David N. Bossie, President, Citizens United, Regarding the USAF Aerial Refueling Tanker Contract:

“In one of the most colossal blunders of the struggle against the terrorists, we have handed over the future of a vital tool in the projection of U.S. power over to bureaucrats and politicians in Russia and France…

“EADS executives recently attended an air show in Iran and were caught red-handed trying to sell helicopters with military applications. When confronted, an EADS executive said the company was not bound by the U.S. arms embargo against Iran. EADS also sold nuclear components vital to exploding a nuclear device to an Asian company that in turn sold them to an Iranian front operation.

“There is no question that America desperately needs to replace its aging tanker fleet, which dates to the time of Eisenhower, with new aircraft. Given the thousands of sorties flown by U.S. fighters and bombers over Iraq and Afghanistan, the tanker has become a critical tool in winning the war on terror. But outsourcing this vital aircraft to a proliferator of technology to our worst enemies, with partial ownership by the French and Russian governments, is an act of military malpractice.”

On Iran and the War in Iraq:

“The Iranians were able to start the recent trouble in Basra and Baghdad through one set of operatives, then negotiate a cease-fire through another. In short, they play the Iraqi lyre on all its strings.

“Fighting a war against Iran is a bad idea. But fighting a proxy war against them in Iraq, where many of our key allies are manipulated by Iranian networks of influence, may be even worse. The best argument for keeping American troops in Iraq is that it increases our leverage against Iran; but paradoxically, that's also a good argument for reducing U.S. troops to a level that's politically and militarily sustainable. It could give America greater freedom of maneuver in the tests with Iran that are ahead.”

— David Ignatius, Washington Post Columnist

“Tehran tried to test the waters in Basra and, as an opportunist power, would've annexed southern Iraq under a quisling administration had that been attainable at a low cost. Once it became clear that the cost might be higher than the Quds force expected, Tehran opted to back down.

“Yet this was just the first round. The struggle for Iraq isn't over.”

— Amir Taheri, New York Post

Tony Blankley, Author, Former Washington Times Editorial Page Editor, Regarding the Growing Knowledge Deficit in News Reporting:

“Collecting news is too expensive, so almost all news organizations are cutting back on newsgathering. Every year, every month, every day, more and more commentary and analysis are based on less and less actual newsgathering. Often only one or two wire reports are the only real news. Everything else, as they say, is mere commentary…

“This is not a liberal problem or a conservative problem. This is a threat to having an informed electorate. Public knowledge is the first barricade against tyranny. (Gun ownership is a necessary, and very close, second.) We all have seen the shocking bias of certain Reuters and AP reporters. As newsgathering further shrinks to such minimal levels, the light of knowledge will go out. Even now, it flickers from time to time.”

On Playing Politics With Trade:

“It’s no accident that Austan Goolsbee, the top Obama adviser who told Canadian officials not to worry about Obama’s anti-NAFTA posturing, became an issue during the campaign in economically troubled Ohio. And it’s no accident that Mark Penn, the top Clinton strategist who has been demoted over his private-business promotion of the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, has found himself in hot water in the midst of campaigning in Pennsylvania.

“The two controversies point up one central fact: Many staffers and surrogates, in both campaigns, simply don’t believe what Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are saying about NAFTA, and free trade in general, on the campaign trail. But they can’t say so.”

— Byron York, National Review White House Correspondent

“Trade legislation debates are usually about dry-as-dust topics like reciprocity and dumping. But sometimes they really matter. Take the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, which the Bush administration will send to Congress this week. If Congress rejects it, the loss wouldn't be just measured in dollars or pesos. It could have profound geopolitical effects that would hurt the U.S…

“The foreign-policy benefits of the agreement are immense and the economic costs are minimal. ‘This is a test of whether the Democratic Congress is ready to accept the responsibilities of the majority,’ says Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute.

“Everyone plays politics with trade. But there are times when the stakes are too important. The Colombia agreement is another example of when politics must take a back seat for a larger good. We certainly know how Hugo Chavez is rooting for the congressional vote to turn out.”

— John Fund, The Wall Street Journal

“The year 2008 may enter history as the time when the Democratic Party lost its way on trade. Already, the party's presidential candidates have engaged in an unseemly contest to adopt the most protectionist posture, suggesting that, if elected, they might pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement. [Wednesday], House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared her intention to change the procedural rules governing the proposed trade promotion agreement with Colombia. President Bush submitted the pact to Congress on Tuesday for a vote within the next 90 legislative days, as required by the ‘fast-track’ authority under which the U.S. negotiated the deal with Colombia. Ms. Pelosi says she'll ask the House to undo that rule.

“The likely result is no vote on the agreement this year.”

