Lingua publica
The
good and the bad...presented with permission from The Patriot E-Journal
web posted April 23, 2007
"The writers of the U.S. Constitution understood the necessity for an armed citizenry. When only the government has guns, everyone else is just a slave. Gun-banners who would turn everyone's life and liberty over to the care of an all-powerful, central government, don't understand and don't agree with that." -- Alan Caruba
"All of these massacres, these terrorist attacks, have genuine possibilities for being stopped dead in their tracks if they encounter a well-armed, well-trained, educated public vigilant to defend their freedoms...[T]he proper public response is to promote the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. We can stop this evil if we choose to. Let's roll." -- Andrew Longman
"Why is the Virginia Tech murderer always referred to as the ‘gunman' and not the ‘murderer'? Had he stabbed a dozen students to death, would he be the ‘knifeman'?" -- Dennis Prager
"Unfortunately, the tax cuts that have produced our record-breaking government revenues and personal incomes will expire soon. Because Congress has failed to make them permanent, we are facing the worst tax hike in our history... Those who say they want a ‘more progressive' tax system should be asked one question: Are you really interested in tax rates that benefit the economy and raise revenue -- or are you interested in redistributing income for political reasons?" -- Fred Thompson
"The current alarm [over global warming] rests on the false assumption not only that we live in a perfect world, temperaturewise, but also that our warming forecasts for the year 2040 are somehow more reliable than the weatherman's forecast for next week." -- MIT meteorology professor Richard Lindzen
"'Tragedy' is too meager a word to describe Monday's shooting of scores of people at Virginia Tech. It was a massacre of horrid proportions. Nearly three dozen were slaughtered and nearly two dozen more were wounded on the Blacksburg, Va., campus... Such incidents usually lead to great outcries for greater security and stricter gun control laws. Perhaps this incident will prompt calls for airport-like security at our institutions of higher learning, if not at all our schools, if not in each and every public place. And turn America, land of the free, into America, home of the fortress? There may even be a rising chorus for repeal of the Second Amendment. After all, haven't we had enough of this kind of thing -- Columbine, the Pennsylvania Amish school shootings and now this? But if not guns, the deranged who perpetrate their atrocities will employ some other inanimate accomplice. It is not the instrument of the deeds but the mind-sets that precipitate them that must be addressed...[W]e must somehow overcome the pathology we sadly have become." -- The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
"I got beat up by girls all the time [when I was a kid]. They literally posted a sign-up sheet and would take turns. I think that's why I've always been such a fan of Mencken's line, ‘Afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.' I've been afflicted." -- MSNBC's Keith Olbermann
"It's been said that a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged by reality. Apparently a liberal is someone who's been mugged by little girls." -- James Taranto
"It may change over years. It may change over months. I can't tell you, but I've said very clearly I don't consider myself out of it forever... If suddenly the field changed or the dynamics of the nation shifted, who knows?" -- John Kerry on whether he will run for president again
"I think we have to make a very strong, clear statement to the president. Now we're going to support the troops -- there's no doubt about it... But we're going to try to use this opportunity to change this course. The president was told by the people last November they want a changed course in Iraq. He has not done it. He's gotten us in deeper militarily, although there is no military solution. We're going to try to use this opportunity to change course." -- Senator Carl Levin
"The country's tax code has grown as indecipherable to the average American as Hammurabi's. It might as well be written on clay tablets." -- Paul Greenberg
"Depending on which TV show you tune into, what [Don] Imus said was wrong because: (1) His show goes out on FCC-regulated airwaves; (2) he regularly interviews people like Sens. John Kerry, John McCain and Joe Biden; (3) he spoke at the White House Correspondents' Dinner a few years ago; or (4) he's not black." -- Ann Coulter
