Congressional Quotes du Jour: The Good, the Bad and the Dangerously Insane

Ron Paul (R-TX) from Tuesday's Republican Presidential Debate on CNN:

We have a lot of goodness in this country. And we should promote it, but never through the barrel of a gun. We should do it by setting good standards, motivating people and have them want to emulate us.

But you can't enforce our goodness, like the necons preach, with an armed force. It doesn't work.

Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) discussing the William Jefferson indictment on the House floor this week (Jon Stewart's moment of zen yesterday):

When we talk about the standard here, we all know that bringing dishonor on this House is a standard that all of us attempt to meet.

Trent Franks (R-AZ) in yesterday's House Armed Services Committee hearing on body armor, in which he suggests that the committee just suit up a couple of staffers in the sets of armor in question, find Jim Webb's gun and go down to the basement to do their own damned ballistics test. Hey, if NBC News can do it:

And it's just perhaps a little bit unusual, the suggestion, Mr. Chairman, that -- we've got a gun range in the basement of this building. And I think we ought to take a couple of sets of both sets of this body armor and have both sides have a sworn affidavit that this is indeed the exact armor that's going into the field, and that we all go down and have some experts there to make sure that the tests are fair, and witness this for ourselves.