Verbatim: Jun. 27, 2005

By DEPARTMENT Monday, June 27, 2005

    • "You would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags or some mad regime."

    DICK DURBIN, Democratic Senator from Illinois, on reports of detainee abuse by American interrogators at Guantánamo Bay

    "They've never eaten better. They've never been treated better."

    DUNCAN HUNTER, Republican Congressman from California, displaying a tray of lemon-baked fish and oven-fried chicken, which he said was reflective of the menu at Guantánamo Bay

    "I'd like to think that somebody like me, who says what he thinks and gets his facts right, has a place in politics."

    AL FRANKEN, liberal author and radio pundit, who is considering a bid for the U.S. Senate from Minnesota in 2008

    "I never, never, on the floor of the Senate, made a diagnosis, nor would I ever do that."

    BILL FRIST, Senate majority leader, defending comments he made in March about Terri Schiavo's condition. In that debate, the former heart surgeon said, "There seems to be insufficient information to conclude that Terry Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state"

    "He kissed me goodbye and then left ... that's the very last time I saw him."

    RITA SCHWERNER BENDER, testifying about her late husband Michael Schwerner, at the trial of former Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen, now 80, who is charged with the 1964 murder of Schwerner and two other civil rights workers

    "The Senate failed you and your ancestors and our nation."

    MARY LANDRIEU, Louisiana Senator, on the U.S. Senate's past inaction on antilynching legislation, for which it issued a formal apology last week

    "Never is a bad word."

    THE REV. BILLY GRAHAM, 86, on the likelihood that this week's revival meeting in New York City will be his last

    "She said that she had taken to calling me son ... I wish I could get them to adopt Hillary."

    BILL CLINTON, former President, on his closeness with Barbara Bush and her husband after the two ex-Presidents' collaboration on tsunami-relief fund raising

    Sources: Reuters; AP; New York Times; AP; Washington Post; AP (2); CBS Late Show with David Letterman