Hearsay.

"I don't know that it's written anywhere that you can "t have carpet on your front lawn."

STEVE NADWAIRSKI of Pasco County, Florida, reacting to a judge's order that he remove multicolored carpet swatches covering his front yard. The judge declared the swatches a public nuisance. Nadwairski and his wife, Mildred, had carpeted the yard because grass wouldn't grow and sod was too costly.

"Put the money in the bag."

A WOULD-BE ROBBER muttered this to a Pine Bluff, Arkansas, bank teller, only to be told that the bank had run out of cash. The man took the teller at his word and left without loot. Police picked him up nearby.

"I have to confess that if a few years ago someone had, in the same sentence, said 'Al D'Amato,' 'Hillary Clinton,' and 'courthouse, "I don't think this is what we would have had in mind."

SEN. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (D-N.Y.), speaking at a ceremony during which the U.S. District Court in Central Islip, New York, was named in honor of former Sen. Alfonse D'Amato (R-N.Y.). D'Amato led a Senate committee investigation into Clinton and former President Bill Clinton's involvement in the Whitewater land deal.

"I have no different penal code for people who are senior [citizens] but who want to act like children."

JUDGE E. CURTISSA R. COFIELD of Enfield, Connecticut, sentencing 83-year-old Augustus Simmons to a year in prison for his latest stunt in a long-running battle. Simmons says the state took 14 acres of land from him illegally in 1962. He roped off a parking lot at Bradley International Airport, which now occupies the land; cursed at two Army National Guard members patrolling the grounds; and violated his probation, which had resulted from a 2001 incident.

From newspaper and wire reports