“Today, I am concerned about what progress means. Some of our candidates espouse not leadership, but bargain basement visions. “Vote for me, I’m cheaper,” they say. Instead of inspiring us, instead of calling us to large actions like building community college systems, they are consumed with tedium, with the process of taxing our cars and houses, and such.”–Alan Diamonstein
“I was joined in my first year in the House by Dr. W. Ferguson Reid, a Richmond Democrat, and the first black member of the House since Reconstruction. He was cordially accepted by his colleagues on the floor of the House, but that acceptance did not extend beyond the Capitol grounds.”–Vince Callahan
“It was always clear that secrets were expected to be kept, and that any indiscreet behavior was not to be broadcast or ever mentioned again. I followed those rules then, and I follow them now.”–Eva Tieg-Hardy
“I said many times during the 1990s, and have often commented since then, that our successful reforms represented a victory, not for Republicans, but for the people of Virginia.”–George Allen
“These country folk stuffed brown paper bags with hand-me-down clothes that their own children could no longer wear, and they brought them to church to pass along to my siblings and me.”–Paul Harris
“In politics, for example, my dad never voted for a Republican because, even if he admitted the GOP candidate were “a good man,” helping him get elected would “take a spoke out of the wheel,” the metaphor implying that the Democratic Party rolled the general welfare forward.”–Paul Akers
“The worst thing about Jay Shropshire’s funeral, other than its necessity, was not being able to schmooze with him about it later.” –Margaret Edds
‘Notes from the sausage factory,’ Barnie Day, Becky Dale, publishing mid-July, Brunswick Books, 434 pgs.