In their words …

“There’s so much need out there. I saw this and I just had to give.”

– South Hill resident Don Saffle, one of many community members whose burst of charitable giving enabled the Spokane Valley Food Bank to restock its bare shelves.

“If you don’t write budgets, I’m sure that sounds very pleasing.”

– Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire, maintaining that anti-tax activist Tim Eyman’s call for tax cuts from the 2006 legislative session would undermine her proposal to set substantial money aside to pay for future obligations.

“Their idea of investment is spending it.”

– Washington state Sen. Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville, predicting majority Democrats in the Legislature won’t go along with Gregoire’s recommendation that much of the state’s $1.4 billion reserve be saved.

“If you operate a big hydro dam, you get special treatment and special rights under these rules. But if you live, work or play on these rivers, you don’t even get a say. We want to level the playing field.”

– Jan Hasselman of the organization Earthjustice, one of several conservationist groups that have filed a lawsuit accusing the federal government of not accepting public comment on new rules for hydroelectric dam relicensing.

“The majority of the United States Senate did not want to see the Patriot Act die. We wanted to see it reformed.”

– U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, after the Senate defied a presidential veto threat and agreed on a six-month extension of the Patriot Act so they will have time to add civil rights safeguards.

“This is not a surprising result. It brings into question whether this is really the best use of the state’s resources to constantly put up these clearly unconstitutional laws, only to have them challenged and thrown out. … It does seem to be one in this series of: law passes, gets challenged, gets struck down. Rinse, lather, repeat.”

– Kurt Opsahl, staff attorney with civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, after a federal judge in California threw out that state’s attempt to outlaw the sale of violent video games to children.

“It is the weak, those who suffer from incurable diseases, who were the object of this fraud and academic fabrication, making it an unforgivable offense of the worst possible kind. The university must dismiss Hwang and others involved in this forgery and expel all of them from the academic world forever.”

– Prof. Chang Ho-wan, chairman of Seoul National University ‘s Council of Professors, in a statement expressing the panel’s reaction to word that cloning expert Hwang Woo-suk had deliberately fabricated research results for a paper on patient-specific stem cells this year.