'We had no domestic attacks under Bush; we've had one under Obama.'
RUDY GIULIANI, on the Obama Administration's antiterrorism strategies. The former New York City mayor drew criticism for overlooking Sept. 11 and other attacks; his spokesman said Giuliani was "clearly talking post-9/11"
'The war against the United States must go on.'
DEFNE BAYRAK, wife of the double agent who killed seven CIA operatives and a Jordanian intelligence officer in a Dec. 30 suicide bombing on an American base in Afghanistan
'I cannot express in words how much I enjoy hosting this program ... But I cannot participate in what I honestly believe is its destruction.'
CONAN O'BRIEN, refusing to accept NBC's plan to push back the start of The Tonight Show to accommodate a new Jay Leno show
'It blows the whole story out of the water.'
JENNY CLACK, a paleontologist at Cambridge University in England, on a set of fossilized footprints found in Poland that show four-legged animals on land nearly 400 million years ago, well before the date scientists had given for animals' emergence from the sea
'It's time for me to talk about the past and to confirm what people have suspected.'
MARK MCGWIRE, St. Louis Cardinals batting coach, admitting that he used steroids--including in 1998, the year he broke the single-season home-run record
'If you don't want me in the job, fire me. But until then, shut up.'
MICHAEL STEELE, Republican National Committee chairman, responding to critics who attribute the organization's decline in donations to Steele's performance
'If we ignore history, we're doomed to bail it out again.'
PHIL ANGELIDES, chairman of a bipartisan commission appointed to examine the causes of the financial crisis, during opening remarks in a hearing with leading Wall Street bankers
TALKING HEADS
Ruth Marcus
Disputing the contention that the underwear bomber should be tried as an enemy combatant, in the Washington Post:
"The clamor to have Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab declared an enemy combatant and hauled before a military tribunal ignores several inconvenient facts ... A military tribunal would provide many of the same protections about which critics complain: the presumption of innocence, proof beyond a reasonable doubt, access to counsel. The string-'em-up itch is understandable, but a military tribunal won't soothe it."
--1/6/10
Nicholas D. Kristof
Calling in the New York Times for religious groups to promote gender equality:
"When religious institutions exclude women from their hierarchies and rituals, the inevitable implication is that females are inferior ... Religious groups should stand up for a simple ethical principle: any person's human rights should be sacred, and not depend on something as earthly as their genitals."
--1/9/10
Eliot A. Cohen