Quotes

"There's no doubt Obama would be fully justified in firing his top general [Stanley McChrystal]. But at the same time Obama has committed himself to a rigid timeline for withdrawal from Afghanistan. Changing commanders could complicate that enormously. Right now, because of his own policy decisions, the president has no good choice." --columnist Byron York

"In wartime, generals become public heroes. In some cases -- in Stanley McChrystal's -- they really may be heroes. But that does not change the fundamental imperative of maintaining order and discipline. And if doing so means relieving a hero of command, so be it." --author Eliot Cohen
"While McChrystal's comments were highly improper, they will strike many observers as having a ring of truth. Even if the president gives the general the ax, the whole episode is further grist for the developing media narrative of an administration that is incompetent and adrift." --Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto

"Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a president has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems worthy of compensation? Nowhere. And yet that is precisely what is happening with a $20 billion fund to be provided by BP to compensate people harmed by their oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico." --columnist Thomas Sowell

"Thuggery is unattractive. Ineffective thuggery even more so. Which may be one reason so many Americans have been reacting negatively to the response of Barack Obama and his administration to BP's gulf oil spill." --political analyst Michael Barone

"Obama believes in the rule of law -- his law. No other law is relevant. No other law matters. When Obama speaks, he expects the world to obey. ... Obama can't comprehend any limitations on his power. ... There have been arrogant presidents before, but none that can compare to the sickening self-centered narcissism that exudes from this man." --columnist Henry Lamb

"I think that governments have become like a cancer, they have expanded in the financial system. I think the biggest problem is too much intervention. Whatever the government touches is usually done worse than in the private sector." --author Marc Faber