This Week In Quotes: Special Double Edition: July 2 – July 15

When evaluating claims of constitutionality, there are always three ways to examine the matter: (1) What does the Constitution say and mean? (2) What has the Supreme Court said and meant? and (3) Are there now five justices to sustain the claim? For example, while I do not believe the original meaning of the Commerce Clause includes the power to regulate the insurance business (Issue 1), the Supreme Court has allowed Congress this power since the 1940s (Issue 2) and there are unlikely to be five justices willing to reconsider that New Deal era precedent (Issue 3). Therefore legal challenges to the health insurance reform bill should not be based on this claim, and none is so far as I know. — Randy Barnett

When I became the NASA administrator — or before I became the NASA administrator — he charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering. — NASA Administrator Charles Bolden

I have seen posters … where every president from Reagan to Obama has been called a fascist,” Bryant told ABC News. “Why is it that just because we have a black president, we are hyper-sensitive to posters at rallies? The NAACP wants to “create a climate where they can say that those on the right are in fact racist and those on the left are their saviors. This is very much what the liberal agenda is about. — Rev. C.L. Bryant

He once had a fleeting association with the Ku Klux Klan, what does that mean? I’ll tell you what it means. He was a country boy from the hills and hollows from West Virginia. He was trying to get elected. — Bill Clinton

Seriously though, you get the feeling that if today’s “progressives” had their way, then none of the technology that we take for granted today – the car, airplanes, air conditioning – the Internet that Salon publishes on – would exist today. — Ed Driscoll

In post-Obama-election America, Jackson and Al Sharpton (the Robin to Jackson’s Batman) struggle with a declining market share. They are rabble-rousers in search of rabble to rouse, race-card players in need of race cards when anti-black racism has become an inconsequential matter. — Larry Elder

You go out in public and it’s a f*cking embarrassment to me. You look like a fucking b*tch in heat. And if you get raped by a pack of ni**ers it will be your fault. Alright? Because you provoked it. You are provocatively dressed all the time with your fake boobs that you feel you have to show off. I don’t like it. I don’t want that woman. I don’t want you. I don’t trust you. I don’t love you. — Mel Gibson

Another thing we can do for jobs is make toys of me, especially for the holidays. Little dolls. Me. Like maybe little action dolls. Me in an army uniform, air force uniform, and me in my suit. They can make toys of me and my vehicle, especially for the holidays and Christmas for the kids. That’s something that would create jobs. So you see I think out of the box like that. It’s not something a typical person would bring up. That’s something that could happen, that makes sense. It’s not a joke. — Alvin Greene

His feelings of betrayal personify a slave master mentality. He sees LeBron as a runaway slave. This is an owner employee relationship — between business partners — and LeBron honored his contract. — Jesse Jackson

Last year, after Bristol and I broke up, I was unhappy and a little angry. Unfortunately, against my better judgment, I publicly said things about the Palins that were not completely true. I have already privately apologized to Todd and Sarah. Since my statements were public, I owe it to the Palins to publicly apologize.” — Levi Johnston

The fact is that no one wants to be a farm worker, not even farm workers, precisely because we have so many foreign farm workers. In other words, the low pay and appalling working conditions in farm labor are a direct result of excessive illegal immigration and agricultural guest-worker programs, which keep the labor market looser than it would otherwise be and reduce incentives for change. With fewer field hands available, farmers would do two things: First, raise wages and improve working conditions (because given the right circumstances, there are a non-trivial number of Americans and legal immigrants willing to do farm work). Second, they’d accelerate efforts at finding ways of getting by with less labor; i.e., mechanize. — Mark Krikorian

All those who wore sheets a long time ago have now lifted them off and started wearing [applause], uh, clothing, uh, with a name, say, I am part of the tea party. — Sheila Jackson Lee

Were companies to face heavy corporate fines and jail time for those who hired the illegal workers, they would stop hiring. If a guest-worker program brought in a sufficient labor force to meet their needs — and returned them back home again — it would not be necessary to hire illegal immigrants. But as long as employers can get away with hiring illegals and paying them starvation wages, they will do so. It is only when they face the prospect of prison that they will see the light and start paying good wages as part of a national guest-worker program. — Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

It’s July 4th, my least favorite holiday.

And I’m not referring to the bugs, or the crowds, or the traffic on the highways.

I’m talking about the mindless patriotic bubble bath we’re all supposed to soak in all weekend long.

Well, not me.

My heart does not beat faster at the strains of the Star Spangled Banner, much less at the sight of F-16s flying overhead to kick off the show.

You see, I don’t believe in patriotism. — Mathew Rothschild at The Progressive

All these Democrats had said, like Mr. Bush did, that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD. Of the 110 House and Senate Democrats who voted in October 2002 to authorize the use of force against his regime, 67 said in congressional debate that Saddam had these weapons. This didn’t keep Democrats from later alleging something they knew was false–that the president had lied America into war. — Karl Rove

Keep in mind again, federal candidates, this was a war of Obama’s choosing. This was not something that the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in,” he said. “But it was the president who was trying to be cute by half by building a script demonizing Iraq, while saying the battle really should be in Afghanistan. Well, if he is such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that’s the one thing you don’t do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan? — Michael Steele

Trig Palin is Sarah Palin’s son and it’s irresponsible to suggest otherwise. ….The Trig obsession has also, I’m sad to say, damaged Andrew Sullivan’s reputation. I’m stunned by the anger he’s generating not just among random Tweeters but among people who’ve been online for years, part of the rough-and-tumble of blogging….People want him to take a deep breath and stop obsessing over this conspiracy theory. Count me among those people. — Dave Weigel blogging from Andrew Sullivan’s blog

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