Political Quotes

“Madam Chairwoman, I rise to strongly urge opposition to the Amash amendment. This program has stopped dozens of terrorist attacks. That means it's saved untold American lives. This amendment is not simple. It does not limit the program. It does not modify it. It does not constrain the program. It ends the program. It blows it up. Some of you've heard the analogy that if you want to search for a needle in a haystack, you have to have the haystack. This takes a leaf blower and blows away the entire haystack. You will not have this program if this amendment passes. And it does so, despite all of the safeguards you have already heard. This program is constitutional under Supreme Court precedent--not recent precedent. Precedent goes back to 1979, just 2 years after I was born, the year that one of the young sponsors of this amendment was born. This program is approved by large bipartisan majorities of this body on the statute--text that they approved, not their secret intents or wishes. It is overseen by article III judges who have been confirmed by the Senate and are independent of the executive branch. It is reviewed by the Intelligence Committees, and it is executed primarily by military officers, not generals, but the majors and the colonels who have been fighting and bleeding for this country for 12 years. What is it, metadata? It sounds kind of scary. It's nothing more than an Excel spreadsheet with five columns: called to, called from, date, time, and the duration.…”