Verbatim: Apr. 25, 2005

"He's a quintessential kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy."

CARL FORD JR., a former State Department intelligence chief, testifying in Senate hearings about the management style of John Bolton, nominee for U.S. ambassador to the U.N.

"I don't think Wisconsin should become known as a state where we shoot cats."

JIM DOYLE, Governor of Wisconsin, where a conservation group approved a proposal to allow citizens to kill feral cats

"The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith."

FLYER, advertising an April 24 telecast organized by the Family Research Council--to feature a speech by Senate majority leader Bill Frist--intended to rally conservative Christians against the Democrats' use of the filibuster to block conservative judicial nominees

"I think we have got to sit down and work this thing out. Look, we won't always be on the majority."

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona Republican, expressing doubts about the campaign to do away with the filibuster, in an interview on MSNBC's Hardball

"I was acting."

ACCUSER'S MOTHER, in the Michael Jackson molestation trial, after being confronted with a videotape in which she and her children praised Jackson for helping the family

"If we turn the nation into a paper-shuffling, law-figuring-out country, no one actually gets anything done."

DAVID KEATING, president of the National Taxpayers Union, on the complexity of a tax code that resulted in Americans' spending an estimated 6.6 billion hours this year preparing their returns

"I'll get them to dance in the streets."

MARTHA REEVES, lead singer of '60s girl group Martha and the Vandellas, on her candidacy for the Detroit city council

"Do you want us to come over and shoot her?"

MIKE FORBESS, a 911 dispatcher in Texas, who was reprimanded for his response to a woman who called in to report that her 12-year-old daughter had kicked a hole in a wall

Sources: New York Times; AP; New York Times; MSNBC; AP (4)