"Somehow, even though he's been fired and you'd think it would all be over, the Imus story continues. This is the latest: Hillary Clinton announced that she will now meet with the Rutgers women's basketball team. In a related story, Bill Clinton announced he's going to meet with the Rutgers women's swimming, volleyball, and gymnastics teams." -- Conan O'Brien
"Here's what I think about Global Warming: In my experience, any time every ‘expert' has agreed on anything, that anything later turns out not just to be wrong, but 180 degrees wrong." -- Rich Galen
"There was a strong earthquake in Mexico City [Friday] -- 6.0 on the Richter Scale. It was so powerful, thousands of people were sent careening across the border weeks before it even hit." -- Jimmy Kimmel
"Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani [got] some flack for not knowing the price of a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread. But he does know what a wedding cake costs because he's bought three of those." -- Jay Leno
web posted April 16, 2007
"With her trip to Syria, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi achieved two things: She undercut her own credibility in Washington, and she spotlighted what is wrong with the Democrats' approach to national security." -- Ronald Kessler
"One of our greatest blessings as Americans is that we have brave citizens who step forward to defend us. Every man or woman who wears our nation's uniform is a volunteer, a patriot who has made the noble decision to serve a cause larger than self... Our men and women in uniform deserve the gratitude of every American. And from their elected leaders, they deserve something more: the funds, resources, and equipment they need to do their jobs." -- U.S. President George W. Bush
"The effort to stabilize Iraq is making strides... But one wonders how many politicians, looking at the next elections, can shake themselves free from Weltschmerz long enough to greet, with gratitude, the possibility that time, finally, is working in behalf of the great endeavor to maintain an element of freedom in that critical area of the Middle East." -- William F. Buckley
"Too many Americans lack perspective... They ignore real problems and challenges and contrive silly ones. They praise people who are truly evil and demonize people, flawed though they may be, who are trying to do good. They lack the ability to discern. And if America doesn't regain its perspective, it will lose the overwhelming blessings it continues to receive." -- Tom Purcell
"If we do nothing when the jihad comes for Israel, comes for India, comes for Serbia, comes for the Christians of the Third World -- who will be there for us when it comes for America?" -- Don Feder
"This is still Bush's war. This is still a Republican war." -- NBC's political director Chuck Todd on Iraq
"[John] Kerry said his decision not to run for president in 2008 allowed him to speak the truth on environmental issues." -- Associated Press
"A planned TV drama based on the exploits of a British Iraq war hero has been dropped by the BBC...[A] source close to the project [said] the BBC began to have second thoughts about the project last year because it was hesitant to show anything positive about the war." -- Fox News' Brit Hume
"We have come to the conclusion that the crisis Michigan faces is not a shortage of revenue, but an excess of idiocy. Facing a budget deficit that has passed the $1 billion mark, House Democrats Thursday offered a spending plan that would buy an MP3 player or iPod for every school child in Michigan. No cost estimate was attached to their hare-brained idea to ‘invest' in education." -- Detroit News
"We believe there's just no reason for Democrats to give Fox [News] a platform to advance the right-wing agenda while pretending they're objective." -- Jonathan Prince, John Edwards' deputy campaign manager, announcing that Edwards will not attend the September 23 debate hosted by Fox News and the Congressional Black Caucus Institute
"I just I don't think that [Nancy Pelosi] is blessed with a tremendous IQ. I don't think this is the brightest bulb, incandescent or compact fluorescent in the socket. I don't think that the elevator goes all the way to the top. She is an order of French fries short of a Happy Meal." -- Rush Limbaugh
"It's one thing to be a college student, drunk on Jello shots, at the beach bar in Daytona, lifting your shirt for some dope with a video camera. It is something else to be the Speaker of the House, drunk on power, making a fool of yourself by pretending to be a diplomat and going to the Syrian desert." -- Rich Galen
