“I’m not gay. So I’m not going to marry one.”
— Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) when asked if his views had changed on gay marriage, according to Politico.
Verbatim
“I want to know how we came up with this monstrosity.”
— Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) on the $142 million memorial to President Dwight D. Eisenhower designed by architect Frank Gehry for the National Mall, according to the New York Times.
“This is not Dick Cheney we’re talking about here.”
— President Obama to the Senate Democratic conference on Tuesday, according to 'Politico'. The President was defending himself from attacks that his administration has told Congress little about the legal justifications for his drone policy.
“I'm not going to invest in a country where I see no hope. They've got to want this more than we do. I am perfectly capable of pulling the plug on Afghanistan.”
— Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to Foreign Policy.
“I bet you he spends more time filling out his March Madness brackets than he does writing a budget.”
— House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) on President Obama's priorities to The Hill. The President will release his budget April 8, the first time in the modern era that the President will propose his budget after Congress.
“HABEMUS PAPAM FRANCISCUM”
— First tweet from @Pontifex, the Vatican's Twitter account, after Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was announced as Pope Francis. The Latin phrase can be translated as "WE HAVE POPE FRANCIS." Bergoglio is the first Pope ever elected from the Americas and the first Jesuit.
“The notion of any of our leadership team having sex with a reporter makes me laugh out loud.”
— Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill on HBO's "House of Cards", according to Politico.
“The bombs that went off in Kabul and Khost [Saturday] were not a show of power to America, but were in service to America...It was in the service of foreigners not withdrawing from Afghanistan.”
— Afghan President Hamid Karzi claiming Sunday that the Taliban suicide bombings, which killed at least 18 people, are part of a joint U.S.-Taliban plot so that U.S. combat forces can stay in the country beyond their 2014 deadline for pulling out. U.S. officials denounced the claim as "totally false."
“The book was written last year in a certain environment. The goal was to persuade people against immigration reform to be for it. Since that time, eight of 100 senators have moved, and not much in the House...When we were working on this, Marco Rubio wasn't for a path to citizenship.”
— Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush explaining to Michael Gerson his position on immigration and why it seems at odds with his new book with Clint Bolick, 'Immigration Wars.'
“I would go for another 12 hours to try to break Strom Thurmond’s record, but I’ve discovered that there are some limits to filibustering and I’m going to have to go take care of one of those in a few minutes here”
— Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), quoted by the Washington Post, ending his filibuster after nearly 13 hours and looking forward to using the bathroom.
“We completely reject the Venezuelan government’s claim that the United States is involved in any type of conspiracy to destabilize the Venezuelan government.”
— Patrick Ventrell, a spokesperson for the State Dept., on the rumors that the U.S. was behind the death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
“We were on a roller coaster, exciting and thrilling, ups and downs. But the ride ends. And then you get off. And it's not like, oh, can't we be on a roller coaster the rest of our life? It's like, no, the ride's over.”
— Mitt Romney on his 2012 presidential campaign on Fox News Sunday.
“The sequester is not something I proposed, it's something that Congress proposed. It will not happen.”
— President Obama in the third presidential debate in October.