On the pork barrel

Pork barrel politics is, simply, the art of buying your constituents' votes using their own money, and hoping that they never catch on.

The depressing part about this is how often it works.

On Monuments

The memorial's chief architect told NPR that the quote was "a paraphrase of the original statement based on design constraints."

Meaning, I suppose, "Hey, there's only so much room on the wall."

Dude, if you can't find room for thirteen more words on that surface, in the same face and size, it's because you're not bleedin' trying.

(In fact, it'd actually fill the space better and look more balanced.)