Top 40 Political Quotes Of 2009 - Sarah Palin #2 & #9

John Hawkins, of Right Wing News, did a great job of picking the best quotes of the year. Sarah Palin made it to the top 10 twice.

10) Umbrage is itself, generally, a lie. The ostensible victim of the offensive remark (call him or her the "umbragee") is actually delighted at the opportunity, while the ostensible offense giver (call him or her the "umbragor") is sorry to have wandered into this thicket, or is made to feel sorry as the umbrage game plays itself out. The rules of the game are perverse but simple: I scream with pain until you cry "uncle." -- Michael Kinsley

9) The response to my op-ed by global warming alarmists has been interesting. Former Vice President Al Gore has called me a “denier” and informs us that climate change is “a principle in physics. It’s like gravity. It exists.”

Perhaps he’s right. Climate change is like gravity - a naturally occurring phenomenon that existed long before, and will exist long after, any governmental attempts to affect it. -- Sarah Palin

8) The government competes in the private sector the way an alligator competes with a duck. -- Mike Pence

7) I think in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised. -- Carrie Prejean set off a firestorm after giving this response when she was asked about gay marriage

6) Bowing to the Saudi king is not an energy policy. -- Newt Gingrich

5) Madam President, I’m sad to say that I serve during what I would call the selfish generation. The political leadership that we have today that we are a part of no doubt embodies the most selfish policies this country has seen in its history. There is no question that is the case.

For short time political gain, in order to make certain constituencies happy, in order to give people what they want with no sacrifice, we are willing to throw future generations under the bus. -- Bob Corker

4) If we’re able to stop Obama on [health care reform], it will be his Waterloo. It will break him and we will show that we can, along with the American people, begin to push those freedom solutions that work in every area of our society. -- Jim DeMint

3) If we have another 2,000 people killed, I want Nancy Pelosi and George Soros, John Conyers and Pat Leahy to go to the funeral and say, 'Your son was vaporized because we didn't want to dump some guy's head under water for 30 seconds.' -- Peter King

2) The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil. -- Sarah Palin

1) You Lie! -- Joe Wilson during a Barack Obama speech to Congress

Link to 11 - 40:

Top 40 Political Quotes Of 2009

Rush: Sarah Palin Told Us Obama Would Give Miranda Rights to Terrorists

RUSH: We talked yesterday, just as the program was ending we got the news, Stephen Hayes, at the Weekly Standard on his blog mentioned that terrorist detainees in Afghanistan are being read their Miranda rights.  This signals a huge shift once again that fighting terrorism is a criminal enterprise.  It brings back the old days of the way the Clinton administration went about it.  But when you start Mirandizing noncitizens, especially foreign enemy combatants on the battlefield, when you start Mirandizing them, you are granting them constitutional rights when they are not citizens.  Now, if you can do that, if you can grant a constitutional right and Mirandize a foreign terrorist, enemy combatant, then I guess you can automatically grant citizenship to people who are not citizens, couldn't you?  

Andy McCarthy has written much about this at National Review Online, and he actually goes back and says one of the people that can be blamed for this is Senator McCain.  I don't have his story right in front of me, but Senator McCain supported -- back when McCain was on his anti-torture bandwagon and was trying to curry favor with people on the left to get their votes by agreeing that the US tortured people. One of the ways that McCain sought to prevent torture and make it illegal, which it always has been anyway, was to make it possible for what the Obama administration is doing.  And they did this on the quiet.  It took a member of Congress finding this out.  Sarah Palin warned of this in her acceptance speech at St. Paul, the Republican convention, last September.

PALIN: Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America, and he's worried that someone won't read 'em their right

RUSH:  It's exactly right.  Now, Obama, on March 22nd, this year, on 60 Minutes, said this.

OBAMA: Now, do these folks deserve Miranda rights?  Do they deserve to be treated like a shoplifter down the block?  Of course not.

RUSH: Well, there you have it, there's Barack Obama, March 22nd, "No, they don't deserve Miranda rights."  They're getting 'em.  They are being Mirandized in Afghanistan today.  So once again it's not what Obama says; it's how he says it that appeals to people.  Yesterday this all came up at the afternoon press briefing with the most brilliant and articulate press secretary we've ever had, according to several in the government-run media.  Major Garrett of Fox News said, "Do you know if it's true or untrue that Miranda rights are read to terrorists in Afghanistan?"

GIBBS: I have no reason to -- to disbelieve a member of Congress, but I don't know any of the circumstances that are involved around it.

REPORTER:  Would it come as a surprise to the White House that that's what would be happening?  

GIBBS:  It's not a surprise to me.

RUSH:  Not a surprise.  Yet your boss said on March 22nd that they don't deserve Miranda rights.  And Gibbs says, yes, he's not surprised to him that it's happening, but that he didn't know it.  So they aren't denying it.  And of course it requires us to go back and find Obama saying that they don't deserve Miranda rights on 60 Minutes in March because government-controlled media is not going to do it. 

RUSH: Now, these Miranda rights for terrorists: When can we expect congressional hearings on this policy?  Nobody knew it was happening.  The president's press secretary didn't know it was happening.  When will there be congressional hearings? And I have another question.  If we are going to Mirandize enemy combatants on the field of battle -- we are in a war in Afghanistan, folks.  We're not there in a "police action."  We're there in a war.  If we're going to Mirandize terrorists, the enemy combatants, does that mean they don't have to say anything until they get a lawyer, and if they can't afford a lawyer, are we going to appoint one for them?  I mean, isn't that part of the Miranda rights?  So where are the congressional hearings on this?