May 31, 2005

From Katha Pollitt in The Nation:
If preventing abortion was what they cared about, they’d be giving birth control and emergency contraception away on street corners instead of supporting pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions and hospitals that don’t tell rape victims about the existence of EC. Imagine a vaccine that would protect women from a [...]


This is beautifully written. From Lew Rockwell:
Regular middle class people, who otherwise struggle to eke out a flourishing life in this vale of tears, feel hatred well up within them and confuse it for honor, bravery, courage, and valor. The bloom on the rose of war eventually fades, leaving only the thorns. By the [...]


May 29, 2005

How can we expect others to adopt our system of government when we don’t hold ourselves to a high standard of behavior? From in the Hendrik Hertzberg in The New Yorker:
…Is it really necessary at this late date to point out that the problem is torture and abuse, not dubiously sourced reports of torture [...]


This Memorial Day, what better way to honor those who have served our country honorably (including my father and uncle) than to hold those who dishonor our country accountable (and their commanders as well.) From Reuters:
U.S. forces in Afghanistan were involved in killings, torture and other abuses of prisoners even before the Iraq war [...]


May 28, 2005

I spoke to a Republican the other day who said Iraqis are evil and deserve what they are getting. I said, you mean all Iraqis? He said yes. It seems they aren’t even pretending anymore that this invasion was about “freedom” or “liberation” of the Iraqi people. From Valarie Kaur in Salon:
…”Abu [...]


From Juan Cole:
By now the rest of the world knows what would await its troops in Iraq, and political leaders are not so stupid as to send their troops into a meat grinder. …The US military cannot defeat the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement any time soon for so many reasons that they cannot all be [...]


May 27, 2005

Let’s see, what other countries have already had a woman president or prime minister: Great Britain, Ireland, France, Poland, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Finland, Canada, Israel, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Indonesia, India, and more… even PAKISTAN! Yet America, the supposed leader of the free world, has never had one. From Susan Page in USA Today:
For [...]


More information on the campaign for pharmacists to fill birth control pill prescriptions (can you believe we still have to fight for this right in the year 2005?) from Planned Parenthood…


House Republican leaders refused to allow debate or votes on two amendments that would have provided compassionate health care to military women who?ve been raped. The first would have ensured that the morning-after pill, ordinary birth control pills that can prevent pregnancy after sex or assault, is made available to servicewomen at every military [...]


From Robert Koehler:
…Was the election of 2004 stolen? Thus is the question framed by those who don?t want to know the answer. Anyone who says yes is immediately a conspiracy nut, and the listener?s eyeballs roll. So let?s not ask that question.
Let?s simply ask why the lines were so long and the voting machines so [...]


From Geraldine Laybourne in the Huffington Post:
On Tuesday, John Tierney in the New York Times presented a nuanced and seemingly logical argument entitled ?What Women Want.? He told of an experiment in Pittsburgh where they gave men and women five numbers to add in their heads and they were paid for every correct answer. The [...]


“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are… Texas oil millionaires and an occasional politician [...]


May 26, 2005

We the people have nothing to do with it. From Jim VandeHei in the Washington Post:
Bush has constructed what many scholars said amounts to a virtual oligarchy with Cheney, Karl Rove, Andrew H. Card Jr., Joshua Bolton, himself and only a few others setting policy, while he looks to the Republican-controlled Congress and the [...]


From Sarah Chayes in the New York Times:
…It is inconceivable that the residents of Zabul are less pained than other Afghans by an alleged insult to what they believe is the living word of God. And yet their protest came days late and featured none of the violence, vandalism or loss of life suffered elsewhere. [...]


What a moron. From Express India:
US President George Bush said India must develop an alternative to oil for its energy needs, saying surging demand for fuel in China and India contributed to the price increase.
Advertisement
The United States must help fast-growing China and India become more energy efficient, and reduce its dependence on foreign [...]


May 25, 2005

From Quinnipiac University:
TREND: In general do you agree or disagree with the 1973 Roe versus Wade decision that established a woman’s right to an abortion?

