Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

MADELEINE "MADDIE" McCANN

Ferrari engine makes a deep, distinctive sound. When the children at Portugal's most famous orphanage heard the sports car roaring down the driveway, fear swept through the dormitories.

The noise could mean only one thing: the man known as The Doctor was coming to call. Yet this medical practitioner had no intention of adhering to the ancient Hippocratic Oath.

Instead, arriving at Casa Pia (House of the Pious), a 17th century Lisbon orphanage where more than 4,000 children are cared for each year behind high stone walls, the doctor would summon selected boys and girls from their beds for examinations one night each week.

Where possible, he chose deaf-mutes.

-- ANDREW MALONE and VANESSA ALLEN

Liberal black leaders are attempting to recreate the civil rights movement by equating the Jena 6 thugs to Rosa Parks. . . . The same race hustlers who created this racially divisive atmosphere are now going to write laws to fix the problem? Shame on John Conyers and the Republican members for allowing this circus to continue. Black Democrats have no answers for serious social issues destroying black Americans. They're only interested in holding on to political power. This is why they're defending the Jena 6 thugs - and trying to fabricate a racial crisis. Whites need to speak up and stop giving into these race hustlers' demands.

-- REV. JESSE LEE PETERSON

The Writers Guild has authorized a strike against Hollywood studios if they cannot get an acceptable contract by the end of this month. Over 90% of the voting members of the union supported a walkout over the structure of residual payments from DVD and other ancillary markets. The studios will need to rush their current productions.

What will a writers strike do to the American entertainment industry? It would mean that Hollywood would have to use old scripts that have already been used. They would have to recycle old plot lines and archetype characters. Instead of coming up with new ideas, they would have to rely on rehashes with Roman numerals coming after familiar titles.

In other words, the American consumer shouldn't notice any difference, at least until the actors and directors join them. After that, we'll just get honest reruns.

-- ED MORRISSEY

According to once-prominent religious right figure Cal Thomas, we were on the brink of victory in Iraq, until House Democrats ruined it by pushing that Armenian genocide amendment through committee. Says Cal, "Are Democrats so cynical that they would stir an already boiling pot in hopes that it would negate whatever success America may finally be having in quelling terrorist acts in Iraq? One would hope that is not the case, but given their leadership's rhetoric about the war already being lost and their refusal to acknowledge even the slightest progress in Iraq as positive lest it reflect well on the Bush administration, cynicism about their cynical actions might be justified."

-- JOSH MARSHALL

Everyone's favorite neocon hysteric, Norman Poderetz (who is currently advising Mayor 9/11), has been touting a war against islamofascism as World War IV. Norm's corner for IV included a former CIA director (James Woolsey), who argued in 2003 that Iran, Iraq, Syria & al Qaeda were all part of the islamofascist network. Considering that these four groups don't even get along, I'm not sure how that all works, but I'm sure Jim & Norm have it all worked out in their brains.

So fine, we're heading into World War IV.

But wait! Now Bush has stepped up and warned us that we're heading into World War III ("If you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.").

So which is it boys? World War III or IV? And why aren't we surprised. This bunch has yet to get even one historical analogy right, let alone process or learn from them. Is it any surprise that they can't even agree on which war we're in now?

-- La POPESSA

Are we perhaps witnessing the political ascendance of Mike Huckabee? Is it possible that restive religious conservatives, widely dissatisfied with their choices in the GOP presidential field, are poised to flock en masse to an ordained Baptist preacher who plays the electric guitar? To an ex-governor from Bill Clinton’s state whose chief claim to fame – until recently – was that he lost 100 pounds? To a guy who, with that kind of name, sounds like he should be cracking cornpone jokes on The Andy Griffith Show?

The answer is yes. Huckabee, notwithstanding his ostensible second-tier status as an ’08 candidate, finished in a virtual tie for first place this weekend in a straw poll of religious conservatives at the Values Voter Summit in Washington (if we include the online voters who chose not to attend), and Huckabee slaughtered the entire GOP field (polling 50 percent, with Mitt Romney a distant second at 10 percent) if we count only the votes that were cast in person, by those who were in the room.

-- DICK POLMAN