Political Quotes

“I strongly oppose this amendment. I am deeply surprised the gentleman from Michigan would, in fact, propose the amendment. He has one of these bears from his State, and a lot of hunters are not wealthy. This is a legal activity in Canada. They hunted these bears prior to 2008 and even prior to 2007. These are dead bears, and they are sitting in Canada. When the hunters hunted legally, the Canadian Government gave them the proper authority to do so, and it helped the native villages. Right now, there are more bears in Canada than there ever has been in history. Hunting is a vital process of the management of game, and these people included two wounded veterans. They were in Iraq, in that heated area, and the one dream they had when they got back was to be able to go and hunt a polar bear. I can understand that. They shot their trophies legally and with the blessing of the Canadian Government and the local province, and then they expected to be able to return those bears, those hides--and yes, even sometimes the bodies--back home for the proper display of their hunts. To say now you can't import something when a bear was declared threatened by, yes, the Bush administration--and wrongfully so--the bears are not threatened. There are more bears now than there were in 1964. I'm probably the only individual on this floor who had ever shot a polar bear in '64, and I'm certainly not rich.…”