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President  Obama delivering remarks at the Theatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro.

Miss some of the most important political commentary over the weekend? Here’s a rundown of some of the best political quotes.

1. Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, ventured up to New Hampshire for a speech that immediately stoked speculation that he might make a bid for the Republican presidential nomination again. While not saying he had decided to run, Mr. Giuliani nonetheless sounded like a man after President Obama’s job. The former mayor mocked Mr. Obama for being a weak and indecisive leader. “It’s worse than we thought, isn’t it?” Mr. Giuliani said. “He really seems like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. “

2. Many of the weekend’s notable quotes were criticisms of Mr. Obama. Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska was no exception. Speaking in India, Ms. Palin endorsed The President’s basic approach to the Libya crisis, but said that if she had been president, “certainly there would have been more decisiveness.” Later, she added, “less dithering, more decisiveness.” In the same speech, Ms. Palin said she thought her husband, Todd Palin, would be called “First Gentleman” if she were president. But she quickly added that “man, that’s getting way ahead of ourselves, isn’t it?”

3. Haley Barbour, the governor of Mississippi, said in a speech Saturday night in California that American’s are sick of Mr. Obama’s administration, which Mr. Barbour said was telling people only what he thought they wanted to hear. “America’s ready for leadership that’s plain-spoken, common sense truth telling,” Barbour said during the speech, according to Politico. “They’re sick of happy talk. We need to step up to the plate and solve problems. The Obama administration’s policies are causing problems.”

4. Appearing in Fox News Sunday, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, accused Mr. Obama of treating the situation in Libya as if it were a “inconvenience” or a “nuisance.” The senator said that “I’m very worried that we’re taking a back seat rather than a leadership role.” Mr. Graham’s comments echo an emerging line from the Republican playbook, that the president has not exhibited strong leadership domestically or abroad.

5. Steven Chu, the energy secretary, was grilled on Fox News Sunday about concerns that the Indian Point nuclear reactor near New York Cit poses a threat to the millions who live nearby. “That is an issue,” Mr. Chu said. “And, again, we will have to look at whether this reactor should remain. The evacuation plans of the Indian Point reactor will be looked at and studied in great detail. Certainly where we site reactors and where we site reactors going forward will be different than where we might have sited them in the past.”

6. Traveling abroad even as he launched the first new war of his presidency, Mr. Obama on Sunday sought to reach out to the government of Brazil and its people. “Alo! Cidade! Maravilhoso!” the president said in his speech in Rio. Mr. Obama said he recognized the differences that have existed in the past, but stressed the economic reasons that Brazil and the United States should be partners now. “Now, our countries have not always agreed on everything. And just like many nations, we’re going to have our differences of opinion going forward. But I’m here to tell you that the American people don’t just recognize Brazil’s success — we root for Brazil’s success,” the president said. “As you confront the many challenges you still face at home as well as abroad, let us stand together — not as senior and junior partners, but as equal partners, joined in a spirit of mutual interest and mutual respect, committed to the progress that I know that we can make together. I’m confident we can do it.”

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Brian Snyder/Reuters Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, a potential Republican candidate for president, holds up a tea bag while speaking in New Hampshire.

With all the news around the world these days, it’s easy to miss the good political commentary over the weekend. Here’s a roundup of some of the best quotes.

1. Representative Michele Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota, goofed about American history in an appearance before a New Hampshire Tea Party organization on Saturday. “You’re true lovers of liberty,” Ms. Bachmann said, according to Foster’s Daily Democrat, a newspaper in Dover, N.H.. “You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord.” Those shots were fired in Massachusetts, a fact she later admitted on her Facebook page: “It was my mistake, Massachusetts is where they happened. New Hampshire is where they are still proud of it!” Later she added: “And by the way… That will be the last time I borrow President Obama’s teleprompter!”

2. With Japan’s nuclear crisis still unfolding, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, called for a moratorium on the construction of nuclear power facilities in the United States. “It calls on us here in the U.S., naturally, not to stop building nuclear power plants but to put the brakes on right now until we understand the ramifications of what’s happened in Japan,” Mr. Lieberman said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” Mr. Lieberman praised nuclear power but later repeated that the crisis in Japan meant that “we’ve got to kind of quietly — quickly — put the brakes on until we can absorb what has happened.”

3. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, continued his criticism of President Obama’s energy policies on Sunday. Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” Mr. McConnell accused the president of being partly to blame for rising gas prices because “this administration in the last two years has been shutting down wells.” After Mr. McConnell made the accusation last week, Mr. Obama rejected it in a news conference on Friday, saying that “any notion that my administration has shut down oil production might make for a good political sound bite, but it doesn’t match up with reality.” But Mr. McConnell refused to back down on Sunday: “There has been a conscious effort to make it difficult to drill in this country. Both on shore and offshore by the bureaucrats who have been appointed by this administration and president. Noting that there has been a slight uptick in production doesn’t get to the heart of the problem.”

4. Last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates emerged as a skeptic of the idea that the United States could impose a no-flight zone over Libya to help the rebels who are fighting there. But on Saturday, Mr. Gates said that “a little bit too much has been read into some of my remarks last week.” Speaking to reporters, Mr. Gates clarified that he believed the United States had the capacity to impose a no-flight zone if the president decided to do it. “This is not a question of whether we or our allies can do this. We can do it,” Mr. Gates said. “If we are directed to impose a no-fly zone, we have the resources to do it. I just want to make clear we have the capacity to do it.”

5. For the first time in his presidency, Mr. Obama appeared at the annual Gridiron dinner this weekend, a black-tie, closed-door roast. Among the jokes the president offered was one about the speaker of the House, John Boehner. “I used to think that it was a tan,” Mr. Obama said, “but after seeing how often he tears up I’ve come to realize that’s not a tan — that’s rust!” A full report can be found here, from my colleague Jackie Calmes.

6. Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor, has been sending Twitter messages quite regularly these days. Her favorite targets? Mr. Obama’s energy policy and the news media. Over the weekend, Ms. Palin lashed out at both. “Pres is mistaken. Again. Claims we control 2% world’s oil & he “boosts production”?Who advises him?Who writes his stuff?Why won’t press ask?,” she sad in one message. In a follow-up message, she asked: “Is MSM just awestruck? Is that explanation for ignoring his claims? MT@dcexaminer: WH claims fail/Hugh Hewitt http://bit.ly/dERcdS.”

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Today’s Times

-        Pay-as-you-go plans are not just limited to wireless phone contracts. House Republicans on Friday proposed a plan to finance the government through April 8, only days after passing a stop-gap measure extending the March 4 deadline. “We can’t keep on running the government based on two-week extensions,” President Obama said at a news conference. “We’ve got a war in Afghanistan going on. We’ve got a wide range of issues facing the country on a day-to-day basis.” The measure would cut $6 billion from federal spending over the three-week period by eliminating or reducing 25 programs, the Times’s Carl Hulse reports.

-        President Obama addressed boisterous critics and the pained public on Friday as he defended his energy plan at a White House news conference. To the critics who claim he has pushed prices up by clamping down on domestic oil production, Mr. Obama had this to say: “any notion that my administration has shut down oil production might make for a good political sound bite, but it doesn’t match up with reality.” Although he offered little immediate comfort to the public, he sought to reassure them that global oil supplies were adequate and domestic oil production in 2010 was the highest in several years, the Times’s John Broder reports.

-        Though absent, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, was on trial during Congressional hearings on radicalization in the American Islamic community. CAIR’s accusations from Republican lawmakers ran the radical gamut – they were accused of everything from stifling debate to being a full on terrorist organization.  A representative from the group was not invited to testify at the hearing, but submitted 30 pages of written testimony – including a list of dozens of CAIR statements dating back to 1997 condemning terrorist attacks around the world, The Times’s Scott Shane reports.

-        President Obama is defending the conditions in a Marine Corps jail for Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, despite comments from the top State Department spokesman calling the treatment “ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid.” After being accused of leaking classified government documents to WikiLeaks, Manning has been jailed and forced to sleep without clothing.  Mr. Obama said Friday that he had been assured that such measures were justified and for Manning’s own safety, the Times’s Scott Shane reports.

