Of all presidential perks, the pardon power has a special significance. It is just the kind of authority that would attract the special attention of someone obsessed with himself and his own ability to influence events.

It's difficult to believe that Al Gore was oblivious to the existing laws. He has to respond at some point.

Phones rang constantly, as if the White House was conducting some kind of pardon telethon.

Of all presidential perks, the pardon power has a special significance. It is just the kind of authority that would attract the special attention of someone obsessed with himself and his own ability to influence events.

Mistakes were made is something we heard back in '92, and that has sort of been the Clinton administration's mantra. I can't imagine that Al Gore is going to pick up that statement and carry it through the next election.

Al Gore seems to have found a great political ploy: Picking up whatever issue he is most vulnerable on and championing the cause. Perhaps he will start to champion perjury statutes and obstruction of justice.

I think Gore does have to worry. He is tied to Bill Clinton. We know that there were telephone calls that he made from his office. We know that there were visits to the Buddhist temple.

In the mind of Bill Clinton, political considerations outweigh even life-and-death matters of great concern to his own law-enforcement officials, not to mention the nation.

He decided to plunge on with pardons over the department's objections, or where he knew that there would be objections if he had let career prosecutors know what he was doing.

From what we've heard about George W., he has a lot issues that he wants to run on. They're positive. They're good. He thinks he's got a good vision for America.

I think that's going to be an issue: Whether or not voters are going to get more of the same in a Clinton candidacy or whether she really is something unique and has something to offer apart from her husband.

The decision that has to be made was whether it was material, whether he knew he was lying under oath, whether he did it willfully. I think that's required of any prosecutor who is charged with an investigation of this.

Since the end of the Cold War, Soviet aggression had been replaced by a number of particularly venomous threats, from Timothy McVeigh to Osama bin Laden.

Hopefully, at some point, people will at least credit the Republicans with carrying out their oversight responsibilities and with pursuing a principled course of action even in the face of everyone's short-attention spans.

The mainstream media has chosen their candidates and their issues, and they're not the same as the GOP's. They are going to be painted as the bad guys.

There is one question that I don't think Gary Condit can answer, and that I think is why we all aimed at Gary Condit, besides the fact that he has a relationship.

Every American deserves to live in freedom, to have his or her privacy respected and a chance to go as far as their ability and effort will take them - regardless of race, gender, ethnicity or economic circumstances.

Never underestimate a child's ability to get into more trouble.

We have developed this unbelievable ability to deny. We have to. If we didn't, we'd go crazy.

To know how to hide one's ability is great skill.

It is the ability to take a joke, not make one, that proves you have a sense of humor.

The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee and I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.

Handcuffing the ability of states and localities to develop clean fuels in the cheapest possible way, using local resources, is not sound or sensible policy.

I realised from a very early age that God gave me a gift, and that gift was to run, and I wanted to use it to the best of my ability.

My vocal ability is very limited, but I'm fortunate in that I can write the songs around my vocal limitations.

The key to Operations at Wal-Mart is their ability to maintain the highest standards while at the same time getting things done with lockstep execution.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

The Stones are a different kind of group. I realized that when I joined them. It's not really so much their musical ability, it's just they have a certain kind of style and attitude which is unique.

I liked his ability to deal with a lot of the negativity that surrounded him. Even though he was in a world that he didn't want to be in, he still saw the bigger picture.

We have the most flexible and adaptive economy. Making sure we sustain the ability of the American economy to perform well is really the priority of economic policy.

The system that enables the most people to earn the most success is free enterprise, by matching up people's skills, interests, and abilities. In contrast, redistribution simply spreads money around. Even worse, it attenuates the ability to earn success by perverting economic incentives.

Excellence is the unlimited ability to improve the quality of what you have to offer.

War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.

Get that right, then- if you get the quality right, then the marketability or whatever; your ability to sell videos or your ability to earn money or whatever, will follow naturally. But try to be creatively lead rather than market lead. And that's important to me.

You have to open your mind. I like the ability to express myself in a deep way. It's the closest music to our humanity - it's like a folk music that rises up out of a culture.

I ask the American people to consider the legacy this administration has handed us in the defense budget as we spend billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars without the tools and ability to track these dollars.

I didn't have any problem bonding with Honey, but I was plagued with insecurities about my ability to bring up my baby.

The greatest luck that I've had has been the ability to find men and women who came into my administration who worked with me and brought extraordinary talents that we were able to take full advantage of.

My power is the ability to control water molecules and form them into ice.

Our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation.

I respect people who feel things passionately. I do. But when someone is a judge, that is not what they should bring to the bench. It is not really passion, except in rare instances, that serves the bench well. It is, rather, an ability to understand the law and follow it.

In the last four years under the Patriot Act, we have seen a great increase in the ability of law enforcement officials to investigate and track terrorists.

The genius of the economic machine is in its ability to convert these indulgences into profitability. It converts desire into attention, a grip on our eyeballs and eardrums, which in turn can be marketed to advertisers.

The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability.

An overstretched military undermines homeland security and our ability to meet threats around the world.

Human beings are accustomed to think of intellect as the power of having and controlling ideas and of ability to learn as synonymous with ability to have ideas. But learning by having ideas is really one of the rare and isolated events in nature.

My colleagues have expressed confidence in my ability to articulate our conservative message and to provide new focus to our efforts in the General Assembly.

I think women have an innate ability to be intuitive with people that they truly love, but they have to trust that inner voice, and I think it is there. I think we are more intuitive than men.

Natural ability without education has more often attained to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.