"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." -- Belgian Pascal Smet, proposing a global citizen registration system at a United Nations meeting in Geneva, with the explanation that your existence is a management problem for the U.N.

"There is an escalation of the corporate takeover of the United States. ... The ground and soil are ripe for a revolt by the American people." -- Ralph Nader, apparently trying to win over Buchanan voters for 2004.

"I believe that we might be partly laying the groundwork to undo what will be an inevitable military victory if we subvert the principles that the United States has always espoused for justice." -- military victory expert and former president Jimmy Carter, criticizing President Bush's plan to try foreign terrorists in military tribunals.

"One of the main purveyors of violence in this world has been this country, whether it's been against Nicaragua, Vietnam or wherever." -- actor Danny Glover, perhaps trying to kiss and make up with the cab drivers.

"Every day at some point I encounter some sort of anti-American feeling." -- Chelsea Clinton, writing from Oxford, which is apparently still haunted by the presence of her father.

"Here in the United States, we were founded as a nation that practiced slavery, and slaves quite frequently were killed even though they were innocent ... This country once looked the other way when a significant number of native Americans were dispossessed and killed to get their land or mineral rights or because they were thought of as less than fully human ... and we are still paying a price today ... In the first Crusade, when the Christian soldiers took Jerusalem, they burned a synagogue with 300 Jews in it and proceeded to kill every woman and child who was a Muslim on the Temple Mount. I can tell you that story is still being told today in the Middle East and we are still paying for it." -- former president Bill Clinton, telling a gathering of students at Georgetown University that the terrorist acts of Sept. 11^th were an example of American and Christian chickens coming home to roost.

"I did not like Bush before this happened, but now I find him very human." -- Paul McCartney's fiancee, Heather Mills, who, if she really wanted to pay the president a compliment, would have instead called him an endangered mollusk.

"We do not accept the presence in our country of a single soldier at war with Muslims or Arabs." -- Saudi Arabian defense minister Prince Sultan Abdul Aziz, who, if his nation were consistent in this policy, would now be living in the 20^th province of Iraq.

"Americans don't have the courage to come here." -- Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, attempting to use double-reverse psychology.

"We are in a new world. This event will change the balance between freedom and security." -- House minority leader Dick Gephardt, discussing the possibility of creating a new national identification card.

"When is somebody going to admit that the terrorists have already won, immobilizing the world's greatest democracy and that much of what we're doing as a nation is simply stomping our feet in frustration? Instead, we need to learn to deal rationally with the mayhem that much of the world has long endured -- some of it even inflicted by us. -- Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer, simply stomping his feet on his own gray matter.

"Armed action is only one of the ways of responding." -- French Defense Minister Alain Richard, on the U.S. reaction to the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. One might suppose that if France were attacked in such a manner, Richard would respond with a stern reprimand.

"Bush has seemed almost like a little boy at times, a kid with freckles wishing he were somewhere else, when instead a national anchorman was needed to speak believably with confidence about the state of the union during one of its darkest hours." -- Los Angeles Times TV critic Howard Rosenberg, selecting an especially tasteless occasion to bemoan the absence of Alpha Male Al from the White House.

"The best shot we had at Osama bin Laden was when I bombed his training camp and we missed him by just a matter of hours." -- former president Bill Clinton, who drops bombs all by himself, but thoughtfully shares his misses with others.

"It was okay to demonize a shark in 1974, but in the last 25 years we've learned a lot about the oceans, about the delicacy and fragility of the ocean and having respect for the creatures of the ocean." -- Jaws author and former shark demonizer Peter Benchley, who now sees fear of shark attacks as defamatory.

"I am not perfect." -- Rep. Gary Condit (D, Calif.), expressing the closest thing he knows to humility, in a letter to his constituents.

"Being diplomatic twenty-four hours a day really doesn't suit me." -- former Clinton advisor Ben Schatz, now known as "Rachel," explaining his decision to embark on his new career, as a drag queen.

"What has not been tried -- we didn't give it a chance in the Clinton administration -- is the Democrats' fundamental alternative, which is to expand the economy by investing in people through public spending. Not just rich people, but everyone. This would require repealing the Bush tax cut and borrowing, if necessary. We may never have a chance to try it if the Democrats keep insisting on 'fiscal responsibility,' demanding that the budget be balanced and the debt eliminated." -- former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich, who seems to think he's the first Democrat to discover the idea of deficit spending on social programs.