 
Agree
Disagree
Don’t Know/No Answer

May 25, 2005
63
33
5

Mar 5, 2003
63
34
3


That story served the Bush adminstration well – it was part of the unexamined propaganda passing for journalism that led up to the Iraq War. We won’t hold our breath waiting for that retraction. From Jim Naureckas in Tom Paine:
Newsweek ran a sensational claim based on an anonymous source who turned out to be [...]


From the Los Angeles Times:
Eight more U.S. troops were reported killed in roadside explosions and shootings across Iraq this week, and at least eight Iraqis died Tuesday when bombs exploded outside a suburban girls school and an army recruitment office.
Tuesday’s blasts pushed the death toll from a monthlong eruption of violence beyond 620, including 57 [...]


May 24, 2005

From Ray McGovern in Tom Paine:
What role did John Bolton play in the Bush administration’s efforts to manufacture the intelligence needed to justify the invasion of Iraq? As it turns out, a hidden but important role. Remember the “yellowcake from Niger?”
Briefly reported last week in Steve Clemons’ The Washington Note was that a Congressional subcommittee, [...]


May 23, 2005

What’s with the “GOP” references in the article – is “Republicans” too hard to spell? They manage to spell “Democrats” well enough. From CNN:
Forty-six percent of 1,006 adults polled over the weekend said they approved of the overall job Bush is doing, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll.
Over the past year, Bush’s rating [...]


A field guide to magnetic ribbons from Slowpoke…


May 21, 2005

From Edward Lazarus in Findlaw:
…The Constitution gives the Senate the power to deny confirmation. When the Senators exercise that power, they are carrying out the electoral mandate they were given – just as the President initially does when he chooses a nominee.
Indeed, I would even go so far as to argue that, in this era [...]


From Joe Conason in Salon:
When Senate Republicans led the 1968 filibuster that blocked the nomination of Abe Fortas as chief justice of the Supreme Court, his opponents focused on an alleged ethical lapse that they said disqualified him.
The real reasons for obstructing Fortas ranged from his liberal ideology and his Democratic partisanship to his Jewish [...]


“He knew who I was, at that time, because I had a reputation as a writer. I knew he was part of the Bush dynasty. But he was nothing, he offered nothing, and he promised nothing. He had no humor. He was insignificant in every way and consequently I didn’t pay much attention to him. [...]


May 20, 2005

A little history about Norm Coleman. From Garrison Keillor, just after the 2002 elections, in Salon:
Everyone knows that his family situation is, shall we say, very interesting, but nobody bothered to ask about it, least of all the religious people in the Republican Party. They made their peace with hypocrisy long ago. Norm Coleman [...]


From Syed Saleem Shahzad in Asia Times:
…In a recent interview with the Financial Times of London, Pakistan’s President General Pervez Musharraf claimed that al-Qaeda was now a destroyed entity. However, the reality is different. The destruction of al-Qaeda, or its survival, is beside the point. Al-Qaeda’s success will be judged by its ability to have [...]


May 19, 2005

From Jason Miller in the Baltimore Chronicle:
We’ve been hearing that the teaching of evolution is itself teaching a religion. Science is not anti-God any more than math is anti-God. …In 2004, two groups presented recommendations to the Kansas State School Board concerning the science curriculum. A Majority Report by 25 individuals, including Steve Case, an [...]


From MSNBC:
As the Senate marches closer toward a nuclear showdown over President Bush?s judicial nominees, the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that the American public is dissatisfied ? with Congress and its priorities, with Bush?s plan to overhaul Social Security and with the nation?s economy and general direction. Moreover, a majority believes [...]


May 18, 2005

From :
…When Newsweek’s source admitted that he had misidentified the government document in which he had seen an account of Quran desecration at Guantánamo prison, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita exploded, “People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?”
Di Rita could have said the same [...]


From Media Matters for America…


From Dan Froomkin in the Washington Post:
Simmering tensions between the White House and the media about such issues as credibility, accountability, and the appropriate role of the press burst into full boil yesterday as spokesman Scott McClellan took to his podium in the briefing room and proceeded to tell Newsweek magazine how it should do [...]


