pettifoggery

• “This proves, according to Ezra, that conservative and Republican opposition to the current iteration of the individual mandate is just legal pettifoggery and political opportunism.”

  The Washington Post: Give me liberty or give me health care

• “Of such squeamish pettifoggery are cultural declines made!”

  Socialist Hate Speech of Antiquity, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty

• “Rehnquist's disdain for drawn-out cases and pettifoggery by lawyers is legendary.”

  Newsweek: A President In The Dock

• “Then there are Rice's own inconsistencies in her public statements, the transcripts of which are a gold mine of contradiction and pettifoggery.”

  April 2004

• “When a sergeant at the Police Academy asked Mr. Conlon if he had really attended Harvard, he replied with a pettifoggery worthy of his white-shoe classmates: "Not lately, Sarge" is the literal truth camouflaged as sarcasm.”

  A Quietly Remarkable Memoir Walks a Beat From H.U. to NYPD

• “And some want to have everything done accurately, while others are annoyed by accuracy, either because they cannot follow the connexion of thought or because they regard it as pettifoggery.”

  Metaphysics

• “That is not literary criticism; that is pettifoggery.”

  The Indonesian Way

• “I don't know what Mr. Samuels is getting at, but do I smell a whiff of pettifoggery here?”

  The Indonesian Way

• “The rest of Dr.T. 's epistle is pettifoggery, but I am surprised that a scholarly person, who should be conversant with the findings of modern Russian history (from Kliuchevsky onward to Crankshaw), would defend the wholly discredited Romanov dynasty, which inflicted such continuous harm on Russian culture.”

  Cranberry Jello

• “Hopeless to seek either direct or indirect cooperation here; the man seemed a living definition of pettifoggery.”

  Trullion: Alastor 2262

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