- The “Don’t Tread on Me” sentiment of the Revolutionary War era lives on as conservatives, libertarians and others stand up to defend their right to use the light bulbs of their choice. The Times’s Ed Wyatt reports on efforts to repeal a 2007 law, passed overwhelmingly by both houses of Congress and signed by President George W. Bush, that would impose strict new efficiency standards on light bulbs.

Around the Web

-        One of the many ripple effects of the massive earthquake in Japan was felt in Washington yesterday, as Democrats seized the opportunity to say “I told you so” to Republicans who proposed budget cuts to the National Weather Service. In February, House Republicans approved a budget resolution that would cut $410 million from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Senator John Rockefeller, Democrat from West Virginia, said that the catastrophe in Japan was “a cruel wake-up call” to anyone trying to cut the NOAA’s budget, Politico reports.

-        TwitterLeaks: Twitter will be forced to release the personal account information for three people associated with Wikileaks, a federal court judge ruled on Friday. Lawyers representing the three people argued for the court to overturn the order, Politico reports.  

Weekly Addresses

-        President Obama pleged to continue the work of former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in this week’s Women’s History Month themed address. Eleanor Roosevelt’s leading the commission to look at the status of American women in 1961 inspired him to do the same with hopes of spurring action toward a more equal society. “It’s been almost fifty years since the Roosevelt commission published its findings – and there have been few similar efforts by the government in the decades that followed,” he said. “That’s why, last week, here at the White House, we released a new comprehensive report on the status of women in the spirit on the one that was released half a century ago.”  

-        Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, delivered her party’s weekly address focused primarly on rising gas prices. The goals, she outlined, would “protect America from international conflicts, create thousands of new jobs, reduce the budget deficit and help bring energy prices back down to earth.” Ms. Murkowski proposed ending the moratorium on new development in the Gulf of Mexico and parts of the Rocky Mountain West with hopes that American oil production would provide more jobs, money and security.

Happenings around Washington

- – On Saturday night, President Obama will attend his first Gridiron Dinner since moving into the White House. Besides remarks from Mr. Obama, the event at the Renaissance Hotel will feature entertainment by Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana and Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services.

-        The Embassy of the State of Kuwait will partner with the group No Greater Love on Sunday to host the 20th Annual Remembrance Ceremony. They will honor those who lost their lives in the 1991 Gulf War.

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From Today’s Times:

-  How much does it cost to extend the deadline for a government shutdown? $4 billion worth of new spending cuts, apparently. On Friday House Republicans proposed a stop-gap measure that Democrats said could be acceptable. Under the proposal, the law now keeping the government open would be extended another two weeks while House and Senate leaders try to negotiate a broader plan to fund the government at reduced levels, The Times’s Carl Hulse reports.

- As budget battles continue in states that are skirmishing with unions representing public-sector employees, The Times’s Michael Cooper and Michael Luo report that an analysis of recent Census data make it clear that there is no simple answer to the question of whether state workers are overpaid. The answer varies state by state, and job by job. The clearest pattern to emerge is an educational divide: workers without college degrees tend to do better on state payrolls, while workers with college degrees tend to do worse.

-  Defense Secretary Robert Gates bluntly told an audience of West Point cadets on Friday that it would be unwise for the United States to ever fight another war like Iraq or Afghanistan. He said the Army may find it difficult in the future to find inspiring work to retain its rising commanders as it fights for the money to keep large, heavy combat units in the field, The Times’s Thom Shanker reports. Mr. Gates says that the Army will have to reshape its budget, since potential conflicts in places like Asia or the Persian Gulf are more likely to be fought with air and sea power, rather than conventional forces.

-  President Obama’s administration is nothing if not historic. Adding to the list of groundbreaking firsts is the appointment of Jeremy Bernard as the first male and openly gay social secretary. Mr. Bernard, currently a senior adviser to the United States ambassador to France, is steeped in high-profile event planning. During the 2008 presidential campaign, he helped organize major fund-raising receptions in the Los Angeles area, including one with Oprah Winfrey, The Times’s Ashley Parker reports.

