"I still have this old-fashioned notion that even with people like Osama, who is very likely to be found guilty, we should do our best not to, in positions of executive power, not to prejudge jury trials. ... I do think if you're running for president, it's best to say that the full range of penalties are available, but it's not so great to prejudge the judicial system." -- Democrat presidential frontrunner Howard "Why Do I Say These Things" Dean, who thinks President Bush might be guilty of helping orchestrate the 9-11 terrorist attacks, but is not so sure about Osama bin Laden.

"One of the reasons why we were able to marshal the Mujaheddin and the warlords against the Soviets is because the Soviets tried to provide more opportunities for women." -- Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, N.Y.), portraying the most oppressive regime of the 20^th Century as a beacon of freedom.

"With no weapons, no ties, and no truth, the capture of Saddam was merely the most massive and irresponsible police raid in modern times. We broke in without a search warrant." -- Boston Globe columnist Derrick Z. Jackson, who must be dreaming of becoming the next Walter Duranty.

"The capture of Saddam Hussein is not the silver bullet that fixes everything." -- Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse, desperately defending his party's own goal line.

"[T]he capture of Saddam has not made America safer." -- Vermont governor and Democrat presidential candidate Howard "Why Do I Say These Things?" Dean.

"Capturing Saddam Hussein and ensuring that this brutal dictator will never return to power is an important step toward stabilizing Iraq for the Iraqis. Let's also be clear: Our problems in Iraq have not been caused by one man, and this is a moment when the administration can and must launch a major effort to gain international support and win the peace." -- Democrat presidential candidate Sen. John F.(rench) Kerry, continuing to have a difficult time coping with America's success.

"Don't shoot. I am Saddam Hussein, the president of the republic of Iraq." -- deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, making a thoroughly unconvincing argument. Alas, he was not shot anyway.

"Did I expect George Bush to (expletive deleted) it up as badly as he did? I don't think anybody did." -- Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry, reminding us that his middle name is "F".

"The hard part started on May 1^st. The easy part, if you look at it, was the military part." -- Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, N.Y.), showing about as much appreciation as usual for the sacrifices of America's armed forces.

"This is the worst national administration I've ever lived under, bar none. I want this guy out of there." -- former Democrat presidential candidate and Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, removing his own administration from consideration for that title, by dropping in that "national" qualifier.

"I actually think that Bush is the greatest threat to life on this planet that we've most probably ever seen. The policies he is initiating will doom us to extinction." -- pipsqueaking London mayor Ken Livingstone, who plans to hold a "peace party" for activists who are defending the terrorists.

" ... Then I inserted my forceps into the uterus and applied them to the head of the fetus, which was still alive, since fetal injection is not done at that stage of pregnancy. I closed the forceps, crushing the skull of the fetus, and withdrew the forceps." -- abortionist Warren Hern, describing the gruesome killing of a 17 week-old unborn person as if it were like making a withdrawal from an ATM.

"What has not ended is the resolution and determination of the members of the United States Senate to continue to resist any Neanderthal that is nominated by this President of the United States for any court, federal court in the United States." -- Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, Mass.), who was left behind by political evolution decades ago.

"There is no such thing as a partial birth." -- presidential candidate John Kerry (D, Mass.), who must think that babies are beamed out of the womb by Scottie.

"I feel the smell of paradise." -- Yasir Arafat, perhaps catching a whiff of some good leftovers caught in his goatee.

"This is indeed a historic day, because for the first time in history Congress is banning a medical procedure that is considered medically necessary by physicians." -- Sen. Barbara Boxer (D, Calif.), absolutely lying her face off while lamenting the passage of a ban on partial-birth abortion, which is not a medical procedure, and is considered "never medically indicated" by the otherwise pro-abortion AMA.

"I hope that [Rush Limbaugh] gets over his addiction and dies from cancer of the testicles." -- Mike Hudson, owner of the Niagara Falls Reporter, demonstrating that the liberal media bias is a myth.

"It's difficult to be in France and criticize my government, but I'm doing so because Bush and the people working for him have a foreign policy that is not good for America, not good for the world." -- Clinton administration Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who didn't actually find it difficult at all.

"I'm pro-environment, pro-health." -- Wesley Clark, taking a characteristically bold political stand, during a presidential primary debate in New York.

"A woman can fix the mess they have created, because we're practical, we are not afraid of partnerships and we are committed to making the world better for our children." -- Democrat presidential candidate Carol Moseley Braun, making an argument for her candidacy based on her second X-chromosome, in absence of a more obvious reason.

"I would have been a Republican if Karl Rove had returned my phone calls." -- Democrat presidential candidate Gen. Wesley Clark, demonstrating the depths of his political convictions.

"Every time I cross this border, I feel like I've left the land of lunatics." -- actor Martin Sheen ... upon entering Canada.

