Quotes.

"I still think this is a great country. In Mexico, they would have just shot me."

--maverick dairyman Hein Hettinga on being barred from underselling the dairy cartel, quoted in The Washington Post, December 10

"One particularly good one was a book on Ulysses S. Grant. But I stopped. I found the struggle going on--gosh, those years, there were so many people killed and wounded, and they were all Americans, except for the foreign fighters who came over from Germany and Poland and elsewhere. So I turned away from that and read a great deal about World War II."

--Donald Rumsfeld on what he read as secretary of defense, at a Pentagon "town hall" meeting, December 8

"Keeping us up here eats away at families. Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families--that's what this says."

--Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) on the new five-day congressional workweek, quoted in The Washington Post, December 6

"Any band will be considered even though you are from USA. The lyrics should not contain admirations on war, sex, violence, murder, drug, rape, non-governmental society, imperialism, colonialism, racism, anti-DPRK, and anti-socialism."

--plea for entrants to the "Rock for Peace" concert in Pyongyang, North Korea, on voiceofkorea.org, November 15