“Political appointees are just that. You don’t have to answer to anybody.”

— Spokane County Commissioner Phil Harris, dismissing complaints that he wants to appoint a friend to a vacant District Court judgeship without asking for a bar association survey to evaluate the field of candidates.

“For God’s sake, don’t listen to (Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld. He doesn’t know what in the hell he’s talking about.”

— U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., during prospective Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s confirmation hearing, speaking about the status of training Iraqis to take over security responsibilities in their country.

“Now it’s time to say goodbye to Mr. Beardslee. That’s what I want, that’s what my family wants.”

— Tom Amundsen, whose sister Stacey Benjamin was killed nearly a quarter-century ago by Donald Beardslee, who was executed Wednesday in California after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger denied his clemency petition.

“This cannot become a recruitment poster for the U.S. Army.”

— Army Capt. Chris Graveline, a prosecutor in the court-martial of Spc. Charles A. Graner Jr., referring to the photo of Graner giving a thumbs-up sign behind a pyramid of naked Islamic prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.

“It’s nice to be alive and with you today.”

— Spokane Mayor Jim West, who has been treated for cancer, in his state-of-the-city address to a Spokane Regional Chamber of Commerce breakfast.

“I wasn’t supposed to use that word. I apologize.”

— Singer Brett Scallions of Fuel, one of the acts performing at an inaugural youth concert in Washington, D.C., Tuesday, after he slipped and used a vulgarity in his comments to the audience.

“He is simply Yasser Arafat in a suit.”

— President Morton A. Klein of the Zionist Organization of America, expressing his doubts that Mahmoud Abbas, new leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, is any more likely to curb PLO terrorists than his late predecessor, Arafat.

“A couple of students egged him, and he took it hook, line and sinker.”

— Principal Joseph DiSalvo of Palo Alto’s Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School, where management consultant William Fried told students at a career day program that girls could make a handsome income as strippers.