"The most outrage I could find from a government official [regarding the 15 captured British military personnel] came from Patricia Hewitt, the British health secretary, who called the spectacle ‘deplorable.' Alas, she was referring to something else. She was infuriated ‘that the woman hostage should be shown smoking. This sends completely the wrong message to our young people.' Imagine the outrage if those captured marines had been fed trans fats." -- Jonah Goldberg
"Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards, as well as a number of other Democratic candidates say they will not participate in a presidential debate next month because the debate is on Fox News and Fox News is biased. How are you going to stand up to terrorists when you're afraid of Fox News?" -- Jay Leno
web posted April 9, 2007
"The fact is that the United States military answers to one commander in chief in the White House, not 535 commanders in chief on Capitol Hill." -- U.S Vice President Dick Cheney
"The threat from radical Islamic terrorists will not vanish when President Bush leaves office, or if funds for the Iraq war are cut off in 2008." -- Victor Davis Hanson
"Why would Al Qaeda choose the past several days, just as Democrats in Congress were voting to run up a white flag and commit the United States to defeat in Iraq, to launch a bloody wave of terrorist atrocities?... The answer... is that this is how totalitarian aggressors react to faintheartedness... The smell of irresolution doesn't satiate the totalitarians' appetite; it makes it keener." -- Jeff Jacoby
"In Middle Eastern warfare a classic tactic has been to retreat in the face of strength, but to attack when your enemy withdraws or shows signs of weakness." -- Ralph Peters
"It has been painfully clear that Speaker Pelosi was serious only about scoring political points. Her big grin when she won a narrow vote for a non-binding resolution was grotesque against the background of a life-and-death issue. You don't grin over a political ploy that you have pulled when men's lives are at stake." -- Thomas Sowell
"The true American religious tradition, the one that disciplines power, subjugating it to reason, truth and, ultimately, an all-powerful God, is not a threat to liberty but its best defender." -- Judge Janice Rogers Brown
"No small concern of those who created the Constitution was the prospect of legislative tyranny, the exercise of power for illegitimate purposes carried out in the name of the majority." -- Gary McDowell
"If [Nancy] Pelosi believes, as she told the [Israeli] Knesset, that Iran must be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons, she must explain how that is to be done without at least the possibility of recourse to military action. This she cannot do, because of the anti-Iraq war sentiment that has swept her own party's precincts. Instead she plays domestic politics at Israel's expense, despite warnings from our own state department that visiting Syria is a recipe for trouble. Ms. Pelosi will be fortunate if she, unlike the royal marines, is allowed to return home to America, though it is an open question where she can do more damage, over there or over here." -- The New York Sun
"The House voted for funding for the war with a date certain, March of ‘08, to begin a withdrawal of U.S. troops. But in that bill was $20 billion of so-called pork, money for cricket infestation, tours of the Capitol, security at the National Convention, peanut crops. Why would the Democrats put that kind of money in such a serious bill?" -- NBC's Tim Russert
"You know, the President rushed us to war. He didn't let the inspectors finish their work." -- Hillary Clinton, who must have forgotten the 14-month-lead-up to the war in Iraq
"Having signaled the desire to court defeat in Iraq, the Democrats have passed a goody-laden bill that shows their desire to lose the battle against wasteful spending. Pork: It's the other white flag!" -- James Lileks
"[Barack] Obama is currently in the business of trying to be all things to all people. He figures that so long as he avoids commenting on actual issues, Hillary Clinton will eventually remind the country why so many of us couldn't stand her when she was merely the most obnoxious First Lady we'd ever had." -- Burt Prelutsky
"Connecticut police arrested a man who claimed to be Dick Cheney after a high-speed chase on Tuesday. The suspect was shocked with a stun gun by officers and taken to a psychiatric ward. Only a lunatic would want to be in Dick Cheney's shoes right now." -- Argus Hamilton
