Ordinarily, I’m inclined to cut the folks charged with overseeing our vulnerable homeland security a fair amount of slack. Sure, the department’s Crayola color-code system seems increasingly meaningless. And that whole duct-tape-and-plastic-sheeting business was a p.r. fiasco only slightly less calamitous than the Pentagon’s terrorism-futures casino idea. (Everyone wave good-bye to Admiral Poindexter!)
-Michelle Cottle

I want to do something more relaxing - like dismantle live nuclear weapons.
-Ari Fleischer, White House Press Secretary about why he is stepping down from his position.

One night last year he called about 1 a.m, ranting and raving about something. And I said, ‘Sir, are you watching Fox again?’
-Julia Payne, Bill Clinton’s spokeswoman

I wrote a song about dental floss but did anyone’s teeth get cleaner?
-Frank Zappa’s reply to Tipper Gore’s claim that rock lyrics incited deviant behavior

Don’t vote. You’ll only encourage them

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
-Sir Winston Churchill

When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now I’m beginning to believe it.
-Clarence Darrow

In politics, stupidity is not a handicap
-Napoleon Bonaparte

Politicians are those who deal with the problems which would not exist if they didn’t exist

Politicians and diapers have one thing in common. They should both be changed regularly and for the same reason.

Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a congressman can.
-Mark Twain

Never have I seen a word as accurate as politics. Poly meaning many, and tic being a blood-sucking thing.

People who are willing to rely on the government to keep them safe are pretty much standing on Darwin’s mat, pounding on the door, screaming, ‘Take me, take me!’

I have tried to give Oliver North the benifit of the doubt after hearing his testimony that he knew right from wrong, but that he didn’t know that lying to congress was illegal.
-Art Buchwald

If I were in the President’s place I would not get a chance to resign. I would be lying in a pool of my own blood hearing Mrs. Armey standing over me saying, “How do I reload this damn thing?”
-Representative Dick Armey, on what he would be doing in Clinton’s place.

Capital punishment is our societies recognition of the sanctity of human life.
-Orrin Hatch, Senator from Utah.

“I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy. But that could change.”
-Dan Quayle

If we do not succeed, we run the risk of failure.
-Dan Quayle

Hawaii has always been a very pivotal role in the Pacific. It is in the Pacific. It is a part of the United States that is an island that is right here.
-Dan Quayle

The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation’s history… this century’s history…. We all lived in this century. I didn’t live in this century.
-Dan Quayle

It’s no exaggeration to say that the undecideds could go one way or another.
-George Bush

I want to make sure everybody who has a job wants a job.

-George Bush, during his first Presidential campaign

“This is a great day for France!”

Richard Nixon, while attending Charles De Gaulle’s funeral

“I was under medication when I made the decision not to burn the tapes.”
-Richard Nixon

If you can’t convince them, confuse them.

-Harry Truman

“My fellow Americans, I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”

-Ronald Reagan, about to go on the air for a radio broadcast, unaware that the microphone was already on.

“I’ve tried everything else to convince you. Now I’m going to be sensible.”
-unnamed congressman

Well, if you can’t take people’s money and then screw them over you have no business being in this line of work.
-Mayor of San Francisco, after being asked how he could pass a wide range smoking ban after accepting large campaign contribution from the tobacco lobby.

“Nixon has been sitting in the White House while George McGovern has been exposing himself to the people of the United States.”
-Frank Licht, then governor of Rhode Island, campaigning for McGovern in 1972

He didn’t say that. He was reading what was given to him in a speech.
-Richard Darman, director of OMB, explaining why President Bush wasn’t following up on his campaign pledge that there would be no loss of wetlands.

Now we are trying to get unemployment to go up and I think we’re going to succeed.
-Ronald Reagan

I haven’t committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law.
-David Dinkins, New York City Mayor, answering accusations that he failed to pay his taxes.

They gave me a book of checks. They didn’t ask for any deposits.
-Congressman Joe Early (D-Mass) at a press conference to answer questions about the House Bank Scandal.

Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.
-Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, DC

‘If the alien baby comes, we’re ready and looking forward to it …I’ve always wanted a sibling for Chelsea.’
-Hillary Rodham Clinton, on a tabloid report that she was pregnant with an alien child.

The Internet is a good tool to use to get on the Net.
-Bob Dole

The Lybian army is capable of destroying America and breaking its nose.
-Muammar Qaddafi