Cook, Craddick, Foster & Ahumada, and Coleman

Rep. Byron Cook, R-Corsicana, accused of carrying a non-working employee as a full-timer on his state office payroll: "If there's a target here, it's me because of the issues I've had with the leadership. This is generated by one source and one source only, and that has to have come in a whisper from the speaker's office. I have nothing to hide."

House Speaker Tom Craddick, in the same Austin American-Statesman story: "If some legislators are paying employees with taxpayer dollars who are performing little or no work, that is an egregious misuse of state money. It must be stopped immediately and with full restitution made."

The opening lines of a letter to U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colorado, from Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster and Brownsville Mayor Pat Ahumada, after Tancredo repeated his line about putting the border fence north of cities like Brownsville: "We have received your most recent tirade masquerading as a press release. While we understand that half-truths and deception are the minimum low standard of the Washington drive-by attack, we prefer straight talk."

Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, quoted in The Dallas Morning News on abuse at state psychiatric hospitals: "You get what you pay for. When you financially dumb something down, you make services cheap, something's got to give. Unfortunately, it usually ends up being a mentally ill or disabled Texan."