From Pew:
Bush approval ratings
Approve 43
Disapprove 50
Congressional Republicans
Approve 35
Disapprove 50
Congressional Democrats
Approve 39
Disapprove 41


From the New York Times:
…Republican majorities blocked more than 60 judicial candidates during the Clinton administration by denying them committee hearings through the use of anonymous “blue slip” holds by individual lawmakers and a variety of other tactics just as effective, if less visible, than the filibuster. The majority leader, Bill Frist, who is zealously [...]


So they are going to complete the transition into one party rule, and use it to put Patricia Owens on the bench. It’s fitting that an activist anti-choice/anti-birth control politicial appointee who deliberately stalled a case until a poor accident victim died to protect corporate interests is the one that will go down in [...]


May 17, 2005

From Keith Oberman:
Whenever I hear this White House talking about ?doing to damage to our image abroad? and how ?people have lost lives,? I strain to remember who it was who went traipsing into Iraq looking for WMD that will apparently turn up just after the Holy Grail will ? and at what human cost. [...]


From Editor and Publisher:
In the aftermath of the Newsweek retraction of its item on U.S. guards flushing a Koran down a toilet at Guantanomo, many issues pertaining to journalism and ethics have emerged. One of the most prominent is the use and over-use of anonymous sources, particularly when they are single sources.
While most of [...]


Wow, just heard the audio on the Majority Report, he was magnificent. How fitting that the neocon representative receiving the brunt of his criticism was the singularly unprincipled Norm Coleman. From Common Dreams:
I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, [...]


May 16, 2005

From :
“An unconscious people, an indoctrinated people, a people fed only partisan information and opinion that confirm their own bias, a people made morbidly obese in mind and spirit by the junk food of propaganda, is less inclined to put up a fight, ask questions and be skeptical. And just as a democracy can [...]


From Common Dreams:
I can?t imagine better company on this beautiful Sunday morning in St. Louis. You?re church for me today, and there?s no congregation in the country where I would be more likely to find more kindred souls than are gathered here.
There are so many different vocations and callings in this room [...]


From The Guardian:
“The United States was not only aware of Iraqi oil sales which violated UN sanctions and provided the bulk of the illicit money Saddam Hussein obtained from circumventing UN sanctions,” the report said. “On occasion, the United States actually facilitated the illicit oil sales.” The United States administration turned a blind eye to [...]


From CNN:
Eighty-nine Democratic members of the U.S. Congress last week sent President George W. Bush a letter asking for explanation of a secret British memo that said “intelligence and facts were being fixed” to support the Iraq war in mid-2002.
The timing of the memo was well before the president brought the issue to Congress for [...]


Heil, Bush! From the New York Times:
Executives at National Public Radio are increasingly at odds with the Bush appointees who lead the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
In one of several points of conflict in recent months, the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which allocates federal funds for public radio and television, is considering [...]


That was an excellent show. From Bill Maher:
And finally, New Rule: The people in America who are most in favor of the Iraq war must now go there and fight it. The Army missed its recruiting goal by 42% last month. More people joined the Michael Jackson Fan Club. “We’ve done picked all the [...]


It’s only a matter of time before Bush and the Rubberstamp Republicans turn to a military draft for outfiting their wars. From CBS News:
An Army recruiter accused of lying to young would-be soldiers to meet recruitment goals ? has not been disciplined as the Army promised. Instead, he?s been promoted, reports CBS News Correspondent [...]


May 15, 2005

Read about the drive at the site of organizer Seattle Mayor Nickels…


May 14, 2005

Bernard-Henri Levy is the author of Who Killed Daniel Pearl. From Bernard-Henri Levy in the Los Angeles Times:
…So, we can look at the timing in these instances several ways.
In each case, we can find a reason for this series of coincidences between the lightning-raid operations of the Pakistani armed forces and the political needs [...]