"My vision is to make the most diverse state on earth, and we have people from every planet on the earth in this state. We have the sons and daughters of every -- of people from every planet, of every country on earth." -- troubled California Governor Gray Davis, no doubt making a pitch to win over the Huffington vote.

"Never has a presidential address been so anticipated -- nay, so demanded and virtually dictated -- by so many as the televised speech President Bush delivered Sunday night." -- Washington Post columnist David S. Broder, failing -- nay, refusing -- to remember Bill Clinton's nationally televised "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" speech.

"It doesn't appear so. The whole thing has been a disaster. It's been a disaster for the people of Iraq. It's been a disaster for the world community, and it's been a disaster for the United States." -- Democrat presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, when asked during a CNN interview whether the Iraqi people are better off today than they were before the invasion.

"When I am president, I will put the world back together." -- House Minority Leader and presidential candidate Dick Gephardt (D, Mo.), whose next campaign promise will be to cure the common cold.

"This is a prime example of an administration that has really become so arrogant that they will not hear competing points of view." -- Sen. Hillary Clinton(D, N.Y.), who so graciously welcomed dissenting voices when she convened her illegally secret health care task force meetings in 1993.

"As the crisis escalated, The Carter Center was finally given reluctant permission from President Clinton for me to visit Pyongyang. A satisfactory agreement was concluded and later confirmed by both governments, with participation by South Korea, Japan and others. But neither side honored all the commitments. ... The situation is rapidly deteriorating again. North Korea feels increasingly threatened by being branded an 'axis of evil' member; deployment of anti-ballistic missiles in Alaska; Washington voices expressing military threats; interception of North Korean ships; ad hominem attacks on President Kim Jong Il; condemnation of previous efforts by President Clinton and South Korean leaders to resolve issues peacefully; and U.S. refusal to negotiate directly with North Korea." -- unwanted foreign policy interloper and former president Jimmy Carter, in a September 2^nd op-ed for USA Today, considering the United States more than equally guilty for North Korea's violations of its treaties.

"Order your cake! Order a sheet cake with 'Happy Birthday Medicare' written on it. Buy additional party supplies. Be creative. Buy a 'Happy Birthday' tablecloth for the center table. Purchase disposable plates and utensils if the facility will not provide them. You may also wish to purchase additional party favors -- horns and whistles can be very useful to 'boo' the Republican agenda. ... Confirm cake/food orders and make sure supply checklist is complete. Provide writing utensils and paper for seniors to complete their letters to the editor." -- the latest brilliant Democrat strategy, as written by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, Calif.).

"United we will defeat this ultraconservative coup attempt." -- a letter from the AFL-CIO to congressional Democrats, vowing to defend California Gov. Gray Davis from "ultraconservatives" like Arianna Huffington and Arnold Kennedy Schwarzenegger.

"When you talk about slavery, students need to understand it is not our fault. Our ancestors did nothing wrong to be enslaved. How do you work through that when the person teaching it is the same type of person who did the enslaving?" -- Phyllis Yarber Hogan of the Oberlin [Ohio] Black Alliance for Progress, explaining that a white teacher should not be allowed to teach a black history course, because she is the enemy.

"I think in general that the ends do not justify the means." -- Democrat presidential candidate and Vermont governor Howard Dean, refusing to find our soldiers' means of killing of Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay justifiable.

"This may be the first time in recent history that a president has knowingly misled the American people during the State of the Union Address." -- former Clinton-Gore fundraiser and current Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe, whose concept of "recent history" doesn't extend as far back as the Twentieth Century.

"I would not use the three-letter word, 'lie.' I would use the five-letter word, 'deceit.'" -- presidential candidate Sen. Bob Graham (D, Fla.).

"If you can't come to the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization's national conference to lay out what you believe in and the direction you think our country should go in, you certainly have no legitimacy going into black communities asking for votes." -- NAACP president Kweisi Mfume, declaring that the only legitimate black votes come through his organization, at a sparsely attended Democratic presidential forum.

"Personally, I like to play in the heat, you know? It's easier for me. It's easier for most Latin guys and for most minority people because most of us come from heat. You don't find too many brothers from New Hampshire and Maine and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, right? ... I mean, we were brought over here for the heat, right? I mean, ain't that history? Weren't we brought over here because we can take the heat? ... You don't see brothers running around burnt and stuff. Yeah, that's a fact. I'm not making this stuff up. ... You're not gonna see brothers walking around with some white stuff on their ears and noses." -- The Chicago Cubs' unbuoyant manager, Dusty Baker.

"I liked the traditional duties of keeping a house. ... I mean, it was inviting people to come to your home and therefore it mattered to me what china we used, what the flowers looked like, what the menu was." -- Hillary Clinton, in a BBC interview, bragging about how she's toiled at ordering others to decorate and cook.

