As they see it.

• Position: Letter to the editor

"I am tired of California being the laughingstock of late-night jokes. We must change course immediately or create a new state."

--Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Stone, who is pushing a proposal for roughly a dozen counties in the eastern and southern parts of California to form a new state called South California, in the New York Times.

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"The big lesson from Minnesota is that the unthinkable is possible. You have a tendency to think in these sorts of situations it's just a game of chicken.... But sometimes a game of chicken ends in a car crash."

--Lawrence Jacobs, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota, about the state "s shutdown, in the New York Times.

"We need legislation that promotes job creation, not legislation that takes food away from hungry children."

--Michigan Senator Coleman Young about a bill limiting welfare to four years, in the Detroit News.

"My political obituary's been written twice before and never published. They haven't beaten me yet."

--Virginia Delegate Ward L. Armstrong whose...