“I’ve got this thing and it’s (expletive) golden, and I’m just not giving it up for (expletive) nothing. I’m not gonna do it.” — Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich in a conversation intercepted by the FBI, regarding his opportunity to choose the replacement for Presdient-elect Barack Obama’s senate seat.

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“It’s about greed. He’s got to be completely off his rocker to be talking like that at a time when he knows the feds are looking at him. … He’s out there like he’s talking to his wife in bed.” — Don Rose, a longtime political strategist in Chicago, on Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s conversations as recorded by the FBI, who says Blagojevich plotted to sell Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat for cash or a lucrative job for himself.

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“It’s very simple — we want the government to fall. This boy’s death was the last straw for us. This government wants the poor to pay for all the country’s problems — never the rich — and they keep those who protest in line using police oppression.” — Petros Constantinou, an organizer with the Socialist Workers Party, speaking as more than 10,000 people start to march toward Parliament in Athens to protest the fatal police shooting of a teenager.