— The Editors, The Washington Post

John Stossel, Award-Winning News Correspondent and Co-Anchor of ABC News ‘20/20’, Regarding the System of Legalized Extortion:

“Our legal system invites lawyers to act like bullies. Only in America can I sue you for dubious reasons, force you to spend thousands of dollars on lawyers (not to mention the psychic costs — the anxiety and lost sleep that lawsuits create), and when a judge rules that my claim is bunk, I don't even have to say ‘sorry.’ I can blithely move on to sue someone else.”

Matthew Rogers, California Bar Owner, Writing to Swedish-Owned Absolut In Response to the Company’s Recent “In an Absolut World” Advertising Campaign:

“I run a bar in Pt. Richmond. … After seeing your ad campaign where you show a western map of the United States in which California is part of Mexico again, I've decided to do the following: 1) Never carry Absolut. Ever; 2) Lower the price of Ketel One vodka to $2 a shot indefinitely to build loyalty; 3) Print a copy of your ad and put it above the Ketel One drink special; 4) Tell all my friends and family what Absolut thinks of the United States of America and our right to enforce border laws. I am on the frontline of illegal immigration and its effects. Where are you? Oh, yes, Sweden. Good riddance.”

This Week On the Trail:

“Wealthy Democrats are preparing a four-month, $40 million media campaign centered on attacks on Senator John McCain. And it will be led by David Brock, the former investigative reporter who first gained fame in the 1990s as a right-wing, anti-Clinton journalist.”

— Ben Smith, Politico

“In the days and weeks ahead, the Barack Obama campaign is going to pose a simple question to the undecided voters and undeclared superdelegates who will decide the Democratic nomination for president: If Hillary Clinton can’t run a good primary campaign, how is she ever going to run a good campaign against the Republicans?

“And while she says she is ready from Day One to be president, she is at something like Day 430 into being a presidential candidate and her campaign seems to be going from bad to worse to train wreck.”

— Roger Simon, Politico Chief Political Columnist

“When Hillary got into her wee spot of bother over her concoction of the corkscrew landing under enemy fire in Tuzla, she wiggled out of it by putting it down to sleep deprivation. Is she spending too many nights up at 3 in the morning? ...

“Mrs. Clinton calculated that, given the Democrats' deference to identity politics, her gender would give her enough novelty to sail through. But Mr. Obama trumped that, and now it's eternally 3 in the morning and the phone doesn't stop not ringing. She's like Frank Sinatra in Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer's all-time great saloon song: ‘It's quarter to three;There's no one in the place except you and me ...’”

— Mark Steyn, Author, Internationally Syndicated Columnist

“There is in Obama something of the Democratic candidate for president in the 1950s, Adlai Stevenson. Both from Illinois, they share an eloquence that lifts them above normal political figures and a profundity of thought that lies behind it. But each was seen as weak, and Stevenson as indecisive. Obama's over-intellectualization of issues and of the problems that crop up in his campaign will increasingly harden into a perception of a lack of sufficient strength to deal with America's problems.”

— Dick Morris, Political Commentator and Former Clinton Advisor

“The press has begun to bury the Reverend Jeremiah Wright story, convinced by the polls that the issue — for the most part — has gone away. But the issue of Barack Obama's association with his pastor is unlikely to disappear completely because it so undercuts what made the Illinois senator's political appeal unique….

“In a nation where politics and religion are so intertwined — at least rhetorically — it's never a good idea to be intimately associated with those who spend a lot of time trashing either God or America (which, to a good many Americans, are pretty much the same thing). It's particularly inadvisable for a candidate who's based virtually his whole appeal on his ability to be a kind of quasi-religious figure who can purge our politics of negativity and unite the nation in a common goal.”

— Steven Stark, Boston Phoenix Columnist

“[W]ould the same Obama who lacked the fortitude to break with Jeremiah Wright be a good bet, if elected, to take on his party's own special interests? To break, when circumstances warrant, with the across-the-board liberal orthodoxy he has long embraced? Curb entitlement spending? Temper excessive affirmative-action preferences? Tame the lawsuit lobby? Assign the teachers unions their share of the blame for what Obama calls ‘crumbling schools that are stealing the future’?

“Could he get tough, when necessary, with fashionably leftist foreign dictators, highly politicized international institutions, and sanctimonious European America-bashers? Or would he instead heed such soothing platitudes as his wife's February 14 assertion that ‘instead of protecting ourselves against terrorists,’ we should be ‘building diplomatic relationships’?

“I have a hard time believing at this point that Obama is up to these tasks.”

— Stuart Taylor, Jr., National Journal Senior Writer and Columnist

“I feel like Paulette Revere: ‘The recession is coming! The recession is coming!’”

— Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY)