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A bi-weekly compilation of the latest outrageous, sometimes humorous, 
quotes in the liberal media.

June 23, 2003

(Vol. Sixteen; No. 13)

No Weapons Yet? Impeach Bush!

John Roberts: "Accusations are being leveled that at the very least, administration officials embellished the evidence [of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction] - at worst, misled the world....It could be a significant scandal for the Bush White House, potentially worse than Watergate, says one man who remembers that era well." 
Former Nixon aide John Dean: "If Bush has deliberately turned to the intelligence agencies and told them what he wants rather than what they were giving him, I think he's in deep trouble."
- CBS Evening News, June 9.

"The President listed three causes for the war: Iraq was an imminent threat to us and to its neighbors; that Iraq was connected with the events of September 11; and that there would be weapons of mass destruction there. None of these things have been found, and I think many people believe the burden is on the President to prove his case. And if he doesn't, he then, it seems to me, is either a liar or a fool, and that's a very awkward position to be in....If you are so wrong about all three causes, then I wonder if you can honorably hold - continue to hold your office."
- Randy Cohen, who writes a weekly column, "The Ethicist," for The New York Times Magazine, on CNN's NewsNight with Aaron Brown, June 6.

"Tightfisted, Meanspirited" GOP

"A little distance from Bush is usually not a bad thing for [House Majority Leader Tom] DeLay. An unflinching conservative advocate, he wins hurrahs from the faithful each time he sticks to his guns in public....But sometimes the White House goes too far with its tendency to use him as a foil to show voters that the President is a compassionate conservative. During the 2000 campaign, Bush opposed a DeLay-backed plan on tax credits for the poor to demonstrate that he was a 'new kind of Republican,' distinct from the GOP's tightfisted, meanspirited wing."
- "Notebook" item by John F. Dickerson and Michael Weisskopf in the June 23 issue of Time.

Communism Good for the Bears

"The Soviet Union outlawed polar bear hunting in 1956, but since the fall of communism, illegal shooting has steadily risen, experts say."
- New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin in a June 17 article about how the number of polar bears is declining due to Russian poaching.

Hillary's Grueling Chat with Babs

"You became First Lady like no other First Lady before you. You had your own interests, you got involved in public policy. No First Lady had done that without being severely criticized. Did you realize what you were getting into?"
"I don't think people realize how strong your faith is."
- Questions Barbara Walters posed to Hillary Clinton in a June 8 ABC special promoting her book, Living History.

No Skepticism of "Candid" Clinton

"Surprising revelations from a book due out next week from former First Lady Hillary Clinton. Leaked excerpts show that she's a lot more candid about her personal life and feelings than many had expected."
- NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw on June 4.

"Senator Clinton reveals how she learned the painful truth about her husband and Monica Lewinsky....She's very candid about a very personal matter."
- NBC's Katie Couric on Today, June 4.

"Bombshell new details are emerging this morning from Hillary Clinton's book going on sale next week. In it Mrs. Clinton writes candidly about the moment her husband admitted he'd been unfaithful."
- NBC's Sara James on Today, June 4.

"Months earlier, when he [Bill Clinton] made his famous public denial, he was also lying to his wife in private. Mrs. Clinton believed him and, famously, went on national television, unwittingly repeating his lies and denouncing the reports about Lewinsky as the product of a vast right-wing conspiracy."
- CNN's Jonathan Karl on Inside Politics, June 4.

Ken Starr's Vast Sexist Conspiracy

"In the book you have a lot to say about forgiveness. Have you forgiven Ken Starr?"
"Is the 'vast, right-wing conspiracy' bigger than you thought when you brought that term into our vocabulary?"
- Time's Nancy Gibbs in an interview with Hillary Clinton published in the June 16 issue.

"But were you surprised at the backlash? The really vitriolic, violent backlash against you in many ways? Do you think it was good old-fashioned sexism?" 
- Katie Couric to Hillary Clinton on Today, June 10.

