For 19 years, the Media Research Center has been compiling its list of notable quotables. The quotes, from prominent members of the mainstream news media, provide a clear window into the leftist mindset that pervades most of America's large news organizations. At the end of the year, the center (helped by a panel of judges) chooses the best examples. As usual, this year's crop reveals the media's perennial contempt for all things conservative. Actually, the winners more or less explain themselves. (The full set of winners and finalists can be found at the center's Web site, mrc.org.) Happy New Year!

"We better all hope nothing happens to Arlen Specter, the Republican head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, because he might be all that's standing between us and a full-blown dictatorship in this country. . . . Does it concern you that your phone company may be voluntarily providing your phone records to the government without your knowledge or your permission? If it doesn't, it sure as hell ought to."
- Jack Cafferty on CNN's "The Situation Room"

"Our government has turned its energy and attention away from upholding the rule of law and toward creating law-free zones at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Haditha and other places around the world. And let's not forget the sustained assault on women's reproductive freedom and the hijacking of public policy by religious fundamentalism."
- New York Times legal reporter Linda Greenhouse in a speech at Harvard

"You can see it in the crowds. The thrill, the hope. How they surge toward him. You're looking at an American political phenomenon. In state after state, in the furious final days of this crucial campaign, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama has been the Democrats' not-so-secret get-out-the-vote weapon. He inspires the party faithful, and many others, like no one else on the scene today . . . And the question you can sense on everyone's mind, as they listen so intently to him: Is he the one? Is Barack Obama the man, the black man, who could lead the Democrats back to the White House and maybe even unite the country? . . . Everywhere he goes, people want him to run for president, especially in Iowa, cradle of presidential contenders. Around here, they're even naming babies after him."
- ABC's Terry Moran, on "Nightline"

"No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush, says, we're here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people, millions support your revolution, support your ideas, and we are expressing our solidarity with you."
- Harry Belafonte, to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, at a televised rally

"Finally tonight, the Winter Games. Count me among those who don't like 'em and won't watch 'em . . . Try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention."
- Bryant Gumbel, on HBO's "Real Sports"

"Some of the values, depending on your perspective . . . may be deemed wholesome, but in other ways, I think, people will see this community as eschewing diversity and promoting intolerance. . . Do you think the tenets of the community might result in de facto segregation as a result of some of the beliefs that are being espoused by the majority of the residents there? . . . You can understand how people would hear some of these things and be like, wow, this is really infringing on civil liberties and freedom of speech and right to privacy and all sorts of basic tenets that this country was founded on. Right?"
- Katie Couric, on NBC's "Today," questioning Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan and developer Paul Marinelli, who are building a community based on Catholic values in Florida