"There is nothing human about them [newly formed embryos], except potential -- and, if you choose to believe it, a soul." -- columnist Michael Kinsley, who must have attended high school before the discovery of chromosomes.

"I would be mightily surprised if when you took a stem cell and put it in a petri dish and it divided, that God would choose that moment to put a soul in it." -- Rep. James Greenwood (R, Pa.), combating those right-wing religious zealots in the name of science.

"Cloning is the way we can figure out how to turn valuable insights from stem cell research into products that are transplantable into patients." -- bioethicist (whatever that is, exactly) Michael Werner of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, sending an ominous warning to those who favor experimenting only on "spare" human embryos.

"An embryo is a clump of a few cells. How can you say to somebody who you could cure of a deadly disease, 'we will not cure you because you are less important than a clump of cells'?" -- a great big clump of cells called Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D, N.Y.), arguing in favor of cloning human embryos for research.

"I have been disappointed in almost everything he [Bush] has done ... I hoped that coming out of an uncertain election he would reach out to people of diverse views ... I thought he would be a moderate leader, but he has been very strictly conforming to some of the more conservative members of his administration." -- former president Jimmy "I will never lie to you" Carter, who is somehow surprised and upset that President Bush is keeping his campaign promises.

"The working people of Milwaukee have a long proud history in the defense of democracy, labor rights, civil rights, and peace. We are widely known for our socialist traditions on both a City and State-wide level. In that sense, we share many things in common with the long history of the Communist Party and all those engaged in the fight for a decent life for working families." -- a letter from the office of Milwaukee mayor John Norquist, to the annual convention of Communist Party U.S.A. Norquist, who was on vacation at the time, acknowledges having agreed to write an address to the convention, but says he did not review the letter before it was released by his staff.

"I am someone who believes the [New York City] Board of Education should be abolished ... I just think it's an unworkable situation. I think everybody involved in it thinks it's unworkable." -- Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, N.Y.), who obviously does not want The Children to be educated, if you believed the Democrats in 1996.

"If statistics are any indication, the [capital punishment] system may well be allowing some innocent defendants to be executed." -- Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who was considerably less concerned over executing the innocent when she voted in favor of partial-birth abortion in Stenberg v. Carhart.

"We have created an environment where there's almost a conspiracy of silence when it comes to sexuality." -- Surgeon General David Satcher, who apparently hasn't turned on a TV or radio since there was still some color in his beard.

"Any clear-sighted person can see that this is a vicious slander against China by very peculiar individuals. Some people will churn out sensational lies denigrating China to achieve their personal goals. It is China's policy to strictly forbid any sales of human organs. The main source of human organ transplants in China are the willing donations of citizens during their lifetime." -- Zhang Qiyue of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, denying her government's well-documented practice of harvesting organs from executed prisoners.

"Jim Jeffords is from the state of Vermont that elects a socialist [Bernie Sanders] as their representative to Congress. Jim Jeffords represents a very different constituency than Trent Lott does. That's the greatness of America. We have differing viewpoints, different ideas." -- Sen. John McCain (R, Ariz.), believing that America is made great, at least in part, by its socialists. 

"She never meant that it necessarily applied to her." -- a spokesman for Barbra Streisand to the New York Times, explaining Streisand's advice to Californians to conserve energy by cutting back use of computers and air conditioners, and her suggestion that they "line dry as much as possible" instead of using gas or electric clothes dryers.

"We're not trying to penalize people for things that happened in another century. What we are saying is that the brutal system of slavery and its legacy of discrimination were sanctioned by our government and it is to the government that we look for redress, not individual citizens." -- Rep. John Conyers (D, Mich.), failing to remember where the government gets its money, and also forgetting that slavery and its legacy of discrimination (segregation) were sanctioned by the Democratic Party.

"I am a Jim Jeffords kind of Democrat." -- House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (D, Mo.), betraying the big secret that Jeffords, officially an Independent, has been keeping for decades.

