We cannot say that human-rights conditions in China are better today than they were a year ago.

Clinton administration National Security Adviser SAMUEL BERGER at a White House briefing on the day the president kicked off his campaign to win an extension of Most Favored Nation trading status for China.

Shifting stance is a Gephardt tradition.

Headline on a USA TODAY article about House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt's history of public-policy flip-flops. Mr. Gephardt is positioning himself for a Democratic presidential primary challenge to Al Gore in 2000.

Millie went paws up and we're very sorry. Millie went to heaven.

Former President GEORGE BUSH on the death of his 12-year-old springer spaniel, who had stomach and liver ailments and was put to sleep by a Kennebunkport, Maine, veterinarian.

Banning the use of cloning to copy human beings is absolutely necessary to maintain ethical morality which holds together today's human society.

Vice President XU ZHIHONG, as reported by the official Chinese news service Xinhua, on the announcement that the Chinese Academy of Science will ban human cloning.

Tawdriness and lack of principle has spread outward from the Oval Office like the distorting ripples of a dirty stone dropped into a sunlit pool.

British journalist and historian PAUL JOHNSON in an article in the June Esquire magazine.

Our legal fees have been somewhat higher than expected, and it has caused our debt to increase to a higher level.

Democratic National Committee chairman STEVE GROSSMAN, explaining in part why the DNC faces debts of $16 million that will take at least until the end of 1998 to pay off.

A real police force would have talked to me before going to The Washington Times, of all places.

New York Times reporter ADAM CLYMER charging that Capitol Hill police leaked to the news media an account of his cussing out officers who last month denied him access to a roped-off area of the Senate floor. Mr. Clymer is the reporter who accepted the illegal tape of a telephone call involving Newt Gingrich and disclosed it in the newspaper. Media Research Center's Brent Baker enjoyed the irony of Mr. Clymer's temper tantrum: "Now maybe he has a better appreciation of how it feels to have what you thought was a private conversation highlighted by the media.