From Trevor Royle in the Sunday Herald:
?WE don?t do body counts,? was the infamous retort by US general Tommy Franks when he was asked about Iraqi civilian deaths. To date nobody knows the exact figure, but one thing is clear: it is being added to with a relentlessness which is enraging Iraqis and worrying coalition [...]


Dahr Jamail’s Iraq Gallery


Here’s the link to the blog of the reporter referred to in Pitt’s speech, Dahr Jamail. From a speech by William Pitt:
The butcher’s bill to date: 1,610 American soldiers dead, times ten grievously wounded; well over 100,000 Iraqi citizens dead, uncounted more wounded, with a recent upsurge of violence claiming more than 300 lives [...]


May 13, 2005

Yet another freak in the Bush Freak Show. No sane person would want someone like this holding life or death power over their loved ones. So I must, once again, conclude most Bush supporters have no clue about what is really going on. From Ayelish McGarvey in The Nation:
According to Davis, Hager’s [...]


May 12, 2005

What a thoroughly evil woman. Evil and corrupt. From in Salon:
The boy — who had (heroically) graduated from high school, wheeled from class to class by an attendant who monitored the ventilator that kept him breathing and held a transducer to his throat to allow him to “talk” — was now 21 and [...]


May 11, 2005

From Common Dreams:
Today the Bush administration will announce the formal repeal of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which was issued by the U.S. Forest Service in January 2001 to protect the last remaining wildlands in our national forest system. The rule placed about one-third (58.5 million acres) of the national forest system’s total acreage off-limits [...]


From NPR:
Medicaid has become the single biggest budget item for most states, and nearly all of them are trying to curb its growth. In Missouri, plans to pare 90,000 people from the Medicaid rolls in 2005 have sparked a fierce debate over the morality of the cuts.
The proposals have opened a moral schism, with [...]


May 10, 2005

Liar, liar, pants on fire… oops, better make that, pants off. Oh, the hypocrisy. And this “family values” man has a safe seat, thanks to gerrymandering. Rest easy, Pennsylvanians. From the Times Leader:
…The Times Leader obtained the full report from the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, which verified the incident.
According to [...]


From James Bovard at Lew Rockwell
On November 1, 2001, President Bush issued an executive order entitled ?Further Implementation of the Presidential Records Act.? His order effectively overturned an act of Congress and a Supreme Court decision and could make it far more difficult for Americans to learn of government abuses. Jonathan Turley, a George Washington [...]


From the AP:
Critics of the USA Patriot Act on Tuesday called for the Senate to temper the anti-terrorism law’s provisions that let police conduct secret searches of people’s homes or businesses, but defenders say since no abuses have been documented the law should be renewed.
The Bush administration wants Congress to make permanent all 15 provisions [...]


May 8, 2005

Nobody here cares. It’s amazing how little most people know about what is going on in this country, much less in Iraq. And while it’s important there’s a body count, it’s also important to remember the severely injured – they are alive, but their lives will never be the same. From AP:
The [...]


May 7, 2005

The list is getting bigger every day, but with no checks and balances in our government, nothing will come of it. From Philip Shenon and Anne Kornblut in the New York Times:
Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist at the center of a federal corruption investigation, led a Congressional delegation to Pakistan in 1997 but failed to [...]


May 6, 2005

The British government memo that said it all, from The Times:
“…Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and [...]


From Juan Cole in Salon:
…Years ago, George Bush the elder explained why he did not push on to Baghdad at the end of the first Gulf War: He feared the breakup of the Iraqi state. The most dangerous fissure was and is between Iraq’s majority group, the Shiites, and the formerly ascendant Sunnis. Those divisions [...]


May 5, 2005

It’s not enough that they’ve got all the dumb people voting for them. They want to dumb down the universities, as well. The Republican sponsoring the bill asks why he should support universities if they graduate students who disagree with him. An absurd statement on so many levels coming from the mouth [...]


Must be nice…
Spot of Indecision 2005


From Thom Hartmann in Op Ed News:
…Andy Stephenson is an activist, a vigilant worker on behalf of clean voting in America. He has worked tirelessly to help uncover details of electronic voting fraud in the 2000, 2002, and 2004 elections. He’s devoted years of his life to making America a more democratic nation.
And now his [...]


