Edward Kennedy
Edward Kennedy
Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedywas a United States Senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Democratic Party. He was the second most senior member of the Senate when he died and was the fourth-longest-serving senator in United States history, having served there for almost 47 years. The most prominent living member of the Kennedy family for many years, he was the last surviving son of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. and Rose Kennedy; the youngest brother of President John F. Kennedy...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth22 February 1932
CountryUnited States of America
If a legislator is safe from competition, or if he represents groups with the same economic and political beliefs, he does not have to change his ideas or respond to the needs of the broader population. He can rest content with a mediocre, absentee performance knowing he will be returned to office. And as he is returned year after year the seniority system gives him immense control over people from other parts of the country whose views he need not heed at all.
It is extraordinary that each of the three individuals this president [ George W. Bush] has nominated for the Supreme Court - Chief Justice [John] Roberts, Harriet Miers and now Judge Alito - has served not only as a lawyer for the executive branch, but has defended the most expansive view of presidential authority.
The Constitution does not just protect those whose views we share; it also protects those with whose views we disagree.
Thus, the controversy about the Moral Majority arises not only from its views, but from its name - which, in the minds of many, seems to imply that only one set of public policies is moral and only one majority can possibly be right.
When you talk about security and safety in schools, most of us have historically looked at smaller class sizes, after-school programs, and better trained teachers, but part of this whole thing is having schools free from easy accessibility to guns,
We're going to support the servicemen and women, ... But when you're asking for the tens of billions of dollars in reconstruction, we're entitled to the answers to those questions.
Unfortunately, Mr. Chairman, there are real and serious reasons to be deeply concerned about Judge Roberts' record. Many of his past statements and writings raise questions about his commitment to equal opportunity and the bipartisan remedies we have adopted in the past.
The real transgression occurs when religion wants government to tell citizens how to live uniquely personal parts of their lives. The failure of Prohibition proves the futility of such an attempt when a majority or even a substantial minority happens to disagree. Some questions may be inherently individual ones, or people may be sharply divided about whether they are. In such cases, like Prohibition and abortion, the proper role of religion is to appeal to the conscience of the individual, not the coercive power of the state.
The separation of church and state can sometimes be frustrating for women and men of religious faith. They may be tempted to misuse government in order to impose a value which they cannot persuade others to accept. But once we succumb to that temptation, we step onto a slippery slope where everyone's freedom is at risk.
With Barack Obama, we will turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion. With Barack Obama we will close the book on the old politics of race against race, gender against gender, ethnic group against ethnic group, and straight against gay.
What we have in the United States is not so much a health-care system as a disease-care system.
Individual faults and frailties are no excuse to give in - and no exemption from the common obligation to give of ourselves.
I believe that religious witness should not mobilize public authority to impose a view where a decision is inherently private in nature or where people are deeply divided about whether it is... Americans are plainly and persistently divided about abortion and the fiat of government cannot settle the issue as a matter of conscience or of conduct.