In their words
“I’m a big user of terms of endearment.”
– Former Kootenai County juvenile drug court administrator Marina Kalani, whose long-withheld e-mail messages to her boss, Prosecuting Attorney Bill Douglas, are sprinkled with familiar such as “I love you” and “Honey-bear.”
“I’m a professional conservationist. I do everything you’re supposed to do. I recycle. Then I go and drive a car that gets 3 mpg and needs new tires every 100 miles.”
– Race car driver Bob Flagor, of Coeur d’Alene, an environmental scientist whose 1968 Ford Mustang features stickers promoting environmental causes and who donates winnings to environmental causes.
“We can’t put the money into the schools if we have to put it into Davis Wright Tremaine. Let’s be frank; this is about taking money from kids.”
– Seattle School District Attorney Shannon McMinimee, referring to the law firm that wants to recover its legal fees from a successful case to outlaw consideration of a student’s race in determining school assignments.
“I was just looking around and a bunch of guys were on fire. I sort of passed out after that.”
– Double-amputee Travis Greene, now a participant in Olympic-style competition for paraplegics, describing the aftermath of a roadside bomb explosion that injured him and seven fellow Marines during the last of his three tours of duty in Iraq.
“We haven’t gone anywhere.”
– White supremist Gerald O’Brien, at a neo-Nazi demonstration outside the Spokane County Courthouse during HoopFest, saying the region’s Aryan Nations movement did not expire when its founder, Richard Butler, died in 2004.
“It jeopardizes our ability to have a fair trial when the accused is the butt of jokes.”
– Defense attorney Donald Lykkebak, denying that his client, former astronaut Lisa Nowak, was wearing a diaper at the time of her arrest, as widely reported last February when she was apprehended and charged with the attempted kidnapping of her rival in a love triangle.
“I drank my baby bottle with my feet. Nobody ever taught me how to do it, I just did it. I can ride a regular 10-speed bike. I can swim. It has not been a problem in my life at all. It didn’t stop me from having four boys. I’ve never dropped one of them.”
– Dawn Lawson, an Illinois woman born without fully developed arms, who is suing two McDonald’s restaurants where workers refused to hand her her purchase when she reached for the bag with her foot.
“To think that these guys were a sleeper cell and somehow were able to plan this operation from the different places they were and then orchestrate being hired by the NHS (National Health Service) so they could get to the UK, then get jobs in the same area – I think that’s a planning impossibility.”
– Former U.S. intelligence officer Bob Ayres, discounting the possibility that a car bombing plot that targeted London and Glasgow, Scotland, was directed from overseas.
“First thing all of you should know is that all my kills are legitimate and I am innocent of these charges.”
– U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Michael A. Hensley, in an e-mail message to his family regarding the charges against him of killing innocent Iraqi civilians and trying to cover it up by planting weapons with the bodies.
“I think the Republican Party has drifted a little bit, to be right honest with you, to the center. I’d like to bring it back to the right, where it should be.”
– Elk rancher Rex Rammell, whose decision to run for the U.S. Senate in Idaho was formed in part by a dispute with state officials over elk that escaped from his commercial hunting compound.