"I don't need Bush's tax cut. I have never worked a [expletive deleted] day in my life." -- Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D, R.I.), at a meeting of the Young Democrats.

"Let us never demonize or give up on those who disagree with us. We don't want to become like the right-wing talk show hosts, hammering our adversaries into cartoon characters and denying their humanity." -- Bill Clinton, former employer of James Carville, Paul Begala and Craig Livingstone, and willing beneficiary of the "investigations" conducted by Larry Flynt.

"When I'm president, we'll do executive orders to overcome any wrong thing the Supreme Court does tomorrow or any other day." -- Rep. Dick Gephardt (D, Mo.), who has decided to run for Ayatollah.

"These people are all good people, but I'm different than they are." -- former Vermont governor and 2004 presidential nominee Howard Dean, onstage with the other candidates at a Rainbow/PUSH coalition conference in Chicago.

"I'm a Jesse Jackson Democrat." -- Joe Lieberman, who might as well have introduced himself as "Hymie," at the same conference.

"Are you a saint?" -- Barbara Walters, from her recent hardball interview with Hillary Clinton.

"He told me to stay strong and don't give up. It's something that happens to people. It'll go away." -- Chicago Cubs' slugger and suspended bat-corker Sammy Sosa, relating the advice given to him by former president Bill Clinton, who evidently still chalks up voluntary acts of cheating in the "stuff happens" category.

"It's true the Iraqis misbehaved and had no credibility, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they were in the wrong." -- the resolutely oblivious Hans Blix.

"If we're talking about life in the biological sense, eggs are alive, sperm are alive. Cancer tumors are alive. For me, what matters is this: When does it have the moral status of a human being?" -- Bonnie Steinbock, chair of the philosophy department at SUNY-Albany, not caring when one has the biological status of a human being, in an interview with Newsweek.

"I think since people are living much longer ... the Twenty-Second Amendment should probably be modified to say two consecutive terms instead of two terms for a lifetime ... There may come a time when we elect a president at age 45 or 50, and then twenty years later the country comes up against the same kind of problems the president faced before." -- former president Bill Clinton, perhaps daydreaming about how much money he could make by selling our missile technology to the Martians.

"I always assumed these animals were caged and wanted to go home." -- Andrew Stanton, author and director of Disney's "Finding Nemo," remembering the fish in his dentist's tank when he was a kid.

"The fact is, it is not easy for women to play against men, because most games are organized around strength. If sports weren't based just on brawn I think we could compete. If golf courses were set up a lot shorter, if the first drive off the tee didn't have such an emphasis on strength, it would be easier. But we didn't create these games. They're not set up for us." -- Billie Jean King, whose idea of setting up sports for women is to have them play against creaky old men whose careers had peaked 35 years earlier.

"Don't mess with Democrats." -- a CNN graphic trying to make the Democrats in the Texas state legislature sound like tough guys for running away to a hotel in Oklahoma, in order to avoid a quorum call for a vote on redistricting.

"They probably don't even speak French." -- Theresa Heinz, a.k.a., Mrs. John Kerry, pretentiously zinging Republicans who remarked that they thought Kerry looked French.

"I know people in Hildale [Utah] who are polygamists who are very fine people." -- Sen. Orrin Hatch (R, Utah)

"Diplomatic observers said the dissident movement was too small to pose a threat to the Cuban government, and it was the open support the dissidents were getting from Cuba's long-time ideological foe, the United States, that prompted the massive crackdown." -- an April 16^th Reuters story by Anthony Boadle, predictably blaming the U.S. for Castro's brutality.

"I suppose that's a good thing." -- Vermont governor and presumptive 2004 Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, on the fall of Saddam Hussein's government.

"I have a confession: I have at times as this war has unfolded secretly wished for things to go wrong. Wished for the Iraqis to be more nationalistic, to resist longer. Wished for the Arab world to rise up in rage. Wished for all the things we feared would happen. I'm not alone: A number of serious, intelligent, morally sensitive people who opposed the war have told me they've had identical feelings ... What if you are convinced that an easy victory will ultimately result in a larger moral negative -- four more years of Bush, for example, with attendant disastrous policies ... Wishing for things to go wrong is the logical corollary of the postulate that the better things go for Bush, the worse they will go for America and the rest of the world." -- Gary Kamiya, executive director of the endangered online magazine Salon.com, who would rather see a murderous, terrorist-harboring dictator succeed than a Republican president.

"Some people would think that seeing a KFC on a street corner is a sign of progress, I certainly don't. Iraqis have really good food. They don't need a KFC." -- Stephanie Schaudel of the human shield-funding group Voices In The Wilderness, which seems to get its reviews of Iraqi cuisine straight from the Ministry of Information.

