LOTT: Well, again, I'll let other people make that judgment. You know, sometimes when you praise people too much--I went to the floor of the Senate not too long ago and said words of praise for Paul Wellstone. Now, did that mean I was endorsing his positions in the Senate? No. What it meant was, this is a man who served the people, he was killed in a plane accident, and he was always courteous to me and friendly, and so that was the, I thought, the human and the right thing to do. That's why I went to his memorial services, because I thought it was the right thing to do. And quite often we do become too exuberant in our endorsements of people that perhaps we work with or that are retiring or it had been birthdays, in this case. So others clearly have made that sort of mistake.
(from reader LM)