Famous Quotes & Sayings

For three years now, the administration has been sending the message that cruel and inhuman treatment is OK. Now the McCain amendment is going to wipe all of that away. It reminds everybody who's on the front line that the rules are the rules, and if somebody tells you they don't apply, don't listen to them.

Wayne LaPierre

If we lose under California state law, which I don't expect, that is not the end of it. The next step would be a federal lawsuit based on infringement of the Second Amendment of the Constitution.

John Dingell

If we're going to change the laws, let's change them in ways which makes it easier to catch criminals, and yet at the same time protect the Second Amendment rights of our law-abiding citizens.

She's flat out wrong. The only justification for special taxes is to pay for administrative costs. The U.S. Supreme Court has said that First Amendment businesses can't be singled out for special taxes.

Jessi Klein

I find it extremely ironic that Bush says that personal opinion should not be a tool in the interpretation of the Constitution, when he's the one who's lobbying for a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. If that doesn't stem from personal opinion, I don't know what does.

charts a path towards a longer-term solution through amendment of the Helms-Burton Act.

By approving the city of Chicago's O'Hare expansion plan, the FAA has done nothing less than authorize the desecration of St. Johannes Cemetery and promote the careless disregard for the First Amendment and federal religious freedom law.

Sam Brownback

None of us takes amending the Constitution lightly, ... The plain fact is this amendment has been exhaustively studied and it really is time to act.

John Spencer

It is a shame that President Clinton is losing his First Amendment rights. We think this is a big mistake. How else would we have known that President Clinton was working behind the scenes to support the Dubai port deal while Sen. Clinton was trying to block it?

just a clear and unqualified constitutional violation. So the university should probably know that regardless of what the outcome of their investigation regarding Muammar shows, they are still vulnerable to a serious First Amendment claim.

Jonathan Zittrain

People may be due the benefits of a democratic electoral process. But in the United States, content curators appropriately have a First Amendment right to present their content as they see fit.

The amendment to the Constitution will lay a solid legal foundation for the establishment of a complete and effective system to guarantee the environmental rights of the people.

Earl Warren

the Amendment must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.

The amendment I'm proposing does not change the decision to move forward with this cost-savings plan.

We care about this process. We can't let this amendment move forward.

We can use all the assistance we can get to assure the amendment is passed.

I think marriage is a civil contract. I don't know what they're raving about. We should all have the right to marry whomever we wish, whether it be male or female. That's what the 14th amendment provides: equal protection of the law.

Governments don't tax the exercise of constitutional freedoms, that's why we have municipal budgets and publicly funded police departments. People don't pay to exercise their First Amendment rights, that is contradictory to how the Constitution works.

For private employers, there is normally no special First Amendment right to get out of work to engage in a protest. A company might decide that it's good for morale to accommodate the exercise of freedom of speech on an issue that is very important to people, but that's an employment judgment not law.

Jim Jeffords

I am not precluding the hope and belief that when the president fully understands what this means and what my amendment would mean, that we will hopefully have a change in attitude and that my goal is the same as John Breaux's. I would like to see us vote out a budget by 90 votes ... not just hanging on by a vote or two.

I don't think the First Amendment trumps everything.

I don't believe First Amendment rights are being infringed,

The intent had been to provide them with $1 million each. There was not as much in (the budget) as initially thought. We're going to be able to correct it with a floor amendment tomorrow.

The issue is, can you make a law to restrict free speech? The First Amendment says that 'Congress shall make no law (abridging the freedom of speech).' No law, period.

The First Amendment only restricts governmental control of speech.

The First Amendment is not a shield for illegal conduct by journalists, or journalists' sources.

The truth is there is no $1 billion. This amendment is about deception.

Steve Frank

The framers specifically created an amendment process that was difficult, but not impossible. They didn't want to make that change easily.

Everyone involved with this misguided law has known from the start that it is an unconstitutional infringement on the First Amendment freedoms of those who create and sell video games.

David Daniels

The biggest concern with that amendment are annual increases with no decreases. If we have substantial bad economic times, it continues to go up.

It should not be the end of the privacy debate to say that technological change takes information outside the protection of the Fourth Amendment as interpreted by the courts 25 years ago, ... What we need is to translate the Fourth Amendment's vision of limited government power and personal privacy to the global, decentralized, networked environment of the Internet.

It's good to see that the kids are practicing what they're learning in their government classes. They know their First Amendment rights.

It's unfortunate that those that oppose the marriage amendment are using issues like domestic violence as scare tactics.