Weekly Addresses

-   The cold front that blew into Washington this week was inescapable – even President Obama’s weekly address was affected by it. “Freeze” was a recurring theme in today’s speech, but more so about the budget than the weather. “A freeze in annual domestic spending is just a start,” he said. Indeed; he outlined his plan to freeze annual domestic spending over the next five years by freezing the salaries of civil servants, cutting community action programs, cutting spending on defense, Medicare and Medicaid, and spending through tax breaks and loopholes. The only thing staying warm on Mr. Obama’s agenda is the investment in education and innovation needed to out-compete the rest of the world.

Washington Happenings:

-   Nearly 50 governors will be in town this weekend for the National Governors Winter Meeting, and they will dine with the President and First Lady in the White House on Sunday.

-  he 48th annual Washington Boat Show will set sail this weekend at the Washington Convention Center.

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From Today’s Times:
- Forging ahead amid speculation about a government shutdown, House Republicans pushed to approve the largest spending cuts in recent history Friday. Time is running out before the government’s current funding plan expires, leaving just two weeks for Congress to come to an agreement — one week of which will be spent in recess. And The Times’s David M. Herszenhorn reports even a temporary agreement might be too difficult to reach in time.

- Tensions mounted on the House floor this week as the budget debate continued, amendment by amendment. The Times’s Jennifer Steinhauer describes the scene on Capitol Hill, where the rhetoric has intensified as representatives sparred until late in the night Thursday and again on Friday.

- Up in Wisconsin, the Democrats are still missing in action, protesting the governor’s efforts to bring public employees unions to heel, Monica Davey reports. And the unrest over Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to cut the bargaining rights and benefits of public workers is spreading to other states. Michael Cooper and Katharine Q. Seelye provide a survey of other states where unions and lawmakers are at odds.

- As violence spreads in Bahrain, The Times’s Mark Landler reports on how the United States overlooked signs of trouble in the Persian Gulf nation. The Obama and Bush administrations have been skeptical of accusations of human rights abuses against Bahrain, and now President Obama finds himself struggling once more to handle an unpopular and strategically critical ally.

- Health care providers who refuse to perform professional duties because of moral or religious convictions lost some of the protections granted to them by the Bush administration on Friday. Seeking to correct what it sees as an imbalance between the patient’s and the health care provider’s rights, the Obama administration reversed most of the rule that protects doctors who refuse to perform abortions on moral grounds, among other procedures, The Times’s Robert Pear reports.

Weekly Addresses

- Mr. Obama’s weekly address was similar to a trainer giving a pep talk to runners about a long marathon ahead: The race to out-educate the global competition. He spoke from Intel headquarters in Portland, Ore., where he lauded the tech company as an example of leadership in innovative math, science and technology training and education. He said that companies like Intel won’t have to look overseas for qualified employees if Americans rise to the educational challenge posed by international peers. “If we want to win the global competition for new jobs and industries, we’ve got to win the global competition to educate our people. That’s how we’ll ensure that the next Intel, the next Google or the next Microsoft is created in America, and hires American workers,” he said.

- The Republican address, delivered by Tom Price of Georgia, focused on the budget they will offer as an alternative to Mr. Obama’s proposal this week. He assured the public that the House majority is hard at work keeping its “Pledge to America” by working on a bill to cut spending by $100 billion over the last seven months of the current fiscal year. “As part of our focus on job growth, committees in the House are combing through job-crushing government regulations, and conducting rigorous oversight of how the government spends the people’s time and your money,” Representative Price said.

Around the Web:

- Soon, Republicans may be asking themselves how much they’re willing to pay to repeal the health care overhaul. The Congressional Budget Office says that reversing the bill would add $210 billion to the nation’s deficit over the next decade, Reuters reports.

- Frank Bailey, one of Sarah Palin’s closest advisers while she was governor of Alaska, is writing a tell-all memoir based on thousands of personal e-mails, The Associated Press reports. Tentatively titled “Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin: A Memoir of our Tumultuous Years,” the book does not yet have a publisher.