$400 Billion "Still Not Enough"

"The Senate begins debate today on what would be the biggest expansion of Medicare benefits in its history. If the bill passes, prescription drugs would be subsidized for all 40 million members for the first time. Critics say the drug benefit isn't enough."
- NBC's Ann Curry on Today, June 16.

"Some have said this bill doesn't go quite far enough - it's more of a start than a long-term solution. Do you agree? How do you address those concerns?"
- ABC's Tony Perkins to HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson on Good Morning America, June 16.

"New hope for the 40 million seniors on Medicare. Next week the Senate is expected to pass a bipartisan plan finally adding a prescription drug benefit....The cost of the plan, $400 billion. Advocates for seniors, like the powerful American Association for Retired Persons, say it's still not enough."
- NBC's Campbell Brown on Today, June 11.

Ruing a "Radical Reduction"

"The Democrats, for too long, have allowed the Bush team to name its radical reduction in services, and the huge dependence it is creating on foreign capital, as an innocuous 'tax cut.' Balderdash. This new tax cut is a dangerous foray into wretched excess and it will ultimately make our government, ourselves and our children less secure."
- New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, June 11. Over the next ten years, the 2003 tax cut will reduce federal tax receipts by less than 2 percent.

Non-Payers "Cut Out" of Tax Cut

Tom Brokaw: "Up next, a solution in the works for millions of the families cut out of the recent tax cut...."
Norah O'Donnell: "According to a study done by the Children's Defense Fund, a liberal advocacy group, about one million children in military families will not benefit from the new child tax credit because they make less than $27,000 a year....Those military children part of a larger group of nearly 12 million American children denied the child tax credit when Congress and the White House eliminated low-income families to keep the total cost of the bill at $350 billion."
- NBC Nightly News, June 5.

"The Senate passed new tax cuts today to benefit families left out of the President's relief package. They include child credits for families earning between $10,000 and $26,000 a year who got nothing under the recent plan."
- Elizabeth Vargas, ABC's World News Tonight, June 5.

Omission "Hurt" 12 Million Kids

"A huge number of liberal groups started mobilizing, pointing out who was hurt by this. We're talking about, you know, 12 million children who, you know, are not getting the same kind of tax credit that people thought."
- Washington Post reporter Julie Eilperin on PBS's Washington Week, June 6.

Deficits Worse Than Davis's Lies

"[California Governor Gray] Davis's opponents say he won re-election while misleading voters about a looming $38 billion budget shortfall. That Republicans would spearhead a recall over a deficit is ironic, considering that nearly every state government is in trouble and the Republican majority in Washington is running the biggest deficit in the history of government."
- ABC's Brian Rooney on World News Tonight, June 14.

PBS Host Sees Malicious & Radical Plot to Destroy America

"The failure of Democratic politicians and public thinkers to respond to popular discontents...allowed a resurgent conservatism to convert public concern and hostility into a crusade to resurrect social Darwinism as a moral philosophy, multinational corporations as a governing class, and the theology of markets as a transcendental belief system....
"Their stated and open aim is to change how America is governed - to strip from government all its functions except those that reward the rich and privileged benefactors....It is the most radical assault on the notion of one nation, indivisible, that has occurred in our lifetime. I'll be frank with you: I simply don't understand it - or the malice in which it is steeped....
"And I don't know how to reconfigure democratic politics to fit into an age of sound bites and polling dominated by a media oligarchy whose corporate journalists are neutered and whose right-wing publicists have no shame."
- PBS's Bill Moyers in a June 4 speech at a conference sponsored by the Campaign for America's Future, according to a text version posted on commondreams.org.

Waving the Presidential Wand

"So you've got this President, who'd been waving his wand at everyone who walked by for their entire marriage, and he does it in the Oval Office with an intern and she says that Starr's the one obsessed with sex? Hello?"
- FNC's Brit Hume on Fox News Sunday June 8, reacting to Hillary Clinton's charge in her new book that the Starr Report was "gratuitously graphic and degrading to the presidency."