Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I thank the Senators, and I thank the Presiding Officer. I have listened to this debate, and I rise to urge my colleagues to allow a vote on this due process guarantee amendment. Senator Lee has filed it, I am a cosponsor, and I am delighted to be a cosponsor. We actually voted on an earlier version of this amendment in 2012, so this is nothing new. What Members may not recall is that it passed with 67 votes as an amendment to this bill for fiscal year 2013. I would also note that thanks to then-Chairman Leahy, the bill on which this amendment is based had a hearing in the Judiciary Committee on February 29, 2012. So this bill has come before this body before. It got 67 votes, and it had a hearing in the Judiciary Committee 4 years ago. Unfortunately, the amendment was taken out of the NDAA in conference that year. It is my hope that the Senate will pass this amendment again this year and that the House will support it so that the law will clearly protect Americans in the United States from indefinite detention by their own government. Members may say: Well, this isn't going to happen. We are not going to do this. But we have done it. I remember as a small child going just south of San Francisco to a racetrack called Tanforan. It was no longer a racetrack; it was a detention center for Japanese Americans during World War II, and there were hundreds of families housed there for years against their will.…”