In their words
“Defense attorneys were against it. Therefore, I’m for it.”
– Washington state Rep. John Ahern, R-Spokane, during consideration by the House Judiciary Committee of a bill to restrict sex offenders’ access to the Internet in a special commitment center unless necessary for successful treatment.
“The worst traffic some days can be cows crossing the road.”
– Dr. Brock Slabach, senior vice president of the National Rural Health Association, describing the slower pace that sometimes makes practicing medicine in small communities more appealing than in an urban area.
“I generally don’t like England that much and, you know, it’s nice to be away from all the press and the papers and all the general (expletive) that they write.”
– Britain’s Prince Harry, third in line to the British Crown, during an interview before his secret deployment to Afghanistan was revealed and he was withdrawn from the combat zone.
“This isn’t a zoo!”
– Pitcher Roger Clemens, a prominent figure in baseball’s steroids controversy, snapping at a photographer who took his picture during a visit to the spring training camp where his son is a minor league catcher.
“Mark lost track somewhere along the line about why Americans care about the national forests. They care about them because they take their kids camping and because Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts spend summers there and grandkids fish in the lake.”
– U.S. Forest Service employee Andy Stahl, leader of an organization of agency employees who have sued Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey over forest management practices in Montana.
“We were fed crud, and you’d scrape the worms back in – they were good eatin’, they really were.”
– St. John, Wash., resident and World War II bomber pilot Bryant Smick, 85, recalling his experiences in German captivity after his B-24 bomber was shot down.
“The bottom line is that there is still oil on the beaches. And this lawsuit still isn’t finished.”
– Cordova, Alaska, Mayor Tim Joyce, regarding a lawsuit over the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound for which $5 billion in court-awarded damages have yet to be paid 14 years after the verdict was returned in 1994.
“I think it’s nonsense. People don’t agree on what a word is.”
– Oxford English Dictionary editor at large Jesse Sheidlower, scoffing at claims by a Web site that the English language is nearing the 1 million-word mark.
“This is Miami. People have sloths and leopards and God knows what else.”
– Veterinarian Thomas Goldsmith, seeing nothing out of the ordinary about the snakes, scorpions, iguanas and other exotic creatures turned in to the Miami Metro Zoo during an event aimed at preventing their release in the wild.