Quotables

‘I feel highly responsible for his actions.’

Nathaniel Richmond, absentee father of one of two Ohio teens convicted of raping a 16-year-old girl. A judge sentenced high-school football players Ma’lik Richmond, 16, and Trent Mays, 17, to at least one year in a youth correctional institute for the attack on an unconscious girl at a drunken party last summer. The boys’ friends had trumpeted the assault via text messages and photos.

‘Nothing but pure political posturing on the backs of these dead Marines.’

Unidentified Marine Corps official, quoted by Pentagon reporter Jim Miklaszewski of NBC News, after Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., blamed the budget sequestration for an explosion at an Army depot in Nevada on March 18 that killed seven Marines.

‘Portman has not gained wisdom on this, he has lost objectivity.’

Dallas talk show host and Dallas Morning News columnist Mark Davis on Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, switching from opposition to same-sex marriage to support for it after his son publicly admitted to being a homosexual. “Portman has abandoned his [principles], not because he has suddenly decided that all of his previous views are wrong, but because of a personal development that understandably tugs at his heart.”

‘I cannot see how we could work with such an apparently delusional leader much longer, but unfortunately I do not know if we have any other good options.’

Retired U.S. Army Col. David Maxwell, now with Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, after Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai accused the Taliban of working “in the service of America.”

‘I did think about a catheter.’

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, on his marathon, 13-hour filibuster in which he spoke against the government’s drone attacks on American citizens.

‘I’m just an angry old man hurting for my son.’

Former President George H.W. Bush, in his newest book All the Best, George Bush, on harsh criticism of his son’s presidency.