Timely quotes

"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain
the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the
government -- lest it come to dominate our lives." -Patrick Henry

"The prohibition against torture [in the law] is considered to be a jus cogens norm, meaning that no derogation is permitted from it under any circumstances." -Naomi Wolf, from blog "What is probably in the Missing Tapes" 12.13.07

"The strategy is to lay low and then blame them for not getting anything done. The truth is, we all lose." -Rep. Ray Lahood, IL. discussing the Republican strategy to undermine the Democratic-held Congress

"When facism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and
carrying a cross." -Sinclair Lewis

"Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her [America's] heart, her benedictions, and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy." -John Quincy Adams

"Why worsen the situation by threatening sanctions and bring it to a
dead end?" Putin said in a veiled reference to the U.S. push for
harsher international sanctions. "It's not the best way to resolve the
situation by running around like a madman with a razor blade in his
hand." -Vladmir Putin on US proposed Iranian sanctions
(originally published 10/25/07 in the Christian Science Monitor)

"At its best," writes Sullivan, "the Obama candidacy is about ending a
war--not so much the war in Iraq, which now has a momentum that will
propel the occupation into the next decade--but the war within America
that has prevailed since Vietnam and that shows dangerous signs of
intensifying, a nonviolent civil war that has crippled America at the
very time the world needs it most. It is a war about war--and about
culture and about religion and about race. And in that war, Obama--and
Obama alone--offers the possibility of a truce."
(Celeste Fremon in 'Off The Bus' article on The Huffington Post quoting Andrew Sullivan's article in the December issue of The Atlantic)

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." -Abraham Lincoln

"The problems we face will not be solved by the minds that created them." - unknown