Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

"Hala" goes for $135 million, most expensive home on market. More here.

When it all gets boiled down, and all of the other superficial and substantive issues are peeled away - this is the choice that this country will be making over the next decade. Not just now - whether to (gulp) pursue impeachment charges against Cheney, Gonzalez or even Commander Guy himself, but also in 2008 and beyond.

There are a number of differences - some very stark differences - between those of us on the left (and the sane ones among us who may not be "on the left" per se), and those rabid chest thumping not thinking past the words coming out of their mouths chickenhawk fingerpointing bloviating warmongering blowhards who are all about "staying on offense".

Even with the differences in the approach towards education, religion, healthcare, the environment, reality (sorry, trying to be nice here) - the biggest life and death issue - one where people are sent off to kill and die, and whose actions cause others to kill or die as well as die by virtue of displacement, starvation or whatever other means - is that of war.

-- CLAMMYC

[V]aluable strands of policy also may end up strewn in the wreckage, victims (in varying combinations) of President Bush's ineptitude, inconstancy and unpopularity. Among these are what Bush called compassionate conservatism, now moribund; American promotion of democracy abroad, now flailing; and accountability in elementary and high school education, losing ground as it approaches a major test in Congress.

-- FRED HIATT

The world has marched on since that day on the ranch when George W "looked in Putin's eyes and got a sense of his soul." As the pair share Maine lobster and boat rides waving at the press, what will George see in those eyes today? Will he see a man who less than a month ago equated the direction W/America is heading with Nazi Germany (hey, who said that George was the only one who could abuse historical analogies?)? Will Bush see a man who has done what he could to consolidate and strengthen his power? The two have seemingly little to share at this point, and it will be interesting to see if they can achieve anything beyond that spin power quote, "frank discussion" that says nothing - because nothing was said.

-- La POPESSA

[Rudy] Giuliani's efforts to run on his 9/11 performance have hit another snag as the president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, New York's firefighter union, has vowed to sink his candidacy.

-- BENJY SARLIN

The American Civil Liberties Union has settled a federal lawsuit stemming from an incident during which a Delaware state trooper ejected protesters from a book-signing event with former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa).

Under the settlement, the Delaware State Police will adopt a policy and training program for its officers on the free speech rights of protesters and pay $15,000 for the plaintiffs' legal fees, the ACLU said.

-- RANDALL CHASE

When Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn) was in college, he smoked pot. If his former college roommate is to believed, he smoked a lot of it.

Angered by a letter from Coleman that expressed support for continued prohibition on marijuana, Norm Kent sent a letter back to Coleman and copied it to the website CelebStoner.com.

-- JEFF FECKE

Italian police busted two would-be marijuana cultivators after "unusually frisky" deer alerted the authorities as to the presence of their mountaintop dope plantation.

-- LESTER HAINES

All work and no play makes Jonah a dull boy. But two years after the scheduled publication of Jonah Goldberg's magnum opus Liberal Fascism, there is no evidence that he has actually written anything other than the subtitle -- again and again and again, like Jack Nicholson in “The Shining.” And now he is even rewriting that. The original subtitle, The Totalitarian Temptation from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton had to be changed, probably because the publisher worried that Hillary Clinton would no longer be President by the time the book came out.

-- JON SWIFT

Photograph by Michael Brands for The New York Times