Shoot from the lip

[A] pair of suburban slickers […] made the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour the most popular new TV show of the season. They did it by shooting from the lip, dauntlessly laying down a crossfire of patter that is often more fizzle than sizzle.

In a letter to Mr. Watt this week, Mr. Quitberg suggested that the Secetary had been shooting from the lip again. "You have never met me and until that moment had undoubtedly never heard of me," he wrote.

He is, as most Americans have now gathered, a blunt fellow, prone to shoot from the lip. He often speaks before he thinks.

Darrel Reid used to shoot from the lip. Few Canadian evangelists can match his record for the controversial quote, whether accusing single moms of using welfare to have babies or likening hate crime laws protecting gays and lesbians to Nazi tyranny.