Verbatim: Apr. 16, 2007

‘It’s interesting because three of our colleagues, who are all Republicans, were in Syria yesterday, and I didn’t hear the White House speaking out about that.’

NANCY PELOSI, Speaker of the House, shrugging off Bush Administration criticism of her trip to Damascus, Syria, on April 4, during which she hoped to revive U.S. relations with the country; Republican Representatives Frank Wolf, Joe Pitts and Robert Aderholt also met with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus on April 1

‘I don’t want to come out. I know you want to kill me.’

SHAUNTAY L. HENDERSON, the FBI’s most-wanted woman, reportedly talking to officials before she was captured in Kansas City, Mo., on March 31; she is suspected in up to 50 shootings and was just the eighth woman ever on the FBI’s most-wanted list

‘EPA has refused to comply with this clear statutory command. Instead, it has offered a laundry list of reasons not to regulate.’

JUSTICE JOHN PAUL STEVENS, writing for the majority in the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling that found that the Environmental Protection Agency violated the Clean Air Act by not limiting heat-trapping greenhouse gases in vehicle emissions; the court said the EPA has the power to regulate those pollutants

‘At the end of the day, I know what I did. And I know that the motivations for the decisions I made were not based on improper reasons.’

ALBERTO GONZALES, U.S. Attorney General, defending his controversial firing of eight U.S. Attorneys, which has left many calling for his resignation

‘I’m not saying that we should take a foreign policy stance; I’m saying it’s not a good place to invest our money.’

JOEL ANDERSON, California assemblyman, about a bill he wrote that would bar California’s investment in Iran; when he introduced the bill in January, he called Iran’s finances “the mother’s milk of terrorism”

‘A year ago, my approval rating was in the 30s, my nominee for the Supreme Court had just withdrawn, and my Vice President had shot someone. Ah, those were the good ol’ days.’

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH, in a lighthearted address at the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association dinner

‘Put your big-girl panties on.’

MARGARET SPELLINGS, U.S. Education Secretary, giving encouragement to deputy White House press secretary Dana Perino, who will take over for press secretary Tony Snow, who is battling cancer

‘There’s actually a thriving little underground community that’s been studying this exact solution for a long time.’

LARRY PAGE, Google co-founder and president, in a statement for an April Fool’s Day prank in which a link posted on Google’s home page connected to a site that supposedly offered consumers free high-speed wireless Internet through their home plumbing systems; Google called the program “Toilet Internet Service Provider”

Sources: AP; Kansas City Star; AP; New York Times; San Francisco Chronicle; AP; Washington Post; Google