President [Franklin] Pierce, like a great war ship, fired two shots across the bows of the Congress, to bring matters to.

Thus, when he drew up instructions in lawyer language […] his clerks […] understood him very well. If he had written a love letter, or a farce, or a ballade, or a story, no one, either clerks, or friends, or compositors, would have understood anything but a word here and a word there. For his signature, however, that was different.

Then, bolder than the storied Cyclops, great Cthulhu slid greasily into the water and began to pursue with vast wave-raising strokes of cosmic potency.

Dermot Ahern established himself as a reforming and combative minister during his two years holding the Justice portfolio. . . . [H]e relished fighting his corner with successive opposition spokesmen.