Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

WHAT THE DUCK?! MORE HERE.

From the extreme of Lyndon Johnson, who twisted arms, to Dwight Eisenhower, who believed in “reasoning” with legislators, every President has worked hard as an advocate, cheer-leader and horse trader to get Congress to do what he wanted.

(George) Bush seems to disdain all that. Perhaps his life experience explains why. Unlike others who had to strive and struggle to get there, Bush came to the White House after a lifetime of getting what he wanted through family connections.

-- ROBERT STEIN

John Solomon, the Charlie Brown of Gotcha! journalism, may have defied the odds and made contact with the football.

-- TIM F.

It's astonishing, really, that conservatives are still exercised about FDR and the New Deal 70 years after the fact. Not just in a historical sense, mind you, but in the same kind of immediate, visceral sense that you and I might be outraged by the war in Iraq or yet another tax cut for the rich.

-- KEVIN DRUM

During the final weeks of the Supreme Court term, it was hard not to be struck by one recurring theme: Former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor—a few short years ago the "most powerful woman in America'" a "majority of one'" the "most powerful person on the court," and the most "powerful Supreme Court Justice in recent history"—had somehow become the most disregarded. With the court’s newly dominant conservative wing focused pretty much on whether to ignore or overrule her outright, it’s clear that one real casualty of the new Roberts Court is O'Connor’s lifetime of work on an extraordinary range of constitutional issues. . . . So far, the court has explicitly minimized—or, more frequently, stepped distastefully over—O'Connor's theoretical framework for abortion, campaign finance, and affirmative action. That's to name just a few. My friend Marty Lederman predicted as much when O'Connor first retired two years ago; still, the speed of it all is proving to be unsettling, if not downright unseemly.

-- DAHLIA LITHWICK

Hamas--remember them, the people we warned the Palestinians not to elect in the elections we insisted that they hold last year?--is really on a roll in Gaza since their takeover a few weeks ago. They are two of two in solving prominent kidnappings, one involving the BBC reporter Alan Johnston, and the other involving the Gaza Zoo's lion, snatched by a drug gang who was holding her as a kind of cash cow. They would charge passersby $1/head to pose with the lion for a cute photo. . . . The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been hell on animals, as you can imagine.

The question is, can they govern? Will they govern? I'd like to see some of that efficiency applied to the task of coming to some kind of agreement with Israel. Despite all the acrimony and injustice that has characterized this conflict, Israel is not going to be run into the sea, and it is in everyone's interest that the two sides forge a two-state arrangement. Fatah is toast. . . . they do not enjoy people's trust, they are ineffectual, they can't be a partner. It seems that Hamas can be.

-- BUCKAROOSKIDOO

One of the things I find interesting about male-female interactions in the dating world is how so many women complain that men are bastards, so many guys complain girls are bitches, yet both groups largely ignore their roles in creating those negative impressions.

ephvlad-- SAM de BRITO

Quote of the millennium:

"I'm a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary. If he does something like that, I'm walking away with one thing, and it's not alimony, trust me."

-- Mrs. David Vitter, in a 2000 interview.

I guess if you're looking for Louisiana Sen. David Vitter on the Senate floor today, he'd be the one sitting with his legs crossed.

-- WILL BUNCH