The Buzz

“We hope we can put the past behind us.”
Liberian Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf MPA 1971, during a speech sponsored by the Women and Public Policy Program before her election. A former minister of finance for the African nation that spent years in civil war, Johnson-Sirleaf spent a year in jail at the hands of the late president Samuel Doe and lived in political exile during President Charles Taylor’s regime. In November, she was elected as Liberia’s first female president.

“We’ve got to be holding officials’ feet to the fire. I think that some journalism fell away from that after 9/11.”
Judy Woodruff, former senior correspondent and anchor of CNN’s “Inside Politics” and current visiting fellow at the Shorenstein Center for Press, Politics and Public Policy, about the changing landscape of TV news.

“The majority of Americans think our judges are out of control.”
Conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly criticizing the direction of the U.S. court system. Schlafly, known for her work to defeat the ERA, said it is wrong for courts to legislate from the bench.

“We must take down the walls of mythology and tear down the heroic labels of men who committed atrocities in our name.”
Serbian President Boris Tadic, speaking in the Forum in September on how a future of democracy cannot flourish without a full and open discussion of the past.

“The Weekly Standard is very interested in the machinery of government. I am sort of interested in getting it to rust.”
Satirist P.J. O’Rourke, a contributor to the conservative political magazine, during a Forum panel discussion in September marking 10 years of The Weekly Standard.