United States Presidential Candidates 2008

"I think it's time that people who really do believe in the sanctity of human life ... should look for people that are not just talking the talk when it's election time."

"For six years they did nothing to end abortion on demand or overturn Roe v. Wade."

"Gene Amondson"

"Barack Obama"

"Róger Calero"

"John McCain"

"Gloria La Riva"

"Thomas Stevens"

"Brian Moore"

"Charles Jay"

"Chuck Baldwin"

"Alan Keyes"

"Ralph Nader"

"Cynthia McKinney"

"Every American is hard-wired in history or experience to be libertarian about something."

"There is no legitimate use whatsoever for marijuana. This is not medicine. This is bogus witchcraft. It has no place in medicine, no place in pain relief..."

"Defending the Constitution is always important. That duty is even more vital today, when the president and top administration officials argue that the executive branch may break the law whenever the president deems it to be necessary in a time which he declares to be wartime."

"Clearly, the court today has ignored the constitutional right and responsibility of Congress to pass laws protecting citizens from dangerous and addictive narcotics..."

"The definition of throwing your vote away is to go into that voting booth and vote for one of two parties that will not change the direction this country's going in."

"What has to do with your ability to fall asleep is not caffeine. It's having a clean conscience. I have a clean conscience so I can drink all the caffeine I want."

"...there remains time to turn back the constitutional clock and roll back excessive post-9/11 powers before we turn the corner into another Japanese internment or, closer to our own experiences, before we witness a legally sanctioned Ruby Ridge or Waco scenario."

"A print of the painting, The Prayer At Valley Forge, depicting George Washington on bended knee, praying in the hard snow at Valley Forge, hangs over the desk in my office. If the practice of witchcraft, such as is allowed now at Fort Hood, is permitted to stand, one wonders what paintings will grace the walls of future generations."

"After sleeping late on Sunday, I was back at my desk that afternoon. I had two prime considerations. First, I wanted to be certain that the tapes were not a trap for the committee or that there was a significant bit of missing information that we lacked; experience taught me that matters of this importance do not usually fall into your lap without more complications that are immediately apparent. Second, if our information was legitimate, I wanted to be sure the White House was fully aware of what was to be disclosed so that it could take appropriate action. Legalisms aside, it was inconceivable to me that the White House could withhold the tapes once their existence was made known. I believed it would be in everyone’s interest if the White House realized, before making any public statements, the probable position of both the majority and the minority of the Watergate committee. Even though I had no authority to act for the committee, I decided to call Fred Buzhardt at home. Buzhardt was the only White House staff member with whom I had had any substantial contact. He had been unassuming and straightforward in his dealings with me. He never tried to enlist me in any White House strategy, to suggest that I relay confidential information, or to so any of the things that were probably assumed by many of the so-called sophisticates in Washington. (page 86)"

"When five men were captured in the Watergate offices of the Democratic National Committee early in the morning on Saturday June 17, 1972 I had just completed a three-year stint as an assistant United States Attorney in Nashville. Ironically I had resigned the day before the break-in. I was about to become an unpaid political worker- the middle Tennessee director for the reelection campaign of Sen. Howard Baker. (page 3)"

"In hindsight, I have come to believe the discovery of the tapes may prove to be an historic event in more than one way. At a time when the United States government acknowledges that 2 million conversations were overheard by authorized eavesdroppers in a twelve month period, and at least an equal number were being recorded by private dectecies, suspicious spouses, corporate spies, special agents, and blackmailers; at a time when people like me conduct their lives under the assumption that their telephone lines are tapped; and at a time when devices such as the bug-in-the-martini-olive are proliferating, the disastrous consequences that flowed from Nixon’s fateful decision to record White House conversations may serve to awaken the nation to the threat posed to the little privacy that remains to us. (page 92)"

"This country has shed more blood for the freedom of other people than all the other nations in the history of the world combined, and I'm tired of people feeling like they've got to apologize for America."

"We are always just one successful terrorist attack away from a nuclear disaster"

"We can't forget the fact that although at a particular point in time we never found any WMD down there, he clearly had had WMD. He clearly had had the beginnings of a nuclear program."

