Quotable & Notable

“George’s answer to any problem at the ranch is to cut it down with a chain saw, which I think is why he and Cheney and Rumsfeld get along so well.”

-- Laura Bush wisecracking at the White House Correspondents’ Association’s annual dinner

“This aggressive new strain of right-wing zealotry is actually a throwback to the intolerance that led to the creation of America in the first place.”

-- Former Vice President Al Gore referring to conservative Christian efforts to influence the judicial process

“All this man has done is exercise the rights all American citizens have. He has uttered words, folks, mere words.”

-- Edward B. MacMahon Jr., a lawyer for Ali Al-Timimi, a prominent Northern Virginia Muslim spiritual leader convicted in federal court April 26 for inciting his followers to train for violent jihad abroad

“The United States and the coalition forces … will not be the thing that will defeat the insurgency. So therefore, winning or losing is not the issue for ‘we’ … in the traditional, conventional context of using the word winning and losing in a war.”

-- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld who said political and economic progress in Iraq eventually will prevail over the insurgency

National Catholic Reporter, May 13, 2005