Brown, Berman, Carona, Clifford, and Bush

Rep. Betty Brown, R-Terrell, talking about the difficulty of Asian-American monikers with a witness testifying before the House Elections Committee: "Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it's a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?"

Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, talking to the Austin American-Statesman about Voter ID legislation: "There's so much fraud that even the district attorney or the attorney general won't prosecute it. If they did, they'd have to stop prosecuting murderers and rapists."

Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, on his push for local option taxes to pay for roads: "I won't be accused of sitting on my bottom and doing nothing. When we arrive here, we take the easy jobs and the tough ones. I do not want to be a talk-radio Republican. I want to be a problem-solving Republican."

Judge Eric Clifford of Paris, quoted in the Los Angeles Times about the decision to send Aaron Hart, who has an I.Q. of 47, to prison for 100 years on sexual molestation charges: "It was a sad situation. I was about to cry. The jury was crying. Everybody looked at everybody like, 'What the hell do we do?' The only option we were presented was prison. We don't have any facilities in the state of Texas for any type of care for somebody like that."

Former President George W. Bush, quoted in The Dallas Morning News on cleaning up after his dog Barney: "It dawned on me, for eight years I was dodging this stuff and now I'm picking it up."