Quotables

‘The last time the Senate has passed a budget, the iPad wasn’t even invented yet.’

House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., on the U.S. Senate not having approved a budget for the federal government in four years. Congress has funded the government through continuing resolutions.

‘Given healthcare, I don’t care if he speaks in tongues.’

Former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, before Chief Justice John Roberts administered the oath of office to President Obama. Roberts, who cast the deciding Supreme Court vote in favor of Obamacare, botched the wording of the oath of office for President Obama’s first term in 2009.

‘No one was actually doing anything. A few scrolled or clicked, but the rest just stared.’

Sophie Schmidt, daughter of Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, describing a room of about 90 North Koreans ostensibly studying on computer terminals at a university. The Schmidts witnessed a variety of apparently staged scenes during a January trip to North Korea.

‘Our grief and sense of betrayal are beyond words.’

Archbishop Stanley Ntagali, of the Anglican Church of Uganda, on the Church of England’s decision to allow gay bishops. See "Inglorious revolutions" in this issue.

‘The North Korean believer enslaved in the gulag can’t speak. The Iraqi nun fearing for her life cannot speak. Will we be their voice?’

U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., in a January letter to 300 Protestant and Catholic leaders calling for religious leaders to speak out on behalf of the persecuted church, and announcing his intent to reintroduce legislation for a special U.S. envoy for religious minorities.