May 4, 2005

And it’s no wonder. Is a draft next? From the Washington Post:
The Defense Department acknowledged yesterday that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have stressed the U.S. military to a point where it is at higher risk of less swiftly and easily defeating potential foes, though officials maintained that U.S. forces could handle [...]


An unjustified invasion led to 100,000 civilians killed (half of them children), depleted uranium from our bombs killing yet more, torture, and now this. From in the Bob Herbert in the New York Times:
…Mr. Delgado’s background is unusual. He is an American citizen, but because his father was in the diplomatic corps, he grew [...]


May 3, 2005

Remember the troops? Seems like they’ve been forgotten. In light of revelations that another Bush crony, John Bolton, avoided combat duty himself, yet pushed for others to engage in combat in Iraq, I thought I’d bring back these letters from a year ago:
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, five-star general and supreme commander of the [...]


Let’s see, in Germany, Rumsfeld is charged with war crimes, but in the US, he gets a free pass on the Abu Ghraib tortures (while Lindy England gets 11 years.) In England, relatives of the dead charge Tony Blair with starting an illegal war, but in the US, relatives of the dead watch as [...]


It’s no surprise that Jeb Bush was once more in league with the devil, Randall Terry, in their unholy quest to force women into submission. From All Headline News:
Girls her age have a more than three times greater risk of death carrying the fetus to term than if they had an abortion. The controversy [...]


From John Mintz in the Washington Post:
When asked during the campaign debates to name the gravest danger facing the United States, President Bush and challenger Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) gave the same answer: a nuclear device in the hands of terrorists.
But more than 3 1/2 years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the U.S. [...]


From Eric Alterman in The Nation:
“It’s become much, much harder to get responses to FOIA requests, and it’s taking much, much longer,” David Schulz, the attorney who helps the Associated Press with FOIA requests, explained to a reporter. “Agencies seem to view their role as coming up with techniques to keep information secret rather than [...]


May 1, 2005

From the Independent:
Tony Blair had resolved to send British troops into action alongside US forces eight months before the Iraq War began, despite a clear warning from the Foreign Office that the conflict could be illegal.
A damning minute leaked to a Sunday newspaper reveals that in July 2002, a few weeks after meeting George Bush [...]


From Timothy Noah in Slate:
Scratch a saber-rattler, find a war wimp. You can just about set your watch by it, can’t you? So it’s entirely unsurprising to read the following about John Bolton, Yale ‘70, in the Yale Daily News:
Though Bolton supported the Vietnam War, he declined to enter combat duty, [...]


Essentially, aggressive drivers are self-centered losers who have found a way to get back at the world. The road is their stage, and we are their captive audience.
The other day, a woman who stayed in the left lane for the entire 20 miles I saw her played cat and mouse games with [...]



Reference
Recommended Sites
Quotations
Women

"Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear." ~ Zora Neale Hurston

"Life can be wildly tragic at times, and I've had my share. But whatever happens to you, you have to keep a slightly comic attitude. In the final analysis, you have got to not forget to laugh." ~ Katharine Hepburn

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song." ~ Maya Angelou

"If only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time." ~ Edith Wharton

"Mistakes are the dues one pays for a full life." ~ Sophia Loren

"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman." ~ Virginia Woolf

"Woman must not be awed by that which has been built up around her; she must reverence that woman in her which struggles for expression." ~ Margaret Sanger

"Probably, hanging onto the past brings more destruction than any other single cause. ...It's the Muslim fundamentalists who worship the past and ignore the reformist spirit with which Muhammad viewed women. It's the backward-looking Christian literalists who interpret religious teachings in a way that consolidates their power..." ~ Gloria Steinem

"'Inherent differences' between men and women, we have come to appreciate, remain cause for celebration, but not for denigration of the members of either sex or for artificial constraints on an individual's opportunity." ~ Ruth Bader Ginsberg

