Political Quotes

“I would be happy to listen for much longer to that kind of eloquence and enormously powerful and significant comment on the blanket shield that some of our Republican colleagues seek to provide to wrongdoers, whether they are corporate wrongdoers or others who have severely harmed innocent people. And it is not just about the rule of law that provides accountability for victims and survivors of wrongdoing, it is also an important part of the deterrent function of our legal system. Accountability and penalties for wrongdoing are essential to protecting vulnerable people in the future, and so our side will stand for keeping the courthouse doors open. Those rights that some of our Republican colleagues would destroy are essential not only to the Anglo-Saxon concept of rule of law, they are also important to vindicating right. And some of the folks who lived in nursing homes and who passed away as a result of this virus are veterans of wars. They fought for these rights. They risked their lives and sacrificed, and many were wounded, and they have now reached an age where they are in nursing homes. But one of the reasons they fought was to preserve these very rights that some of our colleagues would sacrifice so needlessly and so readily. Today, we are here not to look back and to lay blame. There will be time enough to establish a commission, as I hope there will be, a 9/11- type commission, to learn from the mistakes that were made.…”