Here are some of the week’s most notable quotes culled from news reports from across Texas, and beyond.
Texas state Rep. Jessica Farrar, D-Houston, on the end of the 82nd session of the Texas Legislature and the effects of a budget with deep cuts to public education for the next two years.
What we’ll see in the interim is what cuts will do to the schools. You won’t see a lot of people defending their decisions.
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U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., explains that God told her to run for president.
When I pray, I pray believing that God will speak to me and give me an answer to that prayer, and so that’s what a calling is. If I pray, a calling means that I have a sense from God which direction I’m supposed to go. It means I have a sense of assurance about the direction I think that God is speaking into my heart that I should go.
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Twice-divorced, thrice-married Newt Gingrich, reacting to New York State’s legalization of same-sex marriage and calling on President Obama to enforce the federal Defense of Marriage Act that Gingrich helped pass when he was speaker of the U.S. House in 1996.
I think the president should be, frankly, enforcing that act, and I think we are drifting toward a terrible muddle which I think is going to be very, very difficult and painful to work our way out of.
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Republican strategist Mark McKinnon on U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign.
She’s gonna be a playah.
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Far-right talk show host Glenn Beck, discussing a possible relocation to Texas with Gov. Rick Perry after his FOX News show ends this week.
I could run for governor.
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Soner Tarim, chief executive of Harmony Public Schools, in response to the Texas House General Investigating Committee’s plans to look into its — and other charter schools’ — use of public money. Questions about the school have been stirred up by the religious-right Eagle Forum because of the schools’ Turkish ties.
It is unfortunate, however, that a small but very vocal group of critics here in Texas have chosen to use inaccurate information, rumors and innuendo, some of it tinged with religious bigotry and anti-immigrant rhetoric, in an effort to paint our schools in a negative light or to allege affiliations that do not exist.
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Texas State Board of Education member David Bradley, R-Beaumont, responding to far-right pressure groups targeting of Harmony Public Schools because its leaders are non-U.S. citizens with ties to Turkey.
There is a lot of misinformation, a certain level of fear and a small helping of bigotry that needs to go away … The only thing these guys are guilty of are high scores and being Turkish.
