The Patriot Post® · Thursday Short Cuts

Insight: “Freedom can’t be kept for nothing. If you set a high value on liberty, you must set a low value on everything else.” —Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Upright: “I don’t think there’s any evidence [that Russia stole the 2016 election]. And, you know, I really don’t think that’s a good conversation to have. I think that really does devalue the people in Wisconsin and Michigan and others who decided to vote for President Trump. Whether you like this president or not, whether you believe that he should have been president or not, let’s give the credit to the Americans who went out and voted for somebody who they thought would bring change.” —Condoleezza Rice

Friendly fire: “What does it say that Fox News is nicer to me than the lefties are? What does it say that the conservatives are nicer to me?” —Marianne Williamson

Belly laugh of the week: “We do not [discriminate].” —Facebook executive Monika Bickert regarding anti-conservative prejudice

The BIG lie: “Unlike Donald Trump, I know what it’s like to be in a family that lives paycheck to paycheck.” —Sen. Bernie Sanders

Non compos mentis: “Sometimes, life comes along and imitates art instead of the other way around. And as I was re-writing this book, all at once I find out we’re locking little kids up in cages on the border and I’m thinking to myself, ‘This is like my book.’” —Stephen King

Non sequitur: “The president is right to take action on e-cigarettes. Six people have died, and that is a tragedy. We need to know more about all of this, but we cannot ignore what we know about other threats to the public as well. 38 people died in mass shootings in this country just last month. What about them?” —CNN’s Don Lemon

Braying jackass: “[Trump] now wants to ban [flavored e-cigarettes] to protect children from being harmed or killed. And I think that’s good. I’m fine with it. You know what else harms and kills children? Assault rifles do. … Maybe if the NRA starts flavoring those you’ll ban them too.” —Jimmy Kimmel

And last… “The few deaths from vaping are almost all tied to unlicensed, blackmarket products. A ban on vaping will only drive more people towards precisely the kind of vaping that’s causing the problem in the first place. The government is once again solving a problem by creating one.” —Matt Walsh