Quotes from Jim Geraghty

You know what will bring family and social issues front and center? If 2012 America sees middle-schoolers reenacting Lady Gaga videos.

A healthy agency does not require relevance to the national agenda so much as the APPEARANCE of relevance to the national agenda," Humphrey explained. "It is perhaps the second-most important tool in ensuring continued funding." "And the most important?" "A friend on the Appropriations committee.

The gargantuan, ever-growing, ever-less-accountable, impossible-to-uproot federal bureaucracy is actually the sleeper issue of our time. It's at the heart of the conservative critique of modern government: faceless bureaucrats writing incomprehensible regulations that complicate our lives for no good reason.

Hey, the ubiquitous Leak-Cam is to 2010 as the bottom-of-the-screen news ticker was to late 2001: What you're seeing beneath the news anchor or talking head may not actually include any new information, but you feel like you're watching something dramatic.

That tiny part of your soul that believes in a 'good government' ideal requires you to avert your eyes from the segment of the civil service that is attracted to the work precisely because it doesn't really want to work.

Others said this was a sign the Glorious Revolution had born bitter fruit. We had become accustomed to lies, blind loyalty, too obsessed with appearing strong to openly discuss our weaknesses.