"Feminism is and always has been about women acting in the world as full-fledged citizens, as real participants in the world of ideas and policy and history." ~ Susan Faludi

"As a woman, I have no country. As a woman, my country is the world." ~ Virginia Woolf

"...remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors... If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation." ~ Abigail Adams

"Bloody treason, murderous act
Not by women were designed.
Bells o'erthrown nor churches sacked
Speak not ill of womenkind."
~ Gearoid Iarla Fitzgerald

"We are coming down from our pedestal and up from the laundry room. We want an equal share in government and we mean to get it." ~ Bella Abzug

"Too often the great decisions are originated and given form in bodies made up wholly of men, or so completely dominated by them that whatever of special value women have to offer is shunted aside without expression." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

"There cannot be true democracy unless women's voices are heard. There cannot be true democracy unless women are given the opportunity to take responsibility for their own lives." ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton

"If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse gift will find a fitting place." ~ Margaret Mead

"Of my two 'handicaps' being female put more obstacles in my path than being black." ~ Shirley Chisholm

"Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company?" ~ Zora Neale Hurston

Nature

"Eventually, all things merge into one; and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs..." ~ Norman Maclean

"There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example - where had they gone?... It was a spring without voices." ~ Rachel Carson

"If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men." ~ St. Francis of Assisi

"I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men." ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

"God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but He cannot save them from fools." ~ John Muir

"The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders." ~ Edward Abbey

"We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it... Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass to-day might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years which still live in us, and transform our perception into love." ~ George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)

"Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life." ~ Rachel Carson

"When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world." ~ John Muir

Freedom

"The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood of ideas in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." ~ John F. Kennedy

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." ~ James Madison

"When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion." ~ C. P. Snow

"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth." ~ Albert Einstein

"Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." ~ William Pitt

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." ~ Benjamin Franklin

"No matter how big a nation is, it is no stronger than its weakest people, and as long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you might otherwise." ~ Marian Anderson

Truth

"Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are." ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

"If somebody tells you you ought to quit, it's because they're afraid you won't." ~ Bill Clinton

"The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." ~ Robert F. Kennedy

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Find things that shine and move toward them." ~ Mia Farrow

"The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me? But the good Samaritan reversed the question: If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?" ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Abuse of Power

"We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth in a few hands, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis

"Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things." ~ Russell Baker

"O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; But it is tyrannous to use it like a giant." ~ William Shakespeare

"I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be." ~ Thomas Jefferson

Violence

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

"When men talk about defense, they always claim to be protecting women and children, but they never ask the women and children what they think." ~ Patricia Schroeder

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity." ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

"What difference does it make to the dead whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?" ~ Mohandas Gandhi

"Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind... War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today." ~ John F. Kennedy

"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God." ~ Jesus

"Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

"When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?" ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

"I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent." ~ Mohandas Gandhi

"The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Hypocrisy

"And thus I clothe my naked villany with odd old ends stol'n forth of holy writ, and seem a saint when most I play the devil." ~ William Shakespeare

"And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing... in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men... But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret..." ~ Jesus

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, ... legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"Persecution is not an original feature in any religion, but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law." ~ Thomas Paine

"I believe a woman has a right to an abortion. That's a decision that's up to the pregnant woman, not up to the pope or some do-gooders or the Religious Right.... There is no place in this country for practicing religion in politics." ~ Barry Goldwater

"Being pro-choice is trusting the individual to make the right decision for herself and her family, and not entrusting that decision to anyone wearing the authority of government in any regard." ~ Hllary Rodham Clinton

Politics

"I never was surer of my position that no self-respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party that ignores her political rights." ~ Susan B. Anthony "In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take." ~ Adlai Stevenson

"On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." ~ H.L. Mencken

"All political movements are like this - we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility." ~ Doris Lessing

Pretended Patriotism

"Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism." ~ George Washington

"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!" ~ Albert Einstein

"True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else." ~ Clarence Darrow

"When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." ~ George Orwell

"To (say) that we are to stand by the president right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but it's morally treasonable to the American public." ~ Theodore Roosevelt
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