarfs. Even Al Gore is said to be thinking again about his rash decision to abandon the field to the little people." -- Wesley Pruden

"More and more, Mr. Clinton comes to resemble a Harold Stassen who was elected. He is forever running for office, or at least for historical justification. He not only seems bent on swaying posterity, but talking until it arrives." -- Paul Greenberg

"In the book that came out today, Hillary [Clinton] says she compared her decision to forgive Bill with Nelson Mandela's decision to forgive his jailers. Of course, the big difference is Mandela was innocent." -- Jay Leno

"Saddam Hussein remained invisible ... after he made his weapons of mass destruction vanish into thin air. This man is just a white tiger away from having a job for life on the Las Vegas stage. We already know he can saw a woman in half." -- Argus Hamilton

"...[Iranians] want only one thing: Freedom. ... We are constantly amazed, though, at how different our reality is from what some American journalists, academics, and opinion-makers portray it as. So often, we hear self-described Iran experts on CNN and reporters in America's leading newspapers explain away the dictatorship under which we suffer. We hear them talk about how young people and women still support President Khatami! No. We do not! ... Listen to us: We no more want to be part of an Islamic Republic than did the Hungarians, Czechs, or Poles want to be part of a Communist dictatorship. ... We aspire to establish a democracy based on a modern, liberal, and, yes, the Western model of secularism. ... To us, the Islamic revolution has failed. ... Iran's 23-year-old theocracy is as incapable of granting freedom and human rights as was the Soviet Union. No politician associated with the Islamic Republic is acceptable to us. There are no reformers in the clerical government. Our real reformers are among the 600,000 languishing in prison, or the hundreds of candidates who are disqualified in each election for believing in human rights or secularism. Do not sell out our freedom because of Khatami's meaningless double talk and irrelevant rhetoric. He is simply a smiling face of an ugly regime." -- Iranian dissident leader Farideh Tehrani

web posted June 2, 2003

"Like it or not, we're teaching our children from the moment they come into the world. They watch us like hawks. As they see us obey laws, treat others with respect and remain faithful to our spouse, they learn to do those things, too. If we engage in watching raunchy videos, use foul language or cave in to the cultural pressures on us as adults, how can we expect them, as children, to not give in to pressure?" -- Rebecca Hagelin

"How fitting that Jesse Jackson has subjected NASCAR to his unique brand of activism. Like so much of Mr. Jackson's world, car racing involves noise, smoke and spinning in circles while ultimately going nowhere. Meanwhile, poor blacks in the bleachers wonder how this helps them.... NASCAR should ignore Mr. Jackson's pay-me-or-I'll-scream-racism racket. If its executives still believe they owe blacks something, they should underwrite groups that actually improve the lives of underprivileged black folks." -- Deroy Murdock

"Today, our alliance of freedom faces a new enemy, a lethal combination of terrorist groups, outlaw states seeking weapons of mass destruction, and an ideology of power and dominations that targets the innocent and justifies any crime." -- U.S. President George W. Bush

"In any event, the United States at the moment is involved in a very shaky peaceful interlude not only between acts of terror perpetrated on its home soil but also between wars." -- Lyn Nofziger

"The 'right reason' for this war was the need to partner with Iraqis, post-Saddam, to build a progressive Arab regime. Because the real weapons of mass destruction that threaten us were never Saddam's missiles. The real weapons that threaten us are the growing number of angry, humiliated young Arabs and Muslims, who are produced by failed or failing Arab states -- young people who hate America more than they love life. Helping to build a decent Iraq as a model for others -- and solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- are the necessary steps for defusing the ideas of mass destruction, which are what really threaten us." -- Thomas Friedman

"An impeccable constitution, simpliciter, will not transform Iraq into a genuine democracy. It must be complemented by equally transformative changes in Iraq's political, educational, legal, and religious cultures." -- Bruce Fein

"Freedom in Iraq will not deliver its fruits overnight, but seeds have been planted. The breezes of change will help them to grow." -- Ithaar Derweesh

"Saddam Hussein had means, motive, and opportunity to be involved with global terrorism." -- James S. Robbins

"Saddam Hussein was the only international figure other than Osama bin Laden who praised the attacks of September 11th." -- U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz

"The spending problem is deeply rooted in Washington bureaucratic culture, and no administration is immune. ...When neither Congress nor the administration is capable of fiscal self-control, the taxpayer is always the loser." -- Ron Paul

"A few weeks ago, we were doing some work on my back porch back home, tearing out a section of old stacked rocks, when all of a sudden I uncovered a nest of copperhead snakes. A copperhead will kill you. It could kill one of my grandchildren. It could kill any one of my four great-grandchildren. They play all the time where I found those killers. And you know, when I discovered these copperheads, I didn't call my wife Shirley for advice, as I do on most things. I didn't go before the city council. I didn't yell for help from my neighbors. I just took a hoe and knocked them in the head and killed them. Dead as a doorknob. I guess you could call it a unilateral action. Or preemptive. Perhaps if you had been watching me you could have even called it bellicose and reactive. I took their poisonous heads off because they were a threat to me. And they were a threat to my home and my family. They were a threat to all I hold dear. And isn't that what this is all about?" -- Georgia Democractic Sen. Zell Miller

"Iraqis are an exhausted people. Most seem ready to give us a chance, and we do have a shot at making this a decent place -- but not with nation building lite. That approach is coming unstuck in Afghanistan and it will never work in Iraq. We've wasted an important month. We must get our act together and our energy up. Why doesn't Mr. Rumsfeld brief reporters every day about rebuilding Iraq, the way he did about destroying Saddam? ... America is in an imperial role here, now. Our security and standing in the world ride on our getting Iraq right. If the Bush team has something more important to do, I'd like to know about it. Iraq can still go wrong for a hundred Iraqi reasons, but let's make sure it's not because America got bored, tired or distracted." -- Thomas Friedman

"And that underpopulated border camp is a fine motif for what's going on: vast numbers of bureaucrats are running around Iraq with unlimited budgets in search of a human catastrophe that doesn't exist." -- Mark Steyn

"What's hopeful about these [current Mideast] negotiations is who isn't taking part in them. Some people can light up a whole room by not entering it. Such is Yasser Arafat's charisma." -- Paul Greenberg

"Tenured liberal professors who have dominated campus politics since the 1970s haven't been knocked off their pedestals -- not yet -- but moss is spreading at their feet and cracks are growing in the foundation." -- Suzanne Fields

"Economics is a science of single instances, hence it is hardly a science. So how much the president's most recent tax cuts will stimulate the economy is conjectural, a conjecture being a guess by a Ph.D." -- George Will

"While President Bush was ...[at the G-8 summit in Evian, France], a lot of protesting. People throwing rocks, breaking windows. Great, now the French start fighting." -- Jay Leno

"Hillary knew then, and she knows now, that Bill's a satyr. Indeed, Hillary was Bill's top damage-control strategist. It will be interesting to see if Hillary's book makes it into the fiction section of the nation's bookstores, where it belongs." -- Mark Levin

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