Political Quotes

“Thank you for the opportunity to spend a few moments this evening talking about things that are on my mind, and I suspect on the mind of the American public. There's certainly a lot of news recently about collecting data on American citizens. Having attended a conference this afternoon, I can tell you that I think the great majority of the 435 Members of this House share the deep concern of the American public about our civil liberties perhaps being taken away from us in the process of data collection. I would expect that this House of Representatives and a couple of our committees, the Judiciary and the Intelligence Committees, will be spending time over the next few weeks going into this in great detail trying to assess whether we all made a mistake when we voted for the various laws that have allowed the National Security Agency and the other agencies to collect data on all of our phone calls and more. I would hope that's the case. We need to know exactly what's happening, how it has happened and what impact it may have on our civil liberties. One of the most precious things given to us in the Bill of Rights is that freedom, freedom from an oppressive government. So we'll see what happens here. For my own part, I want those hearings to take place right away. I have great concerns about all of this, and we'll see how it all plays out.…”