Political Quotes

“I just rise to point out to the Members that we are here to modernize the FISA bill of 1978, and I ask Members to think about all of the changes in sophistication and accessibility of communication devices today. Think about your own e-mail, your own BlackBerry, your own cell phone, your own laptop, your own desktop, just the handful of things that are directly involved in this line of work, in any routine business in America. All of those things offer multiple avenues per device to communicate around the world in an instantaneous manner at almost no cost. Tracking that type of communication device, when it is being used by people who would fly airliners into the World Trade Center; when it is being used by people who would fly an airliner full of innocent women and children and students on field trips, and bands who have spent all year having car washes to be able to go on that trip into the center of our defense might, the symbol of our Armed Services, into the Pentagon; the kind of people who would plot to blow up 10 more airliners as recently as 5 weeks ago. Now, it seems odd to me that that is a difficult choice, that we would want not to give all the tools possible to our law enforcement and intelligence officials.”