- TV Guide: Martin Bashir, widely known for his interviews with Michael Jackson and Diana, Princess of Wales, will begin hosting his own show on MSNBC. The program will have its premiere on Feb. 28 at 3 p.m., says The Huffington Post.

- If Presidents’ Day sales featured mementos of past leaders, Ronald Reagan memorabilia would be the big seller this year. Nineteen percent of respondents to a Gallup Poll say Reagan was the greatest American president. This year’s win makes him number one on the list for the third time since Gallup started asking the “greatest president” question, reports Politics Daily.

Washington Happenings:
- Mount Vernon will transform from historical site to Presidents’ Day party hall when it hosts a “Surprise Birthday Party” for George Washington on today, tomorrow and Monday.

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Did you miss some of the political chatter over the holiday weekend? Don’t worry. The Caucus has gathered the best weekend quotes for you.

1. As he promotes his new book, Donald Rumsfeld, the former secretary of defense, is taking a few potshots at President Obama. In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Mr. Rumsfeld mocked the Nobel Peace Prize that Mr. Obama won after being in office for just a few months. “He had not accomplished a thing when he got the Nobel Prize,” Mr. Rumsfeld said of Mr. Obama. “It was given to him on hope, had to have been, because there wasn’t anything that he had done. He had been in office 15 minutes.” The former defense secretary also criticized Mr. Obama’s approach to foreign policy. “I think he has made a practice of trying to apologize for America. I personally am proud of America,” he said.

2. The budget standoff between the Congress and the White House is intensifying, and Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the Republican budget chairman in the House, chided Mr. Obama for failing to call for passage of the recommendations of his own debt commission. “His plan disavows the commission’s recommendations,” Mr. Ryan said. “This president has punted, in the words of The Washington Post. He chose not to lead.” Mr. Ryan promised that Republicans in the House would not shy away from making tough proposals about dealing with entitlement programs. “If we wait for the other party to go first to propose reforms, then nothing will ever get done. That’s the problem we’ve had in Washington all along. We are going to lead. Where the president has fallen, we’re going to lead,” he said.

3. Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, has not said clearly that he is going to run for president against Mr. Obama. But in an interview with the Washington Post, Mr. Huckabee hints at why he might not. “He said Mr. Obama is going to be “much tougher to beat than people in our party think.” Having run for the Republican nomination in 2008, Mr. Huckabee offered a sober analysis of the challenges that his party faces in 2012: “He’s going to have a clear ride through to the Democratic nomination, because no one is going to oppose him or challenge him. He’s going to start out with a billion dollars, no opponent, so he can save his money to the last four months. He’s got a huge social network and he has the power of the incumbency. People underestimate how sweet it is flying on Air Force One with all the trappings of the presidency.” And Republicans, he said, “could, in fact, end up with a demolition derby. Whoever emerges will come out bloody, bruised and broke.”

4. Mikhail Gorbachev, the one-time Soviet leader, is now a dissident of sorts in Russia, offering criticism of his country’s current leadership. In an Associated Press story, Mr. Gorbachev is quoted as blasting the idea that Vladimir Putin, the current prime minister, and Dmitry Medvedev, the president, would decide between themselves who should run for president next. “It’s not Putin’s business. It must be decided by the nation in the elections, by those who would cast ballots,” Mr. Gorbachev said at a news conference. “Can’t other people also run?”

5. Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota knows how to find her way into the “best quotes” columns, and today is no exception. During a speech in Spartanburg, South Carolina, Ms. Bachmann lashed out at Mr. Obama’s conduct of foreign policy, accusing him of paying too much deference to world leaders. According to the local paper in Spartanburg, Ms. Bachmann said that “our Peace Prize-winning president is very busy bowing these days to kings. He is bending down to dictators, and he is brown-nosing the elites that are in Europe, and he’s babying the jihadists who are following Sharia-compliant terrorism.” The criticism is a common theme of conservatives and Tea Party activists. But Ms. Bachmann’s words were particularly sharp, saying that Mr. Obama makes “Jimmy Carter look like a Rambo tough-guy.”

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