Political Quotes

“Madam President, reserving the right to object, I share mutual esteem with the Senator from Iowa. I hate to find myself on the opposite side of an issue with him. We had this conversation in February as well, almost 9 months ago. There are many fine provisions in this legislation, as the chairman of the Judiciary Committee outlined, including his legendary work on holding agencies and recipients of Federal funds accountable and working with the GAO to ferret out fraud and abuses. My objection to this legislation is very specific. It is not, as the Senator from Rhode Island said, about the jailing of juveniles for so- called status offenses; that is, for something a juvenile would do-- such as smoking cigarettes, running away from home, skipping school-- that wouldn't be a crime if you were 18 years old. So for all these young pages down here who are not supposed to be smoking cigarettes, the law currently says you cannot put them in jail for smoking cigarettes--and you shouldn't smoke cigarettes regardless. However, if a juvenile goes before a juvenile judge and the juvenile judge issues a valid court order and tells him ``Don't smoke any more cigarettes, don't skip school, and don't run away from home'' and that juvenile flaunts the authority of the judge, that judge needs some mechanism to enforce his orders. That is no longer a status offense; that is contempt of court.…”