“It’s all because of my respect for Gary Haman. Gary Haman and I go back 32 years. He hired me for my first job as a prosecutor here. He also was the deciding vote in my election as an administrative judge.”

– North Idaho Magistrate Eugene Marano, talking about why, after receiving a call in the middle of the night, he ordered retired judge Haman’s 40-year-old son released on his own recognizance from the Kootenai County Jail, where he was being held following an accusation of domestic violence.

“Is there any leader left in Spokane?”

– House Speaker Frank Chopp, as he sat down in Olympia with a nearly 80-member delegation of business, community and political figures who traveled there to discuss Spokane’s hopes for the 2008 Legislature session.

“I’m doing this because I care, and I know how to get people help.”

– AmeriCorps volunteer Terri Mayer, 53, who tapped her connections to find housing for half of the 32 homeless people who had been living at a tent city that had to shut down in northeast Spokane.

“If somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we’d tell ‘em what to do with the pole. That’s what we’d do.”

– Arkansas Gov. and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, campaigning in South Carolina, where the use and display of the Confederate flag is a perennial political controversy.

“This gravy train is stopping.”

– Rally organizer Shelley Taylor, of Gig Harbor, during a property tax protest in Olympia, saying homeowners shouldn’t have to shoulder the state’s burden of funding education.

“He maintains he was shooting at a coyote, but yet we allege he should have known what he was shooting at.”

– Chief Criminal Deputy John Turley, of the Grant County Sheriff’s Department, talking about Robbie Joe Marcher, of Moses Lake, who is accused of shooting an off-duty sheriff’s deputy during a coyote hunt.

“We have a basic philosophical difference with the guy.”

– Association of Washington Business President Don Brunell, reacting to state Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler’s proposal for catastrophic health insurance for all Washingtonians, paid for with a new tax on employers and employees.