Quotes of the Morning: Revolutionary Ideas

“The Bush administration is urging a former White House political director to ignore a subpoena and not testify before Congress about the firings of federal prosecutors, her lawyer says.
The Senate Judiciary Committee wants to hear from Sara Taylor at its hearing Wednesday and she is willing to talk. Testifying, however, would defy the wishes of the president, ‘a person whom she admires and for whom she has worked tirelessly for years,’ lawyer W. Neil Eggleston said.
Eggleston stated, in a letter this weekend to committee leaders and White House counsel Fred Fielding, that Taylor expects a letter from Fielding asking her not to comply with the subpoena.”
-Associated Press, July 8, 2007

“Um.. So let me see if I understand this. The White House is now urging people to break the law and not comply with a Congressional subpoena?”
-Skippy

“’In our view, it is unfair to Ms. Taylor that this constitutional struggle might be played out with her as the object of an unseemly tug of war,’ Eggleston wrote.
He added, ‘Absent the direction from the White House, Ms. Taylor would testify without hesitation before the Senate Judiciary Committee. She has committed no wrongdoing. She will assert no personal privileges.’”
-Associated Press, July 8, 2007

“Yes, it is terrible that Ms. Taylor is caught between obeying the law and standing up for her old boss. That whole ‘rule of law’ thing is such a pain sometimes. Maybe if she is thrown in jail Fearless Leader can commute her sentence to time served. It worked for Libby.
I guess the rules are simple enough. There is to be no questioning of Fearless Leader or his policies, even if those policies lead to things like this..”
-Skippy

“A deadly truck bombing in a busy market in northern Iraq has killed 105 people and injured 240, police say.
The morning blast destroyed the market in the small town of Amirli, south of Kirkuk, killing many people instantly and trapping dozens among the rubble.
It was the deadliest single attack in Iraq since April, correspondents say.
It came as 29 people were killed in separate violence, including 22 people who died overnight in Diyala province when a suicide bomber hit a cafe.
-BBC News, July 7, 2007

“Those are just the birth pangs of a new nation. The same thing happened here when the United States was founded 20-some years ago. Huh? Wait that can’t be right…”
-Skippy

“Our first Independence Day celebration took place in a midst of a war -- a bloody and difficult struggle that would not end for six more years before America finally secured her freedom. More than two decades later, it is hard to imagine the Revolutionary War coming out any other way -- but at the time, America's victory was far from certain.”
-George ‘Dubya’ Bush, July 4, 2007

“Oh.. I guess we were founded back in the 1980s after all.. I guess the American Revolution and the Reagan Revolution were one in the same.. Funny how I don’t remember that.”
-Skippy

“Do you realize that the past, starting from yesterday, has been actually abolished? If it survives anywhere, it's in a few solid objects with no words attached to them, like that lump of glass there. Already we know almost literally nothing about the Revolution and the years before the Revolution. Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right. I know, of course, that the past is falsified, but it would never be possible for me to prove it, even when I did the falsification myself. After the thing is done, no evidence ever remains. The only evidence is inside my own mind, and I don't know with any certainty that any other human being shares my memories”
-Winston Smith, George Orwell, 1984