"Is it acceptable for a TV network that has a license from Congress for free use of our public airwaves as a public trust to air coverage from such a place?" -- NOW president Kim Gandy, proposing that the government should yank CBS off the air, as long as it continues to broadcast the Masters from the Augusta National Golf Club, while that club refuses to conform to fashionable feminist dingbattery.

"I would never start this war if I were president." -- Al Gore, staving off rumors that he will join the 2004 presidential race.

"... It is clear that within the United States there is growing challenge to President Bush about the conduct of the war and also opposition to the war. So our reports about civilian casualties here, about the resistance of the Iraqi forces, are going back to the United States. It helps those who oppose the war when you challenge the policy to develop their arguments ... My Iraqi friends tell me there is a growing sense of nationalism and resistance to what the United States and Britain are doing ... Clearly, the American war planners misjudged the determination of the Iraqi forces, and I personally do not understand how that happened, because I've been here many times and in my commentaries on television I would tell the Americans about the determination of the Iraqi forces, the determination of the government, and the willingness to fight for their country. But me, and others who felt the same way were not listened to by the Bush administration ... That is why now America is re-appraising the battlefield, delaying the war, maybe a week, and rewriting the war plan. The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance. Now they are trying to write another war plan. " -- soon-to-be-fired MSNBC reporter Peter Arnett, doing his best Ezra Pound impression on Iraqi state-run television.

"Today, I weep for my country." -- Sen. Robert Byrd (D, W.Va.), apparently mourning the Confederacy, 138 years too late.

"To me, the question of the environment is more ominous than that of peace and war. We will have regional conflicts and use of force, but world conflicts I do not believe will happen any longer. But the environment, that is a creeping danger. I'm more worried about global warming than I am of any major military conflict." -- chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix, worrying more about your barbecue grill than about the whereabouts of Saddam's VX and anthrax.

"One could say that Osama bin Laden and these non-nation-state fighters with religious purpose are very similar to those kind of atypical revolutionaries that helped [the United States] cast off the British crown." -- Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D, Ohio).

"It is my belief that sex is something that is, and should remain, essentially private." -- Dr. Ruth Westheimer, seeming to only have come to that conclusion since she can't get booked on Letterman anymore.

"I would like very much to see you in the future, Mr. President." -- Dan Rather, to Saddam Hussein.

"I will be leaving Iraq in two days, so I personally think I will be all right." -- Spanish "human shield" Ignacio Cano, evaluating the possibility that he will pay the ultimate price while "protecting" Iraqi citizens.

"Being Hispanic means more for us, much more than having a surname" -- Rep. Bob Menendez (D, N.J.), deciding that Honduran-born Second Circuit Court nominee Miguel Estrada is not Hispanic enough to suit him.

"It's not good enough to simply say that because of someone's genetics or surname that they should be considered Hispanic." -- Angelo Falcon of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, joining congressman Menendez in concluding that some Hispanics are more equal than others.

"I am, you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants." -- Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, N.Y.), whose husband should have thrown them out, then, instead of mailing them "voter identification cards."

"It is dangerous, however, in any actual case of interpretative difficulty to rely exclusively upon the literal meaning of a statute's words divorced from consideration of the statute's purpose." -- Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, making things up, as usual.

"If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America." -- the most overrated man in the universe, Nelson Mandela, speaking to something that calls itself the International Women's Forum.

" ... Iraq produces 64 percent of the oil in the world. What Bush wants is to get hold of that oil." -- Nelson Mandela, overestimating Iraq's oil production by nearly 1,200 percent, and misjudging President Bush just as badly.

"They [the U.S.] don't care. Is it because the Secretary General of the United Nations is a black man?" -- yet more of Nelson Mandela, who is only a dozen or so piercings short of becoming eligible to join International ANSWER.

"I can assure you and put your minds at ease that I rarely find it difficult to sleep. I fall asleep as soon as I put my head on the pillow." -- Saddam Hussein, who will begin sleeping even more soundly, real soon.

"If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age." -- Boston Globe reporter Charles P. Pierce, from the "too little, too late" department.

"I think war is based on greed and there are huge karmic retributions that will follow. I think war is never the answer to solving problems. The best way to solve problems is to not have enemies. -- American Music Award-winning musician Cheryl Crow, using the words "I think" with poetic license.

Harumph '07

Harumph '06

Harumph '05

Harumph '04

Harumph '02

Harumph '01

Harumph '00

Harumph '99

Return to Shinbone

 The Shinbone: The Frontier of the Free Press 

News Round-Up . Harumph! Harumph! . Shinlinks

Mailbag . Watering Hole . Issue Index . Politimals