The Wise, The Lies and The Scary

THE WISE

"If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life."

Henry David Thoreau (noted by Thomas Szasz in an op-ed in today's WSJ)

In the same vein -
"The most dangerous words in the English language are, 'I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”'

Ronald Reagan

THE LIES

"You said that, quote, you 'would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would reach wise decisions.'"

Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, purposely misquoting Sonia Sotomayor, removing the racist content of her wise Latina comment. She actually said, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
Sotomayor herself lied by saying that she merely meant to paraphrase Sandra Day O'Connor's statement, “a wise old man and a wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases” and it fell flat. What she said wasn't a paraphrase, it was a contradiction. And it wasn't just a slip of the tongue either. On at least six occasions spanning a period of years, Sotomayor expressed the same sentiment.

THE SCARY

"Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. … No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: It must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets or livestock."

So who made this remark? A Chinese Communist party official looking for ways to limit the population of his country? A neo-Nazi seeking to eliminate a specific ethnic group? An evil, profit mining pharmaceutical company executive? An inmate in a mental insitution? All good guesses but no. The words come from John Holdren, President Obama's director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. (As noted by Michelle Malkin at Townhall.com)