Political Quotes

“Mr. President, before the Senator from Virginia leaves, since he is the cochairman of the United States-Spain Council, I want him to hear my very brief remarks. As will be officially announced today at 4 o'clock on the new website, La Florida, the following has been discovered by historian Dr. Michael Francis, of the University of South Florida at St. Petersburg, who is one of the eminent Spanish colonial scholars in the world: The first St. Patrick's Day was not in Boston in 1737. Neither was the first St. Patrick's Day parade in New York in 1762. As discovered by Dr. Francis in the Spanish archives in Seville, the first St. Patrick's Day was celebrated by an Irish priest, Richard Arthur, better known as Ricardo Arturo, in St. Augustine in 1600, to be followed by the first St. Patrick's Day parade in the New World, in St. Augustine, in 1601. Needless to say, it is not going to make our friends in Boston and New York happy to hear that they have been eclipsed by well over a century and a half. However, it shows the strong roots of the Irish people in America all the way back to Saint Patty's Day in 1600 in St. Augustine, FL. I thank the Presiding Officer. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from the great State of Alaska.”