Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

National Museum of the Marine Corps exhibit shows Korean War scene

Admit it. Learning about history has rarely been so much fun.

Across the country, shiny new history museums are pushing up like poppies on a battlefield, while the war horses struggle to scrape off their mold. Gone are shelves of crusty artifacts, yellowed text panels stuffed with dates and names and the "excitement" of a stale soda cracker behind glass that some historical figure may have sampled. In their place are Hollywood-produced movies, evocative oral histories and special-effect extravaganzas so spectacular that visitors could be forgiven for thinking they had actually lived through that historical moment.

-- KATHRYN SHATTUCK

What The Fred (Thompson) Surge says about the race is that it is still wide open. You have to wonder if New Gingrich isn’t seeing the reaction to Thompson entering the race and contemplating his own prospects.

At this point, anything and everything is possible.

-- RICK MORAN

This is your only warning. Turn off your TV set, or your will to live — or vote — may be decimated.

The Television Bureau of Advertising forecasts that the politicians who want your vote will spend about $3 billion in 2008, a presidential election year.

-- DR. DENNY

Like many reporters, I had been focused in on a close-up of one or two controversies, but had been missing the broader context. Now, the camera had zoomed way out to bring the full panorama into view. Suddenly, what the Bush administration had been doing across a huge range of issues made much more sense – not just the 9/11-related controversies, but Cheney’s fight to keep his energy task force papers a secret, the attacks on open-government laws such as FOIA and the Presidential Records Act, the use of executive orders instead of legislation to push the faith-based initiative, the decision to pull out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty without consulting the Senate, the choices for Supreme Court nominations, unprecedented efforts to impose greater White House control over Justice Department lawyers and other executive branch bureaucrats, and many other things. These disparate controversies were all connected. The administration, from its very beginning, had set out to set precedents and take actions that would permanently expand presidential power for the long-term, even when such tactics brought them extra short-term difficulties. A quiet but sweeping constitutional revolution was well underway.

-- CHARLIE SAVAGE

An art teacher removed from the classroom for encouraging pupils not to eat meat vowed Monday not to return to Fox River Grove Middle School until it eliminates milk and all other animal products from the lunch menu.

Dave Warwak, 44, also said he plans to ask the McHenry County (Illinois) state's attorney to file child-endangerment charges against the school district because the school continues to promote milk and other animal products as part of a healthy diet.

-- DALE LONG and CAROLYN STARKS

The American Cancer Society’s new advertising campaign urging access to quality health care for all Americans will bring home in gripping terms what happens to people without health insurance. When it comes to dealing with cancer, any delay in detection or treatment, as is common among the uninsured or poorly insured, can be fatal.

The society decided to devote its entire advertising budget this year to the problem of inadequate health coverage after reaching a stark and sobering conclusion. It has no hope of meeting its goal of reducing cancer death rates by 50 percent, and incidence rates by 25 percent, from 1990 to 2015 unless cancer patients gain quicker access to screening and treatment.

-- THE NEW YORK TIMES

Photograph by Eric Long/NMMC