Verbatim

"How did you get your job? It is apparent to most of us in broadcasting that your father got you your job. And yet I really don't even think you're qualified to be the head of the commission."

HOWARD STERN, radio shock jock, in a surprise call-in to a radio show at which Michael Powell, the Federal Communications Commission chief, was a guest. Powell, and later his father Colin, denied Stern's claim

"It would be catastrophic. It would mean that people who give $100 and who write it off their income taxes couldn't do it anymore."

JULIAN BOND, chairman of the N.A.A.C.P., on an IRS investigation into whether his organization can remain tax exempt. The investigation was prompted by a speech Bond made criticizing the Bush Administration. Tax-exempt groups are supposed to remain nonpartisan

"This issue was the outcome of major neglect by some parts of the multinational forces."

AYAD ALLAWI, Prime Minister of Iraq, criticizing the international forces in Iraq for the deaths of 49 Iraqi guardsmen who were executed at a false roadblock outside Baghdad last week

"I was never in a Petri dish, but at one stage I was that little cluster of cells myself, as were you, as was the doctor, as is everybody. Tell me anybody who wasn't that at some point in their development, and I'll give you a cigar."

MEL GIBSON, actor-director, arguing against embryonic- stem-cell research

"They're going to be heartbroken at not being heartbroken."

LESLIE EPSTEIN, father of Boston Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein, predicting how Sox fans will react to the loss of their underdog status

"I never will understand how a guy that lived with me could be with me so much and then write that I'm a liar, that I have a veracity issue, that I'm a psychopath."

MICHAEL OVITZ, former president of Disney, on his former boss Disney CEO Michael Eisner

Sources: Associated Press; Miami Herald; Federal News Service; ABC; New York Times; Los Angeles Times