"A CEASEFIRE is not peace (salaam), and not even an armistice or truce (hudnah). It is no more than an agreement between combatants to stop shooting for some time."

"Leaders have responsibilities to face - and so do you. You who have been given the opportunities to succeed here should remember those who shaped you: your families, your community, your country and all its people."

"Both men now share center stage, having proven their political skills in this difficult campaign. Each will present their competing political solutions to the problems plaguing U.S. foreign policy, the U.S. economy, and the role of government in addressing a myriad of social issues. As compelling as these differences will be, and as substantive as the debate over their proposed solutions ought to be, always before us will be these two competing narratives and images of what it means to be an American that each conveys."

"Grotesquely, the insurance and hospital industries at the center of health care in the United States are, in effect, profiting from priorities that condemn many people to death and many more to avoidable suffering."

"One of two things will now occur. Either the Irish government will resubmit the treaty for a new vote, working harder to explain its meaning or secure a few changes, as they did in 2002 after incurring a loss in the case of an earlier EU treaty in 2001. Or the EU bureaucracy will take a lesson from the defeat, go back to the drawing boards, and present voters with a clearer voter-friendly document, and try again."

"Now, as agenda-setting for an air attack on Iran moves into higher gear, the mainline U.S. news media -- with the New York Times playing its influential part -- are engaged in coverage that does little more than provide stenographic services for the Bush administration."

We are all used to politicians donning the kneepads and performing the requisite acts of subservience to The Lobby, especially at election time, but what Obama did [at the AIPAC convention] was so ingratiating, so obsequious, so devoid of self-respect that he evoked images of a Negro slave grovelling before his white plantation “massah.”

"...the AIPAC audience cheered, revealing a strange ambivalence that exists even among members of this hard-line of this pro-Israel group: cheering McCain's support for more war in Iraq and Obama's call for and end to the war; and McCain's mockery of diplomacy and Obama's emphasis on negotiations. Strange and depressing, but still interesting."