"Judges are one thing, but a president's nominees are different." -- Sen. Charles Schumer (D, N.Y.), whose mother apparently told him that judges are found under cabbage leaves, on why he voted to confirm solicitor general Theodore Olson.

"I think at core he [Bill Clinton] is an honest person ... but I think you can be an honest person and lie about any number of things." -- NBC news anchor Dan Rather, in an interview with Bill O'Reilly.

"He [Bush] is the dumbest president we have ever had ... Eventually he will crumble, things will go bad and we will be happy to have Clinton back." -- Hustler magazine publisher and therefore loyal Democrat activist Larry Flynt, believing himself to be more intelligent than President Bush, yet seeming to think Bill Clinton can come back and run for a third term.

"For many years, people would say the Clintons are disloyal and I would say, 'You have to understand, they are required to do this.' So when all this happened, it forced me to say, am I in the same category?" -- criminally loyal Rose Law Firm partner Webster Hubbell, coming to the realization that he has been just another Clinton "requirement."

"The boy has a sense of justice. That's what attracted me to him." -- novelist Gore Vidal, on his pen pal, Timothy McVeigh.

"I don't believe in four years North American voters, who in the popular vote elected Al Gore in November, will permit the re-election of George W. Bush, chosen by five judges of the Supreme Court." -- Newsweek International "reporter" Carlos Fuentes, failing to understand that Bush is not president of North America, that U.S. presidents are not elected by popular vote, and that Bush has won Florida every single time the votes have been counted. While himself spitting a geyser of ignorance, Fuentes accuses President Bush of being "dim."

"He [Fidel Castro] has done some good things for his people." -- Secretary of State Colin Powell, who might want to run his "why I am a Republican" speech by us one more time.

"Let this be a warning to all the greedy corporations who exploit our Earth's natural resources." -- a letter from the Earth Liberation Front, claiming responsibility for the torching of three cement mixers in Portland, Oregon.

"As you well know, there has been almost a relentless focus on Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and their families ... to the point where you almost have to say at a certain point, that when people talk about vast conspiracies that you maybe start to believe that there are people out there to get you." -- Mark Geragos, lawyer for Roger Clinton, explaining that his client's DUI arrest was a "frame-up."

"The decisions this week to try to rescind the arsenic rule and suspend the mining regulation threaten to roll us right back to the Stone Age." -- Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D, Conn.), perhaps forgetting that he recently ran on a presidential ticket with a man who, if he had his way, would have us all driving Flintstonemobiles.

"Both President Bush and Secretary Powell have expressed their sincere regret over your missing pilot and aircraft. Please convey to the Chinese people and to the family of the pilot Wang Wei that we are very sorry for their loss ... We are very sorry the entering of China's airspace and the landing did not have verbal clearance ... " -- from the official U.S. not-an-apology to the Red Chinese, written by Ambassador Joseph Prueher, on behalf of President Bush.

"I'm going to get that criticism [of bias] whether I deserve it or not." -- CBS anchor Dan Rather, who decided he might as well deserve it, by attending a Democratic Party fundraiser.

"My fear is that he [Bush] is so determined to reward his corporate and ideological backers that he will ignore the needs of the vast majority of American people who make daily decisions between pork chops and peanut butter, as he pays attention only to those who must decide between a $190 and a $125 bottle of Bordeaux." -- AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who himself seems rather familiar with expensive wines, but cannot comprehend the difference in price between peanut butter and pork chops.

"It is important that the U.S. accept its responsibility for the world climate." -- German President Gerhard Schroeder, giving us way too much credit.

"I feel sometimes defending Clinton is like being in the Mafia." -- James Carville.

"...And who did those pardons hurt, I ask you. No one!" -- Barbra Streisand, who sees no harm in the odd crack dealer, pedophile or fugitive from justice being turned loose.

"After sixty days of the Bush administration, prosperity is in trouble, air quality is in trouble, lakes, rivers and forests are in trouble, and our drinking water is in trouble, too." -- Sen. Barbara Boxer (D, Calif.), forgetting to mention that belching sheep are melting the polar ice caps.

"We are neutral politically, academically, and intellectually." -- Dr. Jeremiah Barondess, chairman of Doctors Against Handgun Injury, a group of about 600,000 physicians who lobby for gun control, and advise their patients against ownership of firearms.

"How can America create security for itself whereas the rest of the world is left to its own devices? No country in the world is capable of doing this." -- Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Ash Heap of History, still failing to grasp the concept of strategic missile defense."

"There's no question that global warming is a real phenomenon, that it is occurring ... The science is strong there." -- new EPA chief Christie Whitman, who has been standing in front of her own mouth a little too long.

"High interest rates choked American industries. Unemployment soared. Working families struggled to meet their mortgages, pay for health care, and save for college." -- Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, telling his tale of the 1980's, but confusing it with the collected works of Dickens.

"No senior in America should have to choose between buying food and buying prescriptions." -- President Bush, who ought to consider that nobody in America should have to choose between an impression of Al Gore and the real thing.

"It [South Carolina's book of abortion regulations] is a much more subtle form of discrimination against abortion but as significant as any anti-abortion tactic that has come down the pike in the last decade." -- Margie Kelly, spokeswoman for the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, asserting that abortions have civil rights.

"I don't know any facts." -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D, N.Y.)

"Everybody wants a pardon. When you get out of prison and you've done your time and all the paperwork, and you've been a productive, beneficial part of society and you've obeyed the law, you're entitled to it." -- Roger Clinton, who, handily, believes that getting out of prison is cause for a reward.

"Since when is [rapper Eminem's] offensive language a reason for being unpopular? I find the language of George W much more offensive." -- Madonna, a major-leaguer in her own right.

"If you're a millionaire, under the Bush tax cut, you get a $46,000 tax cut, more than enough to pay for this Lexus. But if you're a typical working person, you get $227 ... and that's enough to buy this muffler." -- Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D, S.D.), explaining to "typical working people" why the government should continue to take their muffler money.

"I was raised Catholic, and a big part of me is still a Catholic girl." -- actress Nicole Kidman, who must have been too shy to expose her big Catholic part when she starred in Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut."

"Given that Hillary Clinton helped raise $25 million for the benefit of the White House, and that proceeds from her new book, Invitation to the White House, will also go to the White House, it is a little silly and small to be talking about these new furnishings." -- Clinton spokesman Jim Kennedy, explaining why Hillary deserves the $28,000 worth of furniture she and her husband took from the White House.

"Indians are not mascots and should not be used as such, and despite how respectfully you think you are portraying Indians, we're still mascots, and they don't do that with any other group in this country." -- Carole Ann Heart of the National Indian Education Association, protesting the North Dakota Fighting Sioux logo and mascot, and conveniently forgetting about the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, the Hofstra Flying Dutchmen and the St. Mary's Gaels, just to name a few. The folks at the National Irish and Dutch Education Association must be sleeping on the job.

"[T]he women who voted for George W. (as well as those who didn't) have a right to feel betrayed." -- editorial from NOW online publication Womensnews, which has divined, with Browardlike clarity, that all women really intended to vote for taxpayer funding of foreign abortions.

"Bush is shamelessly arrogant." -- Miss humility, Barbra Streisand.

"I think it's especially poignant that it was one of the last acts of Bill Clinton's administration." -- lawyer Mark Geragos, on the pardon Clinton issued to his client, Susan McDougal.

"There's nothing unseemly about this at all." -- 66 year-old San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, on fathering a child by his 38 year-old fundraising coordinator, Carolyn Carpenti.

"Senator Ashcroft is so far out of the mainstream that he has said citizens need to be armed, in order to protect themselves from a tyrannical government. Our government? Tyrannical?" -- Sen. Ted Kennedy ... of Camelot.

"The depths of his [John Ashcroft's] religious convictions might make it impossible for him to take that oath." -- Wayne Gaddy, executive director of the Interfaith Alliance, arguing that the Attorney General nominee's religious beliefs preclude him from making a promise to God.

"[T]he only way they [the Bush campaign] could win the election was to stop the voting in Florida." -- President Clinton, pretending not to realize that "voting" for president in mid-December isn't exactly legal.

"We want full recognition, and a remedy, of how slavery stigmatized, raped, murdered and exploited millions of Africans through no fault of their own." -- Charles Ogletree of the Reparations Assessment Group, who has discovered that giving money to some people, himself included, can cure other people of murder, rape and slavery.

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