Off the Hustings   

"In fact, what [Washington Post Executive Editor Len] Downie and [ABC News Political Director Mark] Halperin aspire to is nothing less than a true Zen-like state, where through years of meditation and Buddha-like self-discipline and denial, they purge their minds of all political thought, until they finally achieve the true nirvana, which is a state of ideological nothingness and purity."

— the Philadelphia Daily News' Will Bunch, on his blog Attytood, about the "most ridiculous thing we've ever heard of: Journalists who don't vote"

"If you don't get felons from perjury at congressional hearings, there'll be no place for Fox News to recruit their new generation of commentators."

— comedian and "Simpsons" voice Harry Shearer on MSNBC, describing why he felt a Democratic Congress, with the power to gin up investigations, was so critical

"She ran away with it like a hobo with a sweet potato pie."

— Dan Rather, appearing with political comedian Jon Stewart on Comedy Central's "Indecision 2006," about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's landslide re-election in New York

"What is the lesson here? Take management and put it 70 miles away."

— Chris Rose, a columnist for New Orleans' Times-Picayune, on the strong performance of the paper's "New Orleans bureau" covering Hurricane Katrina while top editors and much of the staff redeployed to Baton Rouge. Rose addressed the Associated Press Managing Editors in New Orleans in October.