"Jimmy Carter left the White House with a lasting legacy, though not one any president would covet. He continues to cast a long shadow over the Middle East, a shadow that wilts flowers, stunts cactus and blights dreams, wishes, hopes and prospects for peace with far deadlier efficiency than the fiercest sandstorm. Mr. Jimmy is well and truly sui generis." -- Wesley Pruden
"In a democracy, a contact sport like politics should depend on what might politely be called ‘a robust exchange of opinion,' but the Deeply Offended now insist that it be played like tiddly-winks." -- Paul Greenberg
"We're now finding out where all the [presidential] candidates met their spouses. Barack Obama met his wife at a law firm. John McCain met his wife at a naval officers dance. And Rudy Giuliani met his third wife when he was cheating on his first wife with his second wife." -- Jay Leno
web posted April 2, 2007
"[I] can make him ambassador to the world, because we have a lot of work to do to get our country back in the standing it should be." -- Hillary Clinton on husband Bill Clinton's future in a potential Hillary presidency
"The idea that an American defeat in Iraq -- and like it or not, that is what the sort of a withdrawal [passed by] Congress will be considered in the Muslim world -- would make it easier to prevail against Iran is ludicrous. Such an outcome would similarly embolden Iran's Islamist allies elsewhere, such as Hamas and Hezbollah." -- Jonathan Tobin
"At once the most preposterous and the most dangerous of contemporary beliefs is ‘nothing was ever settled by violence.' A cursory reading of history makes it clear that virtually every important development in the history of mankind has been, for good or ill, a product of violence." -- Jack Kelly
"There is a word for people who put children in a car to be blown up. The word is evil... It's important that we say this out loud and that we render this moral judgment. Because if we fail to understand that our enemy is evil, we have failed to understand what we are fighting." -- Newt Gingrich
"When the GOP begins to apologize for routine, non-controversial uses of presidential authority to implement administration policies, no wonder the party is on the ropes." -- Brendan Miniter
"[Attorney General Alberto] Gonzales has allowed a scandal to be created where there was none. That is quite an achievement. He had a two-foot putt and he muffed it." -- Charles Krauthammer
"[Al Gore] is a man who makes no bones about wanting to limit population growth by forcing Africans to stop having children but escapes any criticism for what is undisguised racism. If a Republican engaged in such racist proposals he would be ridden out of town on a rail." -- Michael Reagan
"The time for the chastisement of Allah is here." -- Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has now lent his support to Iran's nuclear weapons program
"Hillary Clinton... can call herself the JFK of the race all she likes, but that doesn't make her look even remotely like that cool and ironic practitioner of politics. It makes her look like a ditzy poseur." -- Peggy Noonan
"Today, many people preen about their anger as a badge of authenticity: I snarl, therefore I am. Such people make one's blood boil." -- George Will
"U.S. troops blew up a bomb factory in Iraq during a crackdown. There will never be a free government in Iraq as long as there are factories making bombs. Our work won't be done until they've moved all their manufacturing to China." -- Argus Hamilton
"Katie Couric is not a hard-nosed newsperson. She doesn't even play one on TV, at least when the subject is a Democrat." -- Rich Galen
"Americans spend an extra $2.2 billion on gas a year because they're overweight, requiring more fuel in cars to carry the extra pounds. So even with all those ['carbon offsets'], Gore may have a small carbon footprint, but he has a huge carbon butt-print." -- Ann Coulter
"When you visit Britain, you realize that although it is a normal country in many ways, some things about it are deeply odd -- for instance, they drive on the left, they use the metric system, and their language, while deceptively similar to English, is often incomprehensible." -- James Taranto
"There was a big scare at the John Edwards campaign headquarters. It was evacuated after a staff member opened an envelope containing white powder. Turns out it was just some of John Edwards' age-defying make-up base. ... I guess in Al Gore's office they found some white powder too. But that was just from his powdered doughnuts." -- Jay Leno
"I have to admit we really blew the way we let those attorneys go. You know you've botched it when people sympathize with lawyers." -- George W. Bush at the 63rd annual Radio and Television Correspondents' Association