Leading the free world
"With more than 1 million adults behind bars, the U.S. has an incarceration rate of 426 per 100,000 population, compared with 333 per 100,000 in runner-up South Africa and 268 in the No. 3 Soviet Union ... black Americans ... are locked up at a rate of 3,109 per 100,000, four times the pace at which South Africa imprisons its black offenders." — Time, January 21.
Like repels like
"Keating is a realist ... with a splenetic hatred of his conservative political opponents." — Bulletin, February 19.
Priorities
"The cost of two days of fighting [in the Gulf] surpasses the $937 million that Congress voted last year for aid to the homeless." — Time, February 4.
In the cause of freedom
"We know that they go over the causeway to drink in Bahrain. Everyone knows that they are hypocrites, so why don't they at least let us have a beer when we are fighting, and maybe dying, to defend their country?" — British soldier on his Saudi Arabian government "hosts".
Shut up, soldier
The US oil company "Chevron ... last week reported earnings of $633 million for the fourth quarter of 1990, an eightfold increase over the final quarter of the previous year." — Time, February 4.
And friendlier
"The US Energy Department announced plans yesterday to reorganise its atomic weapons facilities to make them smaller, less expensive and more protective of the environment." — Daily Telegraph Mirror, February 9.
Nobody here but us chickens
"The President, Interior Minister and Defence Minister denied ordering troops in on January 13, or knowing about it at all until after. Yeltsin denied they'd been involved, but admitted he only had Gorbachev's word for it. The chief of a Vilnius factory denied that it was HQ of the mysterious National Salvation Council, saying he opposed both secession and shooting civilians. Vladislav Shved, Lithuanian CP deputy leader, denied being an NSC leader; so did colleague A. Naudziunas. The party denied that the NSC included any LCP leaders at all. LCP leaders Mikolas Burokevicius and Shved denied accusations that they had fled Vilnius. The commander of KGB border troops in Vitebsk denied that they had refused to move into a Baltic republic; no such order had come. Central TV denied that a Col Tarkhanov of the Vilnius garrison had appealed on Lithuanian radio for soldiers to boycott violence against civilians, since he did not exist. Appearing in Lithuania's parliament, Col Tarkhanov denied that he didn't exist." — Soviet Weekly, January 24.