"I was operating under the theory that, even though Baker had been responsible for my appointment, I was representing all three minority senators-Baker, Edward Gurney of Florida, and Weicker. If differences arose within the minority there was no question about where my loyalty lay and whose directions I would take, but I believed that I should try to respond to the wishes of Weicker and Gurney in every way possible. (page 25)"

"As I reflected further, I convinced myself that Nixon had not had prior knowledge to the break-in, nor of the cover-up that followed. Even if culpability reached dangerously close to the president, I reasoned, surely his top aides would have shielded him from damaging information, not just to protect themselves, but also to allow him to tell the nation, in the best faith, that neither he nor his chief advisors were involved. (page 39)"

"The average 20-year-old serving us in Iraq knows more about their country's national security than the average 20-year political veteran serving in the Congress today."

"Some of our folks went to Washington to drain the swamp and made partnership with the alligators instead."

"I often say after eight years in Washington, I longed for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood."

"Not once did an off-the-record comment return to haunt me. For example, my relationship with Walter Pincus, editor of the New Republic, one of the nation’s most liberal magazines, developed to the point were he understood our conversations went off the record without my having to say so. I never divulged anything of great substance, but many of my comments about personalities and my own prejudices could have been extremely embarrassing had he (or others) betrayed my confidence. (page 236)"

"I'm not above acting like a seal every once in a while and waiting for the next fish, I just don't want to do it all the time."

"Where I stand doesn't depend on where I'm standing."

""Dumb as hell" - Richard Nixon described Thompson as not able "to interrogate unfriendly witnesses and would be outsmarted by the committee's Democratic counsel." (see: The transcripts of the Nixon tapes published in "Abuse of Power: The New Watergate Tapes".)"

"I heard Senator Sam Irvin of Watergate fame say something that stayed with me: 'If you can paint a really good picture of a cow, you don't have to write the word "cow" under it.'"

"My daddy always said that a man who walks around with a smile on his face all the time can't possibly know what's going on."

"Minor surgery is surgery that someone else is having"

"I looked down on a quilt of clouds, bordered on the horizon by the blood-orange streaks of the setting sun. As the steady hum of the engine drowned out the chatter around me, I realized that I would probably be thinking about the implications of Watergate for the rest of my life. For the country, and for me it had been a significant point in time. (page 263)"

"Teaching Latin to someone like me in high school was somewhat like trying to teach a pig to dance. It's a waste of the teacher's time and it irritates the pig."

"They say that God protects drunks and children. I would add young morons to that list."

"I thought Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided. I think this platform originally came out as a response to particularly Roe v. Wade because of that. Before Roe v. Wade, states made those decisions. I think people ought to be free at state and local levels to make decisions that even Fred Thompson disagrees with. That's what freedom is all about. I think Roe v. Wade hopefully one day will be overturned, and we can go back to the pre-Roe v. Wade days."

"Well, what if you said something like — if this happens in the United States, and we determine that it is the result of extremist, fundamentalist Muslims, you know, you could take out their holy sites."

"Now, three years later, at the request of the regularly uncooperative Mexican government, your department has decided to use taxpayer resources to send marshals to Hawaii for Dog Chapman? This Administration routinely tells Congress that they cannot secure our borders and immigration system due to a lack of resources. We are told that the U. S . Attorneys offices in Border States are simply overwhelmed with cases and cannot prosecute all the violations even some of the serious ones. Yet somehow they have plenty of time to track down a Mexican drug smuggler and give him immunity so he can testify against our Border Patrol agents."

"It is not just for the security of Iraq and the freedom of Iraq. It is for the security of the entire Middle East and for the freedom of the entire Middle East.... We are creating an environment that is threatening to the rest of the fundamentalist regimes in the area. This is an honorable goal on our part, but it is worrisome to the extreme. We do not know what they will do, nor what they have to do it with."

"The only word I will accept on the word 'conservative', for me anyway, is 'unapologetic'. Because, I for one, am not sorry that we won the Cold War. I am not sorry that we reduced tax rates and created economic opportunities for millions. I am not sorry that we reformed welfare and put millions of people back to work. And I will never, ever apologize for America. It is the last best hope for Western civilization. Let's face it- no one flees for a better life from the United States, to say, Pakistan or anywhere for that matter. Why is it so hard for us, why is it so difficult for us to take pride in the fact of who we are, what we have created, what Western civilization really means."

"This is our culture; fight for it. This is our flag; pick it up. This is our country; take it back."

"After September 11th, we were told that money was the lifeblood of terrorists, and that we should do everything possible to block their access to financial resources...Today we are hearing a far different message: Bank of America